CNBC: Why your smartphone will be the next must-have barbecue grill accessory


 
Well how appropriate, Our one and only phone besides our land line is/ was a 25 year old flip phone. It started acting up so we pulled the trigger yesterday and bought two new smartphones. We stepped into the 21st century. There will be a learning curve and at 73 years old my hard drive is about full. I can already see the advantages of all the things the phone can do, yesterday Barb went to work and I needed some mushrooms for dinner so I sent her a text message and she brought some home from work (she works at Safeway). She had it in her back pocket and had it on vibrate, this was the first text she had received and when it vibrated it scared the hell out of her.
I will probably never use all the things it can do and certainly it won't be running any of my analog grills even my Camp Chef doesn't have remote ability's, I use my smoke to monitor temps remotely.
But I sure can see the attraction a lot of people will have to the next generation of grills. Now when they come up with a way to take the food out to the grill and bring it in when it's ready so I don't have to freeze my butt off going outside in the winter, we'll talk .
The services for flipper the flip phone will be Monday at 1pm
 
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Welcome to the 21st century Rich your gonna love it. To me the smartphone is also a safety device and I had many flip phones for awhile a long time ago loved my Motorola Razor or whatever they called it.

My daughter broke down a year ago at 2 in the morning on Georgia 400 which anyone who lives here knows its a horror show worse at 2 am they are all driving 85. Called me what do I do call LM option need a tow truck broken down they GPS her exact location not a guess on what exit she was on cause she did not know in between exits. 10 minutes later your tow truck should arrive in 20 minuts on the iphone she texts us her location since the iPhone will do that sure droids also hit the link goes into Apple Maps and we head out no guesswork in where she is get there before the tow truck driver he shows up I tell him where to tow the car a Toyota dealership she jumps in our car and we head home. Worth every penny for that smartphone.

Now got one car with Apple Car Play no need for nav anymore use google maps actually think apples maps are awful displays on the screen in the car exactly the same if you had nav. Could I do any of this with a flip phone I don't think so if I get lost heading somewhere can I get directions with a flip phone not talking going around town. My wife and kids are important to me as well as their safety so forget grills and what you can use your smartphone for its just an added benefit if that is what I want to do. Not sure what the difference if you own a Maverick which displays the temp in the basement for me or the display goes to a smartphone you still need the display so your using technology.

Raining today so bored and apoligize for rambling which of course anyone who knows me on the board knows I tend to do that. :)
 
Brian, I used to fly down to Atlanta, and drive up to Alpharetta on business a couple of times a year, about a week each time. I hear ya about GA 400, over the 10+ years I made those trips, the speeds just seemed to creep higher every year.

Slight digression: a friend of mine used to work for a security products company, one of their lines of business were locking phone cradles for point of sale displays. These were so fully active phone could be set out, used by potential customers with a [relatively] low risk of theft. A few times a year, phone manufacturers would show up with their new models, they'd all gather in a conference room to be shown all the nifty features, and by the time the phone got to him, he's almost always wing it back across the table to the manufacturer and ask if it could still make a phone call. That was almost never ever shown.

Smart phones almost shouldn't even be called phones any more, they're servers in their own right with a significant audio capability. I expect this to get even more pervasive.
 
Tim Snyder said:
I hope not.

I refuse to own a smart phone, or any cell phone, for that matter. I was a slave to answering the phone for 30 years in my career, that was enough for me. My wife is in the medical profession, so she must have one, so there is one in the house. If you want to get in touch with me you know where I live, drive over and look for my car in the driveway, or email me. :)

I know a few people/families that have probably spent 20+ grand on phones over the years. I can't wrap my head around that.

I have a remote thermometer, that's as much technology as I want when grilling. Even that was a gift, as is my computer, which I suppose I would consider a grilling accessory.
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Tim,
I get it I was forced into cell phone use by my job. Being able to call or be called at any hour of the day was a need, used company supplied phones,laptops,etc to keep in touch, provide a service to my companies customers, update customers,order parts,schedule maintence,.
Now days a good day is when I leave my phone at home to go do something the peace and quiet is deafening.....
 
Or fishing where you don’t get bars.

I retired June of this year after many, many years of having the 24/7 umbilical cord …. Call list, pager, palm pilot, blackberry, cell phone, and laptop.
Don't have any of them anymore and life is SOOOO peaceful.
 
I just bought a Genesis II about a month ago, and quite honestly thought very hard about the new smart grill. Two things I liked, the black frame instead of grey and the real time temp display right on the grill. In the end, I decided to save $300-400 and go with the dumb grill, mostly because the took the analog thermometer off the lid and because I have a Fireboard I can use for temps if I want to.
 
"......cloud-based technology platform with cooking algorithms........" :unsure:
That doesn't sound like too much fun.

I'm no Luddite. (I have a Mav and a digital thermometer you know). But what happens if the network goes down, and you've just hit the stall on your 9lb tofu & lentil butt?
 
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I have just enough cooking technology to monitor my WSM for fire temperature and meat temperature (2 if I'm feeling adventurous), and allow me to read and set both from inside the house. And that's all I really want. This setup saved me from a potential disaster when the WSM door fell off in the middle of an overnight cook. If/when my old first-generation Stoker (the heart of my cobbled-together system) stops working I'll have to consider something more modern, but not before.
 
TonyUK said:
I'm no Luddite. (I have a Mav and a digital thermometer you know). But what happens if the network goes down, and you've just hit the stall on your 9lb tofu & lentil butt?
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Perfectly valid question, Tony. Yes, if your tail (last mile) connection goes down, dead in the water.If the data center(s) become unavailable for any reason (fire, network, etc.,) dead in the water. This the major reason that I don't have a WiFi thermostat in the house. Yes, it'd be awfully nice to have control from my phone, but not a the expense of having to depend on someone else's servers. And..... my HeaterMeter does have the advantage that I really just have to set up a local connection, no connections outside my local network are required.



Put another way: The Cloud(tm) is nothing more than marketing speak for someone else's computer.
 
Most WiFi grills, Thermostats, etc. still work perfectly fine without internet. My Ecobee is not much different than a programmable thermostat, except it’s a lot more convenient to program with an app and make adjustments to the programming. Yes, sure there’s features that are internet enhanced like sensing when people come and go, but it doesn’t shut off when the internet is out or servers are down. It can also still be adjusted from the unit itself. The same holds for all the WiFi grills I’ve had. They all function perfectly without a connection. You’re just not able to adjust temps without walking to the grill and you would have to probe you’re meat with an IR or pull out the Maverick. The convenience of the features of both outweighs the zero issues I’ve had because of connectivity problems. Now if the power is out, that’s a different story, but dumb thermostats and pellet grills still won’t work then either.
 
Shane, every time I've looked into these connected thermostats, etc. one of the things I've always asked is what happens and how does it function when the Internet connection fails. Without that connection, it comes back to pretty much functioning like what I already have, and in all honesty..... I do not care for the associated data mining that comes along with those devices, even with the purported data anonymization. Additionally, speaking as an IT nerd, I am very uncomfortable with the security surrounding these device communications. Think that your thermostat settings are nominal? If your house settings are set to reduced functionality, say, A/C set to 80+ in the summer and heat set to 60 in the winter from Saturday through Tuesday, chances are you're going for a week. That sounds like a target of opportunity. Beyond that, I don't think I'd be receiving enough benefit from what the provider is gaining from the data mining, and yes, I know that's part of their revenue stream.

Don't forget what happens when your device provider goes out of business, or just decides to stop supporting your model of device (ask 1st gen Nest owners.) Yeah, I know, back to basic functionality. I've had a 7 day thermostat here for 11 years, works just fine.

I need to stop before I get myself in trouble. The Internet of Things is nothing but a hot mess, and unfortunately, I don't see the situation improving. Development is a fundamental problem, security is somewhere between problematic and non-existent and the far end providers are always a concern.
 
I have no big problem with it. However I'm reminded of the old Douglas Adams quote "Technology is word that describes something that doesn't work yet." The truth is a lot of this stuff just doesn't work that well. Once it does we no longer think of it as technology. I enjoy a gadget or too, but I get really annoyed when I can't rely on something to work reasonably. Take Thermoworks for instance. The Thermopen is something that just works. It's awesome, it's reliable. Once they got into the Signals and Billows and smartphone apps then you have stuff that works, sort of. If the Signals crashes in the middle of the night and the fan starts going full blast and my $120 Wagyu brisket turns to ashes, I'm fighting mad (Full disclosure, this has never happened to me my Signals works great). With Weber, I had an Igrill2. The Bluetooth would disconnect but the app wouldn't warn you. Suddenly my reverse sear prime ribeye is a disaster. A simple notice from the app that the Bluetooth wasn't connected would have saved it, but they didn't want to admit the Bluetooth was that unreliable. My display just read a temperature that wasn't updated.

BTW, my signals does the same thing, and I have to make sure that the temp refreshes. However, it tells me when the last reading was and I can go from there. Mine hasn't had any trouble, but the Signals group on Facebook is full of people with complaints. Common response is "Well, did you update your firmware?" Ok, if the firmware at any point is so messed up that you don't have basic functionality, then it's just garbage. I won't even get into the Smokefire launch with Weber.

Pellet grills are "Technology" They work, sort of but you better clean out the firepot, update the app, use the right pellets, etc.
 
EricV. said:
Are you related to Tim, see post #13, LoL kidding of course!
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If there was a way to contact him......hmmmmm, like some sort of message I could send him......They should come out with something like that I tell yah. :p All jokes aside, I will not get a phone until it becomes a mandatory thing for me. I would put some money on it, I may be one of the youngest, if not the youngest on this board who doesn't own a phone.....and I never had one.
 
Darryl - swazies said:
If there was a way to contact him......hmmmmm, like some sort of message I could send him......They should come out with something like that I tell yah. :p All jokes aside, I will not get a phone until it becomes a mandatory thing for me. I would put some money on it, I may be one of the youngest, if not the youngest on this board who doesn't own a phone.....and I never had one.
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Old school, playing vinyl Lp's, eating meat & drinking good liquor!
 
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