
We don’t need a remote-controlled iKettle - edward
http://simple-living-in-suffolk.co.uk/2015/09/you-dont-need-a-remote-controlled-ikettle-you-need-remote-controlled-coffee-in-the-morning/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SimpleLivingInSuffolk+%28Simple+Living+in+Suffolk%29
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jwdunne
Yeah, a remote control iKettle sounds meh but a remote-control iKettle
controlled by your iContact Lense, with the water fetched by a robot (can't be
called iRobot unfortunately) sounds so much cooler.

To be honest, I used to want all of these things. What's changed my mind is
that for every bit of money that comes into my life, hours of my life have
been traded in some way. Why would I give up life hours for a gadget who's
novelty will wear off within days when I'm perfectly able to fill a kettle or
flick a light switch? Takes 2 mins.

I do think there are applications to providing independence to those less
able. That's an important area to look into.

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rwmj
If you've got a robot that can fetch water, pretty much all other problems are
solved. Particularly if it can understand a limited set of spoken commands
like "make me a cup of tea".

Of course it could go horribly wrong:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAswvg60FnY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAswvg60FnY)

~~~
astazangasta
I favor Cheesoid: [http://youtu.be/GzzOw2tmb3A](http://youtu.be/GzzOw2tmb3A)

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cptnbob
100% this. I haven't found a genuine IoT device that is useful. They always
remind me of this scene from The Fifth Element:

[https://youtu.be/SnzzWGcdMqY](https://youtu.be/SnzzWGcdMqY)

Literally ever device has dubious utility and security so far.

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kaolinite
Bathroom scales that log your weight to your health app automatically.

Lights that dim when the movie starts.

A front door that unlocks when you approach.

None of these are necessary, obviously, but they offer little conveniences. An
iKettle is pushing it a little, but honestly, I'd quite like to receive a tap
on my wrist when the kettle has finished or my toast has popped up.

There's plenty of utility to be had from IoT devices (although you're right
about security being a concern) however, like remote controls and robotic
vacuums, initially they are being dismissed as tools for the lazy. Soon I
suspect they'll be part of everyone's lives.

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steckerbrett
All of these things sound like solutions that will take me a lot longer to set
up than they will save me in time. A few years ago I messed about with "smart"
lighting, and it turns out that all of it just unimaginably annoying. All of
these "easy" devices are going to have horrific security, some day there's
going to be articles about a doorknob botnet or exploits running on shovels.

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TheLoneWolfling
Relevant XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/1205/](https://xkcd.com/1205/)

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tragomaskhalos
I would never dare to remotely activate my kettle, as I would never be sure
enough that there was water in it. Nice nostalgia for the Teasmade though -
the simpler more tea-obsessed Britain of my youth, before the invasion of US
coffee chains, harking back to the war, when British troops would even brew
tea under fire to get their 'fix'

~~~
Frondo
I imagine a remote-controlled kettle could detect the water level, and simply
disengage (or even send back a warning!) if there were insufficient water.

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tragomaskhalos
You're right, and actually the article says that now I re-read it. Still no
sale though !

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StavrosK
Does your username really mean goat-armpit-guy?

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snitzr
I can't remember who said it, but a customer buying a shovel is actually
buying a hole. The customer doesn't care about the shovel he / she cares about
solving a problem.

~~~
arjie
Dan Norman, in The Design of Everyday Things, quotes Harvard Business School
professor Theodore Levitt as saying "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch
drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!". Googling now, the quotation seems
rather famous on its own.

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ZeroGravitas
Great book (It's Don Norman BTW, rather than Dan), though thinking about the
quote now, presumably the purchaser doesn't actually want a quarter-inch hole
for its own properties, but has some further goal in mind that the hole lets
them achieve and could peaked be achieved better without requiring a hole or a
drill.

~~~
arjie
Funny about the name. I picked it up off my shelf to confirm the quote and got
the author wrong. Amusing.

In the book, Norman says exactly the same thing. That people are looking for
something to achieve some goal, and the hole and, consequently, drill are just
means to that end.

Of course the spirit of the quotation is different. It means "serve the
ultimate goal, not the task chosen to achieve that goal", so it encompasses
this with some degree of rhetorical flourish.

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octatoan
See "much needed gap". Also, RFC 2324, "Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol
(HTCPCP/1.0)". [1].

[1]:
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2324](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2324)

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jstsch
Like the article says, get a Quooker - by far my most used kitchen appliance.
Also good for your health to have an instant cup of tea always available.

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ZeroGravitas
I don't drink hot drinks myself, but I did look into a boiling water tap when
refitting my kitchen.

They win on usability, though not on efficiency, since they keep a pot of
boiling water stored at all times in a insulated container.

Presumably this could be improved by connecting them to the internet and
having them turn off when your Nest knows your house is empty, or your fitbit
knows your asleep, but start to raise the temp as people enter the house or
kitchen.

They could also connect to a smart grid and vary the stored heat within some
parameters to help balance the grid (kettle boiling contributed to some of the
biggest grid peaks in the UK, during advert breaks in popular television
events).

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reefab
From the article's footnotes:

> While on the subject of smartphone driven hardware, experience has shown me
> that software has a much shorter mean-time-to-obsolescence than hardware.
> Any gizmo that needs an app to make it work will have the service life of a
> bluebottle, as Apple’s planned obsolescence orphans the app with an iOS
> upgrade.

This has been my experience too and I wish manufacturers would remove the
requirement on having an app to use/configure the device.

Because of that, I try to make sure that such devices I design provides a
basic web interface that makes it possible to setup and use the device.

This is impossible or at least difficult if the device is powered by a 8-bit
MCU but with the dropping prices of beefier MCU and linux-compatible SoC this
shouldn't be an issue in the future.

Of course, there is also the issue of remote services that those devices often
depends on, even if it's not exactly necessary sometimes.

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steckerbrett
The teasmade was such a whimsical device, though I prefer the completely
mechanical version which did everything from lighting a burner next to your
bed to pouring boiling water hopefully into a cup.
[http://www.inoutfield.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/02/Teasmad...](http://www.inoutfield.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/02/Teasmade.jpg)

~~~
cptnbob
Does it call 999/911 when it pours boiling water in your lap :)

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coldcode
I heard that British tanks in WW2 came with a kettle for making tea. It might
be just a story but having British relatives it makes sense.

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arethuza
"Boiling vessels" have been a key component of most UK armoured vehicles since
late in WW2:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_vessel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_vessel)

