7 ms·

Any idea why an oven needs an "NVIDIA Tegra K1 with 2.3 GHz quad-core processor and 192 CUDA GPU cores"? Seems like overkill?

by zoba 11y ago

jcromartie 11y ago
To stream video from the full HD camera. Now, any idea why an oven needs a full HD camera?
- rodeoclown 11y ago
  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.
- RyanZAG 11y ago
  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.
  - mattdotc 11y ago
    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?
    - lambdaelite 11y ago
      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.
    - VLM 11y ago
      "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.
      - mattdotc 11y ago
        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.
    - scottmwinters 11y ago
      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
- adam-a 11y ago
  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.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > 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.
  - MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
    > 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.
- danbruc 11y ago
  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?
  - bhartzer 11y ago
    I don't think any computer out there can properly identify the food that I attempt to cook...
    - pdabbadabba 11y ago
      Perhaps not. But it definitely can't without a camera.
      - anigbrowl 11y ago
        What about smelling the food instead of looking at it?
        serf 11y ago
        what about pre-tasting it, or pre-digesting it for a calorie count? would the market accept eating robot feces?
        anigbrowl 11y ago
        Seems to work for ServCo...
  - athenot 11y ago
    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).
- VLM 11y ago
  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.
dhess 11y ago
Doubles as a heating element?
emranemran 11y ago
They're going to need some serious volume to source those K1s from nvidia.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> Any idea why an oven needs an "NVIDIA Tegra K1 with 2.3 GHz quad-core processor and 192 CUDA GPU cores"? Obviously, to power the food identification, analysis, and cooking program recommendation system that makes it a "Smart Oven".
- untog 11y ago
  Still seems like overkill, though. Just like the "beverage identification" in Vessyl, it presumably adds a reasonable amount to the cost of the thing (as well as another breakable component) when selecting "A chicken leg" in an app or something would be sufficient.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Just like the "beverage identification" in Vessyl, it presumably adds a reasonable amount to the cost of the thing (as well as another breakable component) when selecting "A chicken leg" in an app or something would be sufficient. Selecting common recipes from the console is a fairly common feature even in inexpensive microwaves and toaster ovens. Moving that to a phone app isn't really much of a comparative selling point, and its cheap and easy for existing incumbents in the market to replicate. Onboard identification is much more of a unique feature. Sure, it adds quite a bit to the cost, but -- as long as it remains relatively unique -- it probably adds more to the appeal and potential selling price than to the cost.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        > Obviously none of us know the price breakdown but it adds to a cost that will total $3000 for non pre-orders. Even if it's a very useful feature, that much money for an oven that is too small to cook a meal for a family ensures it will not reach a mass market. The first popular countertop microwave oven was sold in 1967 at a price that is equivalent to about $3,500 now. New tech in appliances is often very expensive; the early adopters (as in many fields) are people that aren't very price sensitive if there are new features that aren't available elsewhere. Anyway, a countertop oven that can handle up to 11"x16" baking dishes isn't too small to cook a family meal, so even if your premise was correct, its not really applicable to the device in question.
bryanlarsen 11y ago
The oven can tell the difference between beef and pork. http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/9/8751947/june-oven-identify-your-food http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/9/8751947/june-oven-identify-...
CHY872 11y ago
nVidia positioned the K1 towards the automotive industry (for all of driver assistance, computer vision etc) [0]. Since control systems there will be similar to control systems with this oven (knobs, dials etc) I'd imagine that there's simplifications there; furthermore there'll be decent product support etc. SoCs cost at most like $20 each (if you have scale, which these guys won't)); the cost amounts from elsewhere. They'll form a comparatively small part of the total cost (which they can iterate on in later editions) but that make things simpler overall. If they wanted to, they could just include dev boards in the devices; at $300 it would only be 10% of the price. [0] - on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2014/presentations/S4412-tegra-k1-automotive-industry.pdf
Mister_Snuggles 11y ago
Perhaps that is the heating element
- mey 11y ago
  Usually I downvote or ignore snarky comments on HN as the site tries to keep things on topic and somewhat constructive, but I have to admit I had a good laugh at this.
- jerrysievert 11y ago
  I have one of these, it doesn't run very warm at all (yes, I recognize that was a snarky comment). I was wondering the same thing, but am thinking that it could be part of the food recognition engine.
rpcope1 11y ago
Came here to say, this seems like a job for a low power 16-bit or 32-bit MCU, probably not that Tegra chip. Or are we Bitcoin mining while we cook dinner?
aaron695 11y ago
> Any idea why an oven needs an "NVIDIA Tegra K1 with 2.3 GHz quad-core processor and 192 CUDA GPU cores"? Seems like overkill? This is why this oven exists??? Or do we think image recognition and AI is easy and can be programmed up on a weekend on a phone?

Any idea why an oven needs an "NVIDIA Tegra K1 with 2.3 GHz quad-core processor and 192 CUDA GPU cores"? Seems like overkill?

by zoba 11y ago

Any idea why an oven needs an "NVIDIA Tegra K1 with 2.3 GHz quad-core processor and 192 CUDA GPU cores"? Seems like overkill?

jcromartie 11y ago

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

rodeoclown 11y ago
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.
RyanZAG 11y ago
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.
- mattdotc 11y ago
  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?
  - lambdaelite 11y ago
    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.
  - VLM 11y ago
    "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.
    - mattdotc 11y ago
      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.
  - scottmwinters 11y ago
    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
adam-a 11y ago
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.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > 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.
- MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
  > 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.
danbruc 11y ago
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?
- bhartzer 11y ago
  I don't think any computer out there can properly identify the food that I attempt to cook...
  - pdabbadabba 11y ago
    Perhaps not. But it definitely can't without a camera.
    - anigbrowl 11y ago
      What about smelling the food instead of looking at it?
      - serf 11y ago
        what about pre-tasting it, or pre-digesting it for a calorie count? would the market accept eating robot feces?
        anigbrowl 11y ago
        Seems to work for ServCo...
- athenot 11y ago
  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).
VLM 11y ago
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.

dhess 11y ago

Doubles as a heating element?

emranemran 11y ago

They're going to need some serious volume to source those K1s from nvidia.

dragonwriter 11y ago

> Any idea why an oven needs an "NVIDIA Tegra K1 with 2.3 GHz quad-core processor and 192 CUDA GPU cores"? Obviously, to power the food identification, analysis, and cooking program recommendation system that makes it a "Smart Oven".

untog 11y ago
Still seems like overkill, though. Just like the "beverage identification" in Vessyl, it presumably adds a reasonable amount to the cost of the thing (as well as another breakable component) when selecting "A chicken leg" in an app or something would be sufficient.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Just like the "beverage identification" in Vessyl, it presumably adds a reasonable amount to the cost of the thing (as well as another breakable component) when selecting "A chicken leg" in an app or something would be sufficient. Selecting common recipes from the console is a fairly common feature even in inexpensive microwaves and toaster ovens. Moving that to a phone app isn't really much of a comparative selling point, and its cheap and easy for existing incumbents in the market to replicate. Onboard identification is much more of a unique feature. Sure, it adds quite a bit to the cost, but -- as long as it remains relatively unique -- it probably adds more to the appeal and potential selling price than to the cost.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > Obviously none of us know the price breakdown but it adds to a cost that will total $3000 for non pre-orders. Even if it's a very useful feature, that much money for an oven that is too small to cook a meal for a family ensures it will not reach a mass market. The first popular countertop microwave oven was sold in 1967 at a price that is equivalent to about $3,500 now. New tech in appliances is often very expensive; the early adopters (as in many fields) are people that aren't very price sensitive if there are new features that aren't available elsewhere. Anyway, a countertop oven that can handle up to 11"x16" baking dishes isn't too small to cook a family meal, so even if your premise was correct, its not really applicable to the device in question.

bryanlarsen 11y ago

The oven can tell the difference between beef and pork. http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/9/8751947/june-oven-identify-your-food http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/9/8751947/june-oven-identify-...

CHY872 11y ago

nVidia positioned the K1 towards the automotive industry (for all of driver assistance, computer vision etc) [0]. Since control systems there will be similar to control systems with this oven (knobs, dials etc) I'd imagine that there's simplifications there; furthermore there'll be decent product support etc. SoCs cost at most like $20 each (if you have scale, which these guys won't)); the cost amounts from elsewhere. They'll form a comparatively small part of the total cost (which they can iterate on in later editions) but that make things simpler overall. If they wanted to, they could just include dev boards in the devices; at $300 it would only be 10% of the price. [0] - on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2014/presentations/S4412-tegra-k1-automotive-industry.pdf

Mister_Snuggles 11y ago

Perhaps that is the heating element

mey 11y ago
Usually I downvote or ignore snarky comments on HN as the site tries to keep things on topic and somewhat constructive, but I have to admit I had a good laugh at this.
jerrysievert 11y ago
I have one of these, it doesn't run very warm at all (yes, I recognize that was a snarky comment). I was wondering the same thing, but am thinking that it could be part of the food recognition engine.

rpcope1 11y ago

Came here to say, this seems like a job for a low power 16-bit or 32-bit MCU, probably not that Tegra chip. Or are we Bitcoin mining while we cook dinner?

aaron695 11y ago

> Any idea why an oven needs an "NVIDIA Tegra K1 with 2.3 GHz quad-core processor and 192 CUDA GPU cores"? Seems like overkill? This is why this oven exists??? Or do we think image recognition and AI is easy and can be programmed up on a weekend on a phone?