Perhaps that is the heating element

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.

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.

> 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".

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.

The camera also appears to be used to help determine when the food is done, to allow the oven to do things like turn itself up for the last 15 minutes to crisp the exterior.

And that's the important part. Nobody's going to pay $1500 for something that makes cooking easier. They'll appreciate it, but they won't pay for it. Lot's of people will pay $1500 for a gadget that makes cooking better.

$1500 is a lot for an oven that can't cook very much food. It looks like it would serve two people, max? And it can only cook one thing at a time so wave goodbye to roasting veggies while the meat cooks.

People who are passionate about cooking tend to do it for more people than just themselves.

> $1500 is a lot for an oven that can't cook very much food. It looks like it would serve two people, max?

It handles baking dishes up to 11"x16".

Most family size single-baking-dish recipes are sized for a 9"x13" baking dish.

> And it can only cook one thing at a time so wave goodbye to roasting veggies while the meat cooks.

While I suppose for some people a countertop oven might replace a full-size oven, most of the target early-adopter market for expensive kitchen gadgets is going to have a decent size kitchen with a full-size oven as well as any countertop oven; the features this has might reverse the traditional "large oven is primary, countertop is secondary" arrangement in those households, but I don't think most people in the early adopter market is going to be using this as their sole oven (though, I suppose, if you were particularly price-insensitive, especially if you already had a cooktop separate from a large oven, getting two of these for a dual-oven setup would be more space efficient than most dual-oven setups.)

It fits a 12 pound turkey. That's a small turkey, but it'll feed a lot more than 2 people.

> It fits a 12 pound turkey. That's a small turkey, but it'll feed a lot more than 2 people.

And, for those who find a turkey a less-than-stellar example for whatever reason, a 12-pound turkey is a lot larger than a roughly four-pound roast, which (with various different marinades and preparation techiques) is the base for lots of ~6-8 serving main course recipes.

No one cooks turkey except on Thanksgiving, so that's an odd example to choose.

A turkey is the biggest thing most people ever put in their ovens, so it's often used for oven size comparisons.

> No one cooks turkey except on Thanksgiving

There are lots of people who cook turkey only on Thanksgiving, but it is far from true that no one cooks turkey except on Thanksgiving.

I know it's not technically correct but I'm guessing that "no one" was meant to suggest "a very small percentage" which is likely accurate.

The fact that whole turkey is available year round disagrees with that statement.

$1500 is still a lot of money in the kitchen space. Most people could buy a whole new set of appliances for that price.

> $1500 is still a lot of money in the kitchen space. Most people could buy a whole new set of appliances for that price.

So? The target market of early adopters for high-end kitchen gadgets are willing to pay pretty high premiums for unique features. (And aren't people who could replace their existing set of appliances for $1500; they're more like the people that spend close to half of that on a high-end VitaMix blender alone.)

What? No. An upper-midrange oven alone costs that much. $1500 only gets you a set of the cheapest Chinese Walmart appliances with a temperature precision of say +/- 10C.

(whelp - after checking, it even seems that the Miele oven I had in mind as a reference point is over $5000 in the US)

Yeah, appliances is a place where going from midrange to upper-midrange might double the price. It's nuts.

> 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.

> 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.

Why not 'selecting a chicken leg' on the screen? Why does everything have to be an app these days?

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

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?

I don't think any computer out there can properly identify the food that I attempt to cook...

Perhaps not. But it definitely can't without a camera.

What about smelling the food instead of looking at it?

what about pre-tasting it, or pre-digesting it for a calorie count?

would the market accept eating robot feces?

Seems to work for ServCo...

I'm just going to stuff it full of Soylent and see what it makes of that.

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).

Well in the video it used a temperature probe to detect when the meat was done, then it cranked up the heat to brown. So in that scenario your glaze would be just fine.

But I am not defending this product. It may find a market but it would not be for me. I have been learning to cook through trial and error and find it fun and rewarding. Not only that, it really doesn't take that much time.

Seems like it would be way easier to just have a microphone and simply just tell it what you're making.

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.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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?

"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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Doubles as a heating element?

> 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?

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

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?

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

The oven can tell the difference between beef and pork.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/9/8751947/june-oven-identify-...