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Comment by jcromartie | Hacker News Reader

To stream video from the full HD camera. Now, any idea why an oven needs a full HD camera?

To be able to identify the food you put into it using machine vision. Now, any idea why an oven needs to identify the food you put into it?

I don't think any computer out there can properly identify the food that I attempt to cook...

Perhaps not. But it definitely can't without a camera.

What about smelling the food instead of looking at it?

what about pre-tasting it, or pre-digesting it for a calorie count?

would the market accept eating robot feces?

Seems to work for ServCo...

I'm just going to stuff it full of Soylent and see what it makes of that.

Image recognition with visible spectrum is pretty limited. I can put a egg-based or sugar-based glaze on something and it will turn brown faster, without making the meat cook any faster.

What might be more interesting is a gas-phase chromatography which analyses the vapors and deduces the various reactions going on. But that's going to be severely over-kill (and incredibly priced).

Well in the video it used a temperature probe to detect when the meat was done, then it cranked up the heat to brown. So in that scenario your glaze would be just fine.

But I am not defending this product. It may find a market but it would not be for me. I have been learning to cook through trial and error and find it fun and rewarding. Not only that, it really doesn't take that much time.

Seems like it would be way easier to just have a microphone and simply just tell it what you're making.

Personally if I were writing the firmware I'd put in color correction based on a DSP filter of the last couple minutes of heating element power (because everything looks falsely red under a red heating element) and then analyze the color corrected image to brown/broil my chow such that its perfectly browned while not incinerated. Sometimes there isn't much time difference between browned and burned, think of caramels, etc.

Likewise I feel microwave ovens should have a microphone to sell captured conversation data to corporations and the NSA ... oh wait strike that ... I mean analyze the sound of popping popcorn and stop the oven at a time that optimized the poppping yield while optimistically minimizing burning.

Given the bifurcation of the american economy into a small number of uber rich and a vast number of dirt poor, its hard to sell a $3000 oven when that represents a substantial portion of a line cook's annual salary. If you only use it a hundred times its cheaper to hire a cook either directly or indirectly via a restaurant owner. The uber rich could afford $30K or $300K so you're leaving cash on the table, and the average $30K/yr joe6pack will never be able to afford it. The game plan could be to monetize as much as possible in the short term before the Chinese clones arrive at walmart for $99 rather than being a sustainable luxury goods business. Or maybe not.

Apparently it can recognize what you put inside it from the camera. You can also stream the video to your iPhone - allowing you to post time lapses of your roast chicken to Vine I suppose.

> You can also stream the video to your iPhone - allowing you to post time lapses of your roast chicken to Vine I suppose.

I think the main selling point of streaming HD video is it allows you to check visual indicators of doneness without walking over to the oven.

> allowing you to post time lapses of your roast chicken to Vine I suppose

People constantly post their nice-looking food to Facebook, I'm sure this will be its main purpose.

So you can show off your food cooking on your phone to (hopefully) envious commoners who can't afford to spend whatever this costs on an oven.

- Signed, an envious commoner.

Their 'special' price is $1500 if you pre-order. Looks like they want to charge double that after their promo period ends.

Any good cook is not going to need some gimmicky gadget like this and will likely stay clear of this. You could get so many other great tools and more useful gadgety things for what they're asking. Immersion circulator, anyone?

"other great tools"

I probably have $1500 in cookware and my knife collection and large stand mixer and just cooking stuff in general, but if you buy quality it lasts decades (or at least it used to), which might be a slightly longer time horizon than the typical gadget, or in this case, toaster oven.

Agreed one hundred percent. I try to stay away from single-purpose gadgets, myself, out of desire to save space, but there are a few things I look forward to buying in a few years' time.

A few (2-4?) good knives (full tang), a honing steel, a large wood cutting board, and a knife block would likely be the first things I'd recommend someone starting out to get, along with a basic knife skills class. In addition to buying quality items, caring for them properly will definitely serve you well.

I picked up an Anova a few months ago for $150. That might be the best bang for the buck kitchen purchase I've made. Certainly ranks up there with a stand mixer and microplane.

This thing is cool, really cool. So the novelty factor easily makes it worth more than another toaster oven. But I can go get another toaster oven on Amazon for 5% of that, so..yea, staying clear

The camera is to recognize what recipe you put in the oven. Not sure if full HD was required, but maybe they found it gave better accuracy for the cost difference.

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