Your comment reminds me of my favorite Douglas Adams quote:

"I am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand."

Sometimes it simply isn't about net time saved.

oh man that is hilarious. I am so on that wavelength :)

Don't read his blog though, or you'll be tremendously disappointed.

Are you confusing him with Scott Adams?

I did. Shame on me. I was just quickly skimming the comments.

You might still be disappointed at the lack of updates :*(

I spent the best of a weekend putting it together. I could have done it quicker, but my son was helping. It was his mainly his idea.

I don't really save much time. The real benefit is knowing that the food won't burn. Growing up my mother would make soups and stews, she'd leave them to simmer for 30 mins without checking. The food on the bottom of the pot would burn and make the whole thing taste nasty. I wanted to make a system that would prevent that, whereas my son just loves building robots and playing with motors.

It was as much a project for me and my son to mess around with as much as an actual kitchen time saver. But we have plans to develop it and just see where it goes.

Sometimes it's not just the time saved over doing it by hand, which assumes that when you do it manually, you do it correctly. Automating things also removes potential for human error: when doing something by hand, you might screw up, which could cost you far more time (and materials). You should factor this into the "do I bother automating this?" decision.

(Not OP) I think, it is worth a lot, just for the fact, that if you are the lazy partner/spouse in the house. Then you can make things easier for the one that does the bulk of the chores.

One of these activities builds upon highly valuable skills and, when done, leaves more time to build upon said skills (or do anything else). The other does not.