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Re:Cinder (YC W15) – Smart Countertop Grill by buro9 on Thursday March 05, 2015 @06:02PM (#9154496)
How is the temperature control done? How do you stop it from exceeding that heat, accurately?

Or specifically, is the heating method induction? And how do you determine the temperature from that? (If induction, is it deduced from resistance?)

Re:Cinder (YC W15) – Smart Countertop Grill by InternetofJim on Thursday March 05, 2015 @06:12PM (#9154552)
No, not using induction, just traditional resistive heating plus materials, shape and heater design to get even heating.

Preventing overshoot is a matter of the control method. We have a model of the system and use a predictive control algorithm to cut off heating just when we need to in order to hit the target without overshoot.

Re:Cinder (YC W15) – Smart Countertop Grill by bhayden on Thursday March 05, 2015 @06:27PM (#9154626)
So is that to say if you introduce something to the cooking element, like water, the temperature will be wrong because the water unexpectedly cooled the surface?
Re:Cinder (YC W15) – Smart Countertop Grill by InternetofJim on Thursday March 05, 2015 @07:52PM (#9154924)
We raise the temperature back up as quickly as possible without overshooting in thst case. During low temp cooking, you really only care about the maximum temperature, so you don't care much, it just takes a little longer to finish. But during sear of a protein, you just drive the temperature high enough that any loss from adding food or water to the plate is acceptable.
Re:Cinder (YC W15) – Smart Countertop Grill by nickff on Thursday March 05, 2015 @06:27PM (#9154627)
Do you individually calibrate the grills, or keep the same model parameters for all of them?
Re:Cinder (YC W15) – Smart Countertop Grill by InternetofJim on Thursday March 05, 2015 @07:56PM (#9154938)
Our sensor elements are accurate out of the box, so in theory we shouldn't have to. But I'll admit, for our beta units, we still are calibrating each unit, largely for our readout electronics. We'll either fix this in the production model, or we'll have a highly automated calibrator.
Re:Cinder (YC W15) – Smart Countertop Grill by pjc50 on Friday March 06, 2015 @05:06AM (#9156392)
So it's basically a temperature controlled soldering iron for food?
Re:Cinder (YC W15) – Smart Countertop Grill by InternetofJim on Friday March 06, 2015 @10:16AM (#9157367)
I try to eat as little solder as possible, even RoHS stuff :-) more seriously, getting a whole 10x10 plate to the same temp is trickier than just controlling a single point...