WAF: Auotmating Kitchen Ideas

[LCrawfo]

Ok so we've got lighting, music, and an egg timer/timer screen (because it was all I thought to add - and I use it to be honest...)

But I'm looking to upgrade the WAF in the kitchen and I'm struggling for ideas.

I've thought about adding the perfect baking app and weigh scale, we're mostly an ipad family (to my own horror). link

But I'm out of automation ideas for the kitchen... and frankly that app would likely only be used by me... we're renovating the kitchen in two years time so if there are any serious upgrades to make I'm game for that.

Maybe a roller shade on the window with light level sensor... and temperature sensor in the fridge and freezer pass along updates if they get too warm...

Anyone got some cool ideas to share, I'll go back to google and see what else I can find... houzz link

Maybe integrating with some kind of recipe, grocery list, apps? Anyone done that?

[mrhappy]

I did a barcode scanner into HS and then producing a PDF shopping list (it looked up the UPC code from some of the web sources of codes) and it was not that useful to be honest, I found quite a few products not on the web site so I would have to add them and then really I am not a list shopper so I did not really use it much. I could see where it has an advantage though and could be useful...the amount of time I put into that little project was not funny however.

I would look for some RSS recipe feeds if they exist and/or some Youtube recipe channels to see whether you could embed a Youtube video into a screen somehow.

[LCrawfo]

I thought about the bar code scanner app some time back... but man... I'm terribly lazy about it and having to scan the bar code (when an item arrives and leaves...) would drive me nuts and I think the misses might think I'm even crazier (than I am).

I'll look into the YouTube approach it sounds easy enough... (what could possibly go wrong )

[rmasonjr]

I'm trying to get my wife to move from Grooveshark to Spotify. She listens to music in the kitchen, but from her laptop. If she moves to Spotify, I can use a HST TableTop tablet to stream her Spotify music - when HST finishes that plugin, of course.

[clay2young]

WAF for the Kitchen

My spouse of 43 years would be happiest if I stopped messing in there.

Just give her simple and logical to manually use, well placed matching switches and plenty of outlets.
No lights going out on her when she's not expecting it.
And nothing that talks to her.

Just her iPhone streaming music to a good quality Bose bluetooth speaker, when she chooses.

[scanman]

I've been contemplating the merits of a few ideas for the kitchen recently.......


1. spot light above the sink triggered from a close proximity PIR (the ceiling lights are all behind you when you're washing up so it gets a bit dark

2. humidity sensor in the extractor hood over the hob with control of the fan so it automatically turns on/off as required. You could look at speed control based on humidity level to minimise the noise created too I guess.

3. monitoring the status of the washer/dryer (there are a couple of threads on here about this) so you can be notified when a load is finished

4. I'd really like to look at remote control of the electric oven (so it could pre-heat as I'm on my way home for example). Sadly, the most user-friendly way I can think of doing it means intercepting the control wiring which would void my home insurance if anything were to go wrong.

5. Integration of an iKettle / SmartKettle so HomeSeer could trigger it. Good for morning routine events and a much better solution than an appliance module as it won't boil dry.


If you implement any, let me know how they work out. If I get round to any, I'll share my experiences.

[S-F]

2. humidity sensor in the extractor hood over the hob with control of the fan so it automatically turns on/off as required. You could look at speed control based on humidity level to minimise the noise created too I guess.

My mother's range hood has this functionality built in and it SUCKS! The fan will turn on HIGH out of the blue when you're making pasta and there is not way to turn it off. I highly recomend you don't do this.

[TomTom]

My spouse of 43 years would be happiest if I stopped messing in there.

Just give her simple and logical to manually use, well placed matching switches and plenty of outlets.
No lights going out on her when she's not expecting it.
And nothing that talks to her.

Just her iPhone streaming music to a good quality Bose bluetooth speaker, when she chooses.

Lol I get the exact same thing here!
I'm finding out that there are more and more of us in the same boat w regard to simplicity needs of our wives, as we ourselves move ahead increasing automation.


Tom

[mikedr]

I think the two things that has made my better half most happy in the kitchen technology wise have been:

(1) iPhone speaker dock.

(2) outlets with built-in USB ports.

Oh, and in our other house, a virtual 3-way switch for the kitchen lights.

Everything else I've suggested seems to elicit eyerolls. "Look, honey, GE sells an oven where you can control it using your iPhone -- remember that one time four years ago where you said we had to get back to the house 'now' so you could preheat the oven? That would never ever happen again!"

[sparkman]

My mother's range hood has this functionality built in and it SUCKS! The fan will turn on HIGH out of the blue when you're making pasta and there is not way to turn it off. I highly recomend you don't do this.

I'm sure with some good sensors, an override switch, some fancy scripting and maybe some duct tape, we can make it work better than that

Cheers
Al

PS Isn't it supposed to suck? I'd be more worried if it blew

[S-F]

PS Isn't it supposed to suck? I'd be more worried if it blew

Touche!

Still, I'm a rather passionate cook (Was a private chef in a previous life) and this fan gets my panties in a bunch. I hate to imagine how a wife who is luke warm to HA would react. That is, only if she knew it was part of the HA solution. If she thought it simply was the way the fan shipped she'd probably be much more tolerant of it that I. One time I was cooking for a party my mother was having so that damn fan was running non stop for hours. I went nuts, cut power to it, pulled it down and deactivated the fan all together. In a fit of rage of course.

The ability to have manual control is KEY! That being said, one of the long timers on the Vera forum once told me "If you have to touch a light switch you're doing it wrong".

[Jakob.Sand]

Lol I get the exact same thing here!
I'm finding out that there are more and more of us in the same boat w regard to simplicity needs of our wives, as we ourselves move ahead increasing automation.


Tom

lol +1

[Steve Q]

Current sensor on my refrigerator. HS warns me if the refrigerator runs continuously for a long time or has not run for hours. Door not fully closed or circuit breaker is blown.

Toe kick cabinet lighting controlled by motion sensor, for midnight snacks.

Temperature sensor on the water pipes to the sink to warn when temperature is below 35 degrees. Sink is on an outside wall.

Current sensor on dishwasher. Reminds us to start it before we go to bed.

Steve Q






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[randy]

The three things high on the WAF are:

• An HSM200 in a kitchen wall outlet that displays colors to reflect the status of the washer and dryer in the basement. Blue=washing machine running, Red-dryer running, Magenta=both running and dark=both finished. It is visible from the family room
• Under cabinet LED strips that come on to 30% at sundown, then to 1% at 11:00 (sun-Thur) and 12:00 (Fri-Sat). They go off at dawn. She loves the night lights when going in for a glass of water in the middle of the night.
• The over head light and over sink light are on two different switches. A second tap of the ceiling light switch will turn the sink light on. When she leaves the kitchen, turning off the overhead light also turns off the over sink light.

Non-WAF but practical items

• The Refrigerator and Freezer have OneWire sensors tied to events to let us know if the refrigerator becomes too warm or too cold. We had a failure in a thermister last summer that caused the fresh food to freeze.
• The refrigerator is on a controlled outlet so that it can be forcibly turned off, should it ever get too cold again. The power will be applied again when the temperature reaches an upper threshold. It can continue that cycle indefinitely.
• The refrigerator current consumption is monitored so that I get no warnings about warm freezer or refrigerator temperatures during defrost cycles. The evaporator cores defrost about every other day and during that time a heater element is powered, raising the current consumption. During that time the freezer and refrigerator compartments also rise above thresholds. The system will not generate temperature alerts during defrost cycles.
• The coffee maker is monitored and can let me know when the brewing cycle is completed and/or when the warmer is running - mostly useless, but handy to know when I am in my home office in the basement.
• In the sort of useless category, we also know when the Dishwasher has completed its full cycle.

A note about the refrigerator getting too cold. We purchased it in late October of 2013 and the problems began in late June the next summer. At first we would notice some foods were colder tan they should be. In August all of our fruits and vegetables froze. a temperature probe showed it to be 22 degrees in the refrigerator compartment. That is when I put a controlled outlet and temperature sensor in use to protect our food until GE could repair it. General Electric service was never able to get it fixed, despite replacing the main control board and the refrigerator thermister. After three separate service calls and frustrated with this happening every week or so over a period of a couple of months, I decided screw the warranty and set out to fix it. A few tries with strategically placed temperature probes quickly proved that the controls were working properly, but that the thermistor was not seeing the actual refrigerator temperature. It turned out that the thermister was located in an uninsulated cavity at the top of the refrigerator compartment. When the room was hot, the thermister would "think" the refrigerator was hot, because there was no insulation between it and the outer cabinet (aluminum) of the refrigerator. The fix was to build a 1/4" spacer to bring the thermister mount further down into the refrigerator cavity, then applying about 3/4" of foam insulation behind it. Since the modification the refrigerator maintains within 2 degrees of the set point. It is sometimes surprising that engineers can miss the most fundamental things.