Hacker News Reader

Comment by wrs | Hacker News Reader

I have a Bosch induction cooktop with wifi, and a Bosch oven without wifi. The cooktop has updated its firmware automatically a few times, and I have no idea why. The oven's timer always froze when it attempted to count down past 1:01. It was fixed by a service person who drove over and replaced the entire controller board.

So much wrong with this situation: Why does an oven need a computer in the first place? How can you release software for an oven where the timer doesn't work? How is it economical to make an unflashable controller board? Etc.

BTW, I got a look at the board, and turns out Bosch doesn't even make its own oven controllers.

View on HN

> Why does an oven need a computer in the first place?

What do you mean? What else is going to control the temperature, display, timer, etc.? I’m pretty sure my oven from 25 years ago had what I would call a “computer”.

My oven has a knob that I manually twist. To timer. No display at all. Not much electronic at all.

That’s how my old gas oven was, and now I miss it!

You could do it all with discrete chips on a board. No need for a computer really. Temperature -> PID controller, display -> 7 segment decoder, timer -> timer chip.

Something like a circuit board with a bunch of discretes would be how I would expect an oven from 25 years ago to look. Maybe there's a microcontroller to coordinate things, but I think you could get by without it

> What else is going to control the temperature

An op-amp and a thermistor and variable resistor (for selecting the desired temperature), perhaps? I dunno though, I don't even have a GCSE in electronics.

> display, timer

Why does it have these? My oven doesn't have these, just an LED that lights up when the oven is on but yet hot enough.

> Why does it have these?

Because people want them, and more.

> My oven doesn't have these, just an LED that lights up when the oven is on but yet hot enough.

I’m glad you have that option, but I’m not interested in using appliances that are no more advanced than what my great grandparents used.

Why do you want them, exactly? If I want to set a timer, I can just speak and be heard by one of the phones, tablet, watches, and orbs dotted around the place which collectively cover all three main voice assistants.

And what's to display? It's an oven, not a website. Temperature is a dial, is it hot enough or not is just yes/no.

It’s simple: convenience.

Just like your Internet connected listening devices.

You really can't fathom why someone would want a timer on their oven? The things HN posters will be willfully obtuse about is incredible.

I get why "a timer" is useful. It's specifically "on your oven" which is the part that makes no sense.

We get as many timers as we want, whenever we want, summoned out of the αἰθήρ as needed whenever we invoke the names of the synthetic húsvættir that have shipped in all our phones for the last decade or so.

The question is "why do you need yet another one?", and the fact you think it is so important that it has to be specifically embodied on an oven as to be flabbergasted that I don't think it's important, seems… well, I won't call you "willfully obtuse" because I recognise how minds other than mine work differently, but it does seem very silly.

All you really need to control is the temperature. You don’t need any electronics at all to do that. You can just use physics.

https://www.cookerspareparts.com/news/post/gas-oven-thermost...

The cooktop has wifi? What could that possibly be used for?

I don’t know what the customer would use it for. So far, it’s been used to update its own firmware. (Perhaps to fix a WiFi bug…)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com