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Show HN: I hacked my microwave with a Raspberry Pi
- andor 13y agoThese guys are building a machine that can cook recipes from fresh ingredients: http://everycook.org http://everycook.org
- dwaltrip 13y agoAwesome. I was thinking the other day that an automated kitchen should be entirely possible. You buy groceries, place them in their designated slots in the fridge. Robot arms know which slots hold each ingredient, and can measure and cut appropriately (using scale, food processor, and maybe some other specialized cutting appliance for trickier items). Stove top is easy to control and pans are all lined up for the robot arms to repeatedly grab. Most recipes could fit within this somewhat limited set of "building blocks" that the kitchen robot could easily perform: measure 8 oz of tomatoe, dice onion, boil pasta, slice chicken breast into strips, pour 2 oz of oil on pan, etc. The hardest part might be washing the dishes.. Heh
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago>measure 8 oz of tomatoe, dice onion, boil pasta, slice chicken breast into strips, pour 2 oz of oil on pan, etc. // Surely you have the industrial machines do the pasta sauce in a factory, so no need to measure tomatoes and dice onions. Similarly the chicken breast can be cooked and pre-sliced (or cubed). The greatest problem I foresee with this is maintaining hygiene. The machine will slop and mess, eg pouring ragu, cooking with oil that splatters. Those surfaces will need cleaning and ingredients that spoil readily (fresh diced chicken) will need disposing of and replenishing regularly. It certainly doesn't seem impossible but each section would need specialised washing equipment it seems, or maybe be entirely submersible and so allow the machine to be flushed from the top and then have a steam wand clean the individual stations. I see it working for making dishes in an automat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat) but not really being efficient enough for a domestic situation. Perhaps a digester for the expired foodstuffs and left overs could be built in to generate energy for heating and cooling required in the machine?
- nkozyra 13y agoA lot of fun, but one of the primary issues with smart appliances is you end up having to physically interact with them anyway. It's almost more of a hassle to physically load up the microwave, give a voice command and then physically open and remove what you cooked then to just do the whole thing right there. The Jetsons-eque toaster oven still requires you to put the bread in.
- audeyisaacs 13y agoYes, but it's easier to find and scan the barcode than it is to find, parse, and input the timing manually.
- maxerickson 13y agoI tend to think of this as integration stinking right up until it doesn't. I suppose another way to put it is that "these things can work together" is far worse than "these things work together".
- edent 13y agoBrilliant! Having suffered an expensive microwave with a dreadful UI - I love this concept.
- benjamincburns 13y agoAssuming this isn't a troll, I'm curious -- how dreadful can microwave UIs actually get?
- binarymax 13y agoMy mothers microwave has a pretty bad UI. You cant just start punching numbers and start - you must first select from a grid of vague looking icons - and then specify the time. I got used to it after a couple visits but I was left scratching my head in the beginning.
- blowski 13y agoAs an example, amongst the buttons on our old microwave: * a picture of a whole chicken * one ice cube * two ice cubes * something that might have been a burger or a slice of bread * 3 x straight lines * 3 x wavy lines Never being sure, I ignored all of those buttons. But even the basic 'set a time, a power and go' method was awful. * Choose a power. There was no default. You had to do this before you'd set the time, or the time would reset back to 0. * Turn a wheel which increases the time. The first two minutes increment 1 second. After that they increment in 10 seconds. So to get to 5 minutes, you had to spend ages turning it. * Press 'Go'. Next to the 'Go' button there was a 'Cook' button, which reset everything. There was a defrost mode, which seemed to heat the contents for 2 minutes and 10 seconds (couldn't change the time). The results were identical to just heating it on full power.
- Ellipsis753 13y agoWe must have had the exact same microwave! If it was the same however you missed one more thing that I found really annoying. It makes a beep every time you make an action - so the whole time you're choosing the amount of time turning the wheel it will be beeping over and over. Horrible design. Furthermore when the timer reaches 0 it will do 5 very long beeps to alert you and then keep beeping every minute until you take the item out. If you instead want to just cancel before the timer gets to 0 then you must press cancel twice making more beeps. It was still better so I found myself standing by the microwave so that I could turn it off in time. It made midnight snacks impossible without waking everyone up. My solution was to open up the microwave and (after shorting the capacitor) I removed the damn beeper. I still have that microwave today and while it's still a terrible user interface it brings me happiness each day when I hear the microwave finish cooking something without beeping.
- chiph 13y agoI like the new control pad definitions. One of the problems I have with GE microwaves is that the number pad isn't always for entering time - if you touch "2" in preparation for entering 20 seconds, you get programmed time #2. Unless you hit the "Time" button first... Bad design, General Electric.
- joezydeco 13y agoI think the GE ovens with the "express cook" feature (e.g. press 1 for 1 minute, 2 for 2 minutes) expressly show that right on the keypad. Or at least they do now. Example: http://www.plessers.com/photos/p/00027/279032.jpg http://www.plessers.com/photos/p/00027/279032.jpg
- JD557 13y agoVery nice project. One thing that it seems to miss (that all microwaves that I know miss) and that would probably be very easy to implement is a mute button for late night snacks.
- hfsktr 13y agoAlong with that a way to shut the door quietly. Maybe newer ones are better but all the microwaves I've used sound like they are being slammed no matter how you shut the door.
- moheeb 13y agoGreat idea! It seems they should close more like a fridge or oven, instead of a car door.
- skeletonjelly 13y agoLike those fancy kitchen drawers that you can't slam. They slow down to a satisfying glide at the end.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoAutomatically mute between certain hours.
- angrydev 13y agoReally great project, and well documented too!
- mrdiran 13y agoThank you for this! It's about time someone disrupted the microwave.
- joezydeco 13y agoThe problem with appliance design is that people think they want and need all these features, but they never use them. Appliance makers sit around all day thinking of new ways to entice people to buy new appliances, but in reality they know that the complexity comes back to bite them eventually and the majority of users just use the microwaves for heating water and making popcorn. This whole "scan the UPC" thing? Not disruptive. It's been done before: http://www.smarthome.com/13041/Beyond-Microwave-Oven/p.aspx http://www.smarthome.com/13041/Beyond-Microwave-Oven/p.aspx So the question is, do you really need disruption in this area? Are people really clamoring for an easier way to heat up their Lean Cuisine even though all they really need to do now is push the "4" button?
- desas 13y agoHeating water in a microwave? I've never known anyone do that in the UK. Is that an American thing because you don't have kettles?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- gregPC 13y agoMy God, I've built the Pontiac Aztec....
- JonnieCache 13y agoAnother consumer tech suggestion culled from reddit: my TV should have a button on the side which causes the remote to emit some kind of noise so I can find it.
- arbitrage 13y agoI'm pretty sure that this has been independently rethought up many times since the creation of the untethered remote, long before reddit.
- joezydeco 13y agoIndeed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cPxSk3uIvk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cPxSk3uIvk
- lightbritefight 13y agoAt least a small timing ckt to flash the IR blaster in regular pulses. Your method would be more useful, but it would require adding a speaker to each remote. Both require radios of some stripe, though. At that point, you might as well get away from the IR transmission method completely.
- pbharrin 13y agoThis is a great idea. One thing I would like to point out is that microwaves come in different power levels. A large one may be 1200W while a small dorm microwave may be 750W. The cooking instructions in your database will need to account for this.
- jsingleton 13y agoLooks like this was already thought of "If cooking instructions are posted for a 1000W microwave, you can request the instructions for a 700W microwave, and the cooking times will be automatically adjusted.".
- jaynos 13y agoAlso, some microwaves are continuous power (magnetron always running) and some cycle on/off instead. Based on my struggle to find a continuous power microwave for a Senior Design Project (disposing of toxic compounds in standard microwave oven, I can't imagine this will effect too many models, but cycle times do differ between microwaves. The Raspberry Pi microwave is awesome, though I do wonder why the 1 second buttons exist.
- eik3_de 13y ago> I do wonder why the 1 second buttons exist Ever tried to soften a small piece of cold butter? 10 seconds is way too long for that
- thesis 13y agoWouldnt hitting "4" and "start" be almost as fast? Unless you eat an absurd amount of butter I don't see how much time it could possibly save someone.
- jaynos 13y agoTrue. I forgot that I often hit 30 seconds and then watch the microwave until 15 second have passed (or whatever increment I need).
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- jsingleton 13y agoThis is fantastic. I love how the Raspberry Pi is getting used in hardware hacking so much. It's ideal for it. So far my efforts have been limited to hacking electricity and gas meters but this microwave is much more complex. I gave a talk on this last night at the HN London meetup. Slides will be online at http://unop.co.uk/dev/raspberry-pi-electricity-monitor/ http://unop.co.uk/dev/raspberry-pi-electricity-monitor/ soon. The videos will be online soon too I hope.
- lucb1e 13y agoAmazing, wish I could do things like this. I bet if this was made by a common microwave manufacturer, it'd be advertised as the microwave of the future and cost $3500!
- thechut 13y agoAwesome job! This goes above and beyond for a 'hack'. You should have it upload cooking data to Xively so you can keep track of what you cooked over time.
- Arnor 13y agoIf you're not planning on marketing this, please share your process. I'd love to give this a try (if I can get my wife's permission... crosses fingers)!
- BHSPitMonkey 13y agoA substantial amount of detail is provided in the linked article...
- brokentone 13y agoGreat project! I would have suggested FoodEssential's API for preparation instructions (ran into them at SXSW, seem really cool), but they don't have prep, only ingredients and nutritional data. http://developer.foodessentials.com/ http://developer.foodessentials.com/
- Kerrick 13y agoHey, I live in St. Louis and won the National Day of Civic Hacking with one of the Food Essentials devs, Henry. Nice guy! They had one of their Solr queries printed and hung on the wall... crazy awesome stuff.
- homosaur 13y agoMissed opportunity to use phrase "Raspberry Picrowave"
- negativity 13y agoThere are 4 really bad ideas from the article: 1. Clock is automatically updated from the internet 2. The microwave has a web page so you can control it from your phone (why not), and set up cooking instructions for products 3. Tweets after it's finished cooking something 4. Can be controlled with voice commands ∗∗ ∗∗ ...not that bad, but subject to pranks and false positive microwave commands, from people in the same room This is all REALLY bad from a safety perspective. Exposing household appliances to the wilds of the internet is all kinds of dangerous. You shouldn't advertise that this is a good idea, and leave readers with the assumption that maybe it's password protected or maybe not (it is: http://www.microwavecookingdb.com/products/new?upc=8711000279571 http://www.microwavecookingdb.com/products/new?upc=871100027...), or maybe it's wrapped up in TLS/SSL and maybe not (it's not: http://www.microwavecookingdb.com/users/sign_in http://www.microwavecookingdb.com/users/sign_in). Is the internet control framework just security by obscurity, operated by arbitrarily obscure URL parameters? Who knows? Maybe? (here's the code: https://github.com/ndbroadbent/raspberry_picrowave https://github.com/ndbroadbent/raspberry_picrowave) I mean, yeah it's just a DIY project, but immediately, I see some opportunities to wreak havoc. First of all, it's not merely polling an internet time server, but that's one port exposed to the internet, that anybody can just start dumping malicious payloads on. Second, and worst, it can be switched on from the internet. Third, it gives feedback that can be accessed by the entire internet, tells the internet what it is, and what it's doing, right now in real time, allowing an attacker to monitor the success of malicious efforts. This way, you'll know as soon as you're able to send a command to power up the microwave for one second, to test and prove the ability to control it. People will attack these kinds of openings, just for the sheer amusement of running up a total stranger's electric bill, nevermind start a fire. This article seems relatively smart and competent, and so maybe we should ASSUME that proper security exists? This is the kind of design inspiration that's going to encourage some other engineer (or worse, an MBA in charge of some stupid startup) to go out and expose the electric grid to twitter with some poorly tested SCADA system, and on a dark, stormy night, in the far flung future, I'm going to be eating cold beans from a can, in the dark, because of it.
- benjamincburns 13y ago> This is the kind of design inspiration that's going to encourage some other engineer (or worse, an MBA in charge of some stupid startup) to go out and expose the electric grid to twitter with some poorly tested SCADA system, and on a dark, stormy night, in the far flung future, I'm going to be eating cold beans from a can, in the dark, because of it. Wait... are you saying this as reason why this guy shouldn't be doing what he's doing? Because somebody somewhere who might be in a position of public trust might be incompetent? SCADA security is a big deal, but I think your energy is a bit misplaced here... Party on, Mr. Broadbent. Keep making that Raspberry Pi make you some Raspberry Pie.
- mfraggs 13y agobrilliant
- gigq 13y agoUnfortunately this idea was patented 13 years ago: http://www.google.com/patents/US6124583 http://www.google.com/patents/US6124583 Makes you realize why there are no commercial implementations of this and why patents are terrible.
- netrus 13y agoAt least it expired 9 years ago.
- brizzle 13y agoVery cool project, but I would imagine that an internet connected microwave might result in these headlines: "Apartment complex burnt to the ground by toddler with iPad" "Chinese hackers crash US power grid using Microwave exploit" NFC or Bluetooth control might be better suited for this than full web connectivity.
- afs35mm 13y agoInteresting that the redesigned touchpad was designed (subconsciously?) taking cues from bootcamp css...
- ianterrell 13y ago> Can use a barcode scanner to look up cooking instructions from an online database > There weren't any online microwave cooking databases around, so I made one Brilliant.
- samweinberg 13y agoI saw the post that inspired this project on /r/CrazyIdeas too. Very cool to see how you've implemented the idea! If I ever get my hands on a Raspberry Pi, I'm going to have to try this.
- Yuioup 13y agoSee you CAN run Linux on a microwave. If only somebody can get it to run on a toaster...
- pbhjpbhj 13y agoWith a voice synthesiser: "Would you like a waffle?"
- kalleboo 13y agoI'm surprised there's still so much manual entry going on for people with microwaves. I guess my needs are much simpler than for most. 70% of my microwave needs are met by just pressing the "Heat/Start" button and letting the microwave auto-heat to 75 C. 20% are met by just pressing "Defrost" then "Heat/Start". It's quite rare I actually need to set the time manually (it's basically only for popcorn...)
- septerr 13y agoAwesome!
- coldarchon 13y ago"I couldn't find any existing websites with a database of microwave cooking instructions, so I made one." This has ALWAYS annoyed me to no limit that you couldn't find one good resource for most common receipts. It is mostly Try & Too Hot ..
- DigitalSea 13y agoBeing able to scan a barcode and know how long food should be cooked for? It just makes sense and I wonder why it hasn't been thought of before. I think this is a genius hack and definitely the scanning of a barcode for cooking times makes sense, this guy should definitely pitch it to the likes of Samsung.
- gridspy 13y agoThis was a fantastic article and a wonderfully complete software and hardware task spanning many disciplines. Nathan's done a great job on this. I'd love to hire him. Circuit design, soldering, graphic design, firmware and even a standalone website. If you've worked on electronics and software projects like this please give me a call (details at http://gridspy.com http://gridspy.com) because we need you.
- joshfraser 13y agoBefore you think about opening up your own microwave, you should know that microwaves contain high voltage capacitors that will seriously shock or kill you even when they are unplugged. I knew a guy who got thrown across the room and was in serious condition for months. He didn't even touch anything, but he was wearing a wedding band and his hand got too close. Microwaves are serious business. That said, I HATE the UI on my microwave & would love to fix it. Do people really eat that much popcorn that it deserves it's own button??? For me, I want exactly 3 controls: a time wheel, power up/down & a start button. Hit start for a quick minute, twice for 2 minutes, etc.
- notdan 13y agoIt is also funny that every package for popcorn has instructions that specifically state 'Pop for X minutes. Do not use the popcorn setting on your microwave'.
- nathan_f77 13y agoYep, I was very careful about the high-voltage capacitor. I made sure to unplug it whenever I removed the microwave case. That's a crazy story about the guy, I hope he's doing better now.
- ddunkin 13y agoDon't you have to get up and stir every once in a while?
- lessnonymous 13y agoThis is an awesome project. But by far this is the most amazing and innovative part of the article: > If cooking instructions are posted for a 1000W microwave, you can request the instructions for a 700W microwave, and the cooking times will be automatically adjusted
- post_break 13y agoThis has to be the coolest use for a Raspberry Pi I've ever seen. I honestly wish I had the skills to make this happen.