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BigButSlimmerBloke: you seem to have missed the key point that the guy was trying to get the kettle to do something that the manufacturers hadn't intended it to do.
So its a bit like if I had bought a car and spent a month tinkering with it. And then moaned on the internet under #vehiclesareshit because I couldn't get it to fly like a plane?
Graham you're wasting your breath, if people can't understand after it's been explained over and over there's no hope.
"Misunderstanding" and "disagreement" are not synonyms.
It looks like he just wanted to be able to say
"Tea, Earl Grey, Hot" and get his drink in a Capt. Picard style.
I suggest he could've got much closer to that objective with a Teasmade and a timer.
So its a bit like if I had bought a car and spent a month tinkering with it. And then moaned on the internet under #vehiclesareshit because I couldn't get it to fly like a plane?
No, it's more like you bought a car, posted ongoing commentary on the internet about your quest to make it fly, then finally got it to fly - only for people to smugly quip that their car drives just fine without any tinkering.
No, it's more like you bought a car, posted ongoing commentary on the internet about your quest to make it fly, then finally got it to fly - only for people to smugly quip that their car drives just fine without any tinkering.
No, it's more like you bought a car, posted ongoing commentary on the internet about your quest to make it start from your phone, eventually make it start from your phone - only for people to smugly quip that there is no need to start a car unless you are in it.
Probably a bad example:
I used the example advisedly: an enormous amount of effort needed to achieve something that, at best, is of trivial benefit to a miniscule number of people.
Not quite the flying car of your over-active imagination...
I used the example advisedly: an enormous amount of effort needed to achieve something that, at best, is of trivial benefit to a miniscule number of people.
But is still a commercial product that people pay good money for.
Not quite the flying car of your over-active imagination...
I took somewhatslightlydazed's analogy and ran with it.
Ultimately I see absolutely nothing wrong with messing about with tech (or anything for that matter), exploring, learning, and trying to get it to do things it wasn't really supposed to do, regardless of whether that is "useful" or not.
"Misunderstanding" and "disagreement" are not synonyms.
Well done. I also knew that.
But this doesn't seem to be disagreement, it's painfully obvious that people don't understand the point from the perspective of those that do.
I used the example advisedly: an enormous amount of effort needed to achieve something that, at best, is of trivial benefit to a miniscule number of people.
Like a webcam showing a coffee pot?
But is still a commercial product that people pay good money for.
You were lauding the man as pushing the frontier of human knowledge: now you seem to be relying on the fact that someone somewhere can be relied on to buy useless tat.
I took somewhatslightlydazed's analogy and ran with it.
Well no, you were suggesting that this is analogous to turning a car into something else entirely. What we have here is a kettle that is still a kettle.
Ultimately I see absolutely nothing wrong with messing about with tech (or anything for that matter), exploring, learning, and trying to get it to do things it wasn't really supposed to do, regardless of whether that is "useful" or not.
Neither do I. But then I'm not trying to make any great claims for it.
Well done. I also knew that.
You did? It's not apparent from your posts.
But this doesn't seem to be disagreement, it's painfully obvious that people don't understand the point from the perspective of those that do.
No, I understand the point you are making, but think you are assigning a value to it that it doesn't warrant.
The coffee pot makes sense, the kettle doesn't. Anyway it's not like control over WiFi of heated water is anything special, loads of boilers are now online. Admit it the guy wasted 11 hours he could have been doing something useful like hacking the Kremlin.
No, I understand the point you are making, but think you are assigning a value to it that it doesn't warrant.
But once you've made your Echo accept commands to boil your wifi kettle, it should be trivial to make it do anything else with a similar protocol - which could actually be a salable product.
Especially if you market it to tech geeks with the line "remember the guy who took 11 hours to boil a kettle"...
It's not about the kettle.
Does he have an OCD personality?
But once you've made your Echo accept commands to boil you wifi kettle, it should be trivial to make it do anything else with a similar protocol - which could actually be a salable product.
That particular ship has sailed, as dragon notes.
It's not about the kettle.
The coffee pot was not about the coffee pot.
The kettle is about the kettle.
Yes, and I'm tremendously grateful to all the shut-ins giving their lives over to this kind of bollocks so I can get on with riding bikes and stuff from the comfy confines of said bubble 🙂You do realise that outside of your comfortable little bubble not every network is the same? This is why people like Molgrips are paid money to get stuff like this working, it's very similar and very transferable.
And now he'll be making money from presentations talking about this kind of thing.
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[url= https://medium.com/mark-rittman/the-story-behind-the-ikettle-the-eleven-hour-struggle-to-make-a-cup-of-tea-and-why-it-was-all-769144d12d7 ]The iKettle, the Eleven-Hour Struggle to Make a Cup of Tea, and Why It Was All About Data, Analytics and Connecting Things Together[/url] - Mark Rittman (Kettle guy.... and also Independent Analyst working with BI DW and Big Data tools, Oracle ACE Director, host of the Drill to Detail podcast and regular writer for Oracle Magazine & OTN)
I don't think it's specifically about the kettle, I think it's the juxtaposition of taking one of the simplest houseold devices in existence, something which literally just needs an on/off switch and an in-built thermostat and which pretty much any vaguely competent person cna buy for £5 from a supermarket and use with no training and turning that into something so complex that it requires 11 hours and a degree in electrical engineering to get to work.
And that extra complexity has given no discernible benefit - you still have to get up, walk to the kettle, pour the boiling water etc so you may as well get up, walk to the kettle and flip the ON switch.
And now he'll be making money from presentations talking about this kind of thing.
Congratulations! You've got your very own Kim Kardashian.
ransos: read his blog post above and you'll see exactly what we've been talking about regarding the technology he is fiddling with and how it directly feeds into his professional work.
e.g.
All of this data feeds into a big data "data lake" that I’ve got running on a Hadoop cluster running in the garage, where I run R, SparkML and Python statistical and machine learning algorithms on that combined dataset to work out correlations, attributes of significance and predictive models that could be useful in making sense of that data and the value it can provide.I use the ideas and models that come out of this setup in my own personal life and as ideas for the work I do, and share them other developers and startups hosted at Wired Sussex and their Digital Catapult Centre in Brighton, an R&D centre next to Brighton Station that proves space and collaboration facilities to a number of developers and early-stage companies that are also working on projects and initiatives in this area.
it’s mainly to see what can be done with the data these devices produce and combine it with other data we increasingly log using wearables, smartphone apps and social media sites to give better insights into the lives we lead, make our smart devices even smarter, help carers and health organizations provide better services and support for the elderly and vunerable … or in my case, help me exercise more and adopt a healthier lifestyle.
All of which, though, will at least give me some interesting anecdotes and datasets to use at the UK Oracle User Group Tech’16 event in Birmingham later on in the year when I’m presenting on this topic?—?or more likely, how to get an iKettle working -in one of my conference sessions on big data, cloud and IoT analytics.
If Kim Kardashian is doing that sort of thing then I've sorely misjudged her!
If Kim Kardashian is doing that sort of thing then I've sorely misjudged her!
She's very good at making money through self-promotion. Exactly what you were praising Mark Rittman for doing.
You're not understanding what's involved in this kettle.
A kettle is a trivially simple device. It's a switch that completes a circuit. The wifi kettle is a whole stack of technologies that come together to allow the switch to be operated from a phone anywhere in the world.
The fact that the switch is inside a kettle is utterly irrelevant. It could be a light switch, the heating, some kind of medical device, security feature, whatever.
But even then, you can purchase all those things now. The value here is the process he's gone through of figuring it out, and the technology and skills he had to deploy to get it working.
Those medical devices or central heating controls (e.g. Nest), they work using the same technology that this guy's used now.
mol: read that blog and you'll see it goes [i]far[/i] beyond even that. He's hooking it into a home automation system with Siri, Amazon Echo, RasPi, IFTTT, SmartThings, Nest and other gadgets that is collecting data into his Hadoop cluster. Sounds like quite an impressive set up 😀
Molgrips, I completely understood the meaning behind your first post.
We need geeks.
It doesn't hugely matter what they geek, why they geek or who they geek with.
Same with philosophers, physicists etc.
My previous post wasn't really questioning that, just pointing out that there are different types of intelligence and often that those who are are drawn to one aspect can often fall short on others.
Who is the more intelligent?
Leonard of Quirm or the Patrician who holds him prisoner?
Fall short? That's a bit derogatory isn't it?
We are all different, that's all there is to it. And yes, having one aptitude does not guarantee any others.
Windows kettle,Apple phone,surely.
From his blog it sounds like getting it running on Apple HomeKit was the easier part:
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Siri get me that apple on that apple tree on the other side of the wall on the other side of the car park. Oh you can't. Bugger.
Siri get me that apple on that apple tree on the other side of the wall on the other side of the car park. Oh you can't. Bugger.
Nice try, but ultimately a fail.
It shouldn't be necessary to point out why.
Siri get me that apple on that apple tree on the other side of the wall on the other side of the car park. Oh you can't. Bugger.
Nice try, but ultimately a fail.
It shouldn't be necessary to point out why.
Because it's not mine to have.
I appreciate the guy's drive to problem solve but I just don't appreciate voice technology which reduces the need the physically interact with the world. I'm a bit of a luddite I suppose, but am just a bit [s]tin-foild-hat-wearing[/s] wary of it all.
Yup Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Samsun, Sony all listening to you as you go about your daily business. While the NSA & GCHQ monitor it and the pedo down the street watches your kids on the Web Cam. Oh what a future, and they charged you for it!
GrahamS.. you can introduce new commands to Siri? He wrote an app for it?
all listening to you as you go about your daily business.
Should only be actually storing anything when you give commands. So not really listening except for the key word.
Now if only there were people out there who understood the complexities of these systems and how to protect them from abuse.
Oh wait.
4 pages in & no-one has realised he paid over £100 for a kettle?
GrahamS.. you can introduce new commands to Siri? He wrote an app for it?
I'm not an Apple dev but from what he describes it sounds like it might be a part of their HomeKit API?
4 pages in & no-one has realised he paid over £100 for a kettle?
No-one cares if he buys cheap tat, this is STW after all.
Can it also make the floor vibrate and play soothing music?
What a bright future we will have, where your kettle can DDOS your toaster.
LOIK(ettle) here we come :/
I'm not an Apple dev but from what he describes it sounds like it might be a part of their HomeKit API?
I haven't read the article in full, but you can get some open source software called homebridge which will act like a homekit device.
There are hundreds of plugs ins for all sorts of things - e.g. my automatic blinds are bluetooth only, so Siri cannot control them directly. Eventually I will get homebridge running on a raspberry pi, which will control said blinds from any homekit connected phone (e.g. mine & the wife's).
No problem with voice control of the kettle here. Mrs tells me she would like a cup of tea and I go thru the kitchen and put it on.
Isn't at least 50% of every entire tea making and delivery process (not just turning the kettle on) resolved by the presence of:
a) a wife/husband/ladyfriend etc
then
b) offspring?
Eventually I will get homebridge running on a raspberry pi, which will control said blinds from any homekit connected phone
Eventually:
"Okay Google, wake me at 7am. I'd like to shower first, then coffee."
"Okay, I'll wake you by opening the blinds and playing your favourite song, as usual. Your shower will use the last of the shampoo, so I'll add some to the shopping list. The weather forecast is for frost, would you like me to preheat your electric car's windscreen and seats? Grande or venti coffee?"
"Grande please."
"The traffic between here and your first appointment is usually heavier on a Friday. Shall I wake you five minutes earlier?"
you can get some open source software called homebridge which will act like a homekit device.
Sounds like that's what he's used Jim. In the article he says he controls the kettle from Python running "iBrew" scripts on a RasPi and then "HomeBridge and the HomeBridge-cmdswitch2 plugin, present the iKettle to HomeKit as an accessory with a switch service that when turned on and off runs the corresponding iBrew scripts through this plugin."
Mike: sounds great but I'd need to rename Google as "Jarvis".
Mike: sounds great but I'd need to rename Google as "Jarvis".
At one point, "[url= https://androidcommunity.com/google-now-can-be-launched-with-ok-jarvis-20131107/ ]Okay Jarvis[/url]" worked instead of "Okay Google". Not sure if it still does.
Maybe I like the misery of making tea.