Our project was not hacking only. We tried to cover all aspects from ideation to realization, from user experience to business value. Therefore we started with an ideation phase chatting with the people at the event, calling our relatives and interviewing the event cook on site. We tried to find a purpose, demand, or need… literally we tried to answer the “Why”! Why should anybody in the world be interested in our project, why should anybody (if it turns into a product) buy it, just why should we do it (besides the technical challenge).
Finally we came up with an idea which makes your kitchen really smarter. We wanted to turn dumb home appliances into connected and social devices. As an example we did “retrofit” a blender for a smart home. Well, obviously this allows things like touchless usage (gestures), and guided cooking. Therefore, we added some cheap sensors to the off the shelf blender and used “Internet of Thing”-communication to a smart oven from Bosch. The cooking process makes use of this, because the home appliances can now be synchronized. E.g. the oven knows when and what will be baked. Finally we added the capability of speech to turn the blender into a social device which both communicates with the cook and calls the family members via phone once the food is ready. See the full walk-through in the following video (https://vimeo.com/wolter/blended):
To complete the mission, we started to add sensors to the blender. One sensor is able to detect the ingredients and volume. Secondly, we realized that a touch-less interaction is needed. Hence, we have chosen a tiny gesture sensor.
On top of that, we developed a tablet-optimized application. This "guided cooking" application can control the blender, read from a recipe, and give you voice guidance what and how much of ingredients are needed. To complete the cooking process we control the smart oven, too. Synchronized pre-heating, setting the right program and alike work like a charm. Your friends get an alert via social media to come by and enjoy your food right before you even can smell it…
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