Brewing up a storm.
We’re all for the introduction of new technology that makes our lives even easier and lazier than they already are, but at some point, you have to shout stop.
After all, does the process of boiling a kettle – simply adding water to a container, flicking a switch and waiting – need to be made any easier than it already is?
We’re sure there are many advocates of Wi-Fi kettles and all power to them, but those who wish to remain faithful to the traditional model will no doubt take pleasure from the following tale.
Data specialist Mark Rittman wanted to start his day off with a cup of the good stuff on Tuesday morning, but soon encountered a problem that was going to take a lot longer to fix than he initially thought.
We’ll let Mark take up the story through his own Twitter account.
https://twitter.com/markrittman/status/785751015517814784
3 hrs later and still no tea. Mandatory recalibration caused wifi base-station reset, now port-scanning network to find where kettle is now. pic.twitter.com/TRQLuLzLpx
— Mark Rittman (@markrittman) October 11, 2016
Now the Hadoop cluster in garage is going nuts due to RT to @internetofshit, saturating network + blocking MQTT integration with Amazon Echo pic.twitter.com/ryd42c5ewj
— Mark Rittman (@markrittman) October 11, 2016
Now my wifi kettle is basically taking the p*ss. Told me it had found network, now you need to recalibrate me, oh btw I didn't rly connect pic.twitter.com/WbGsIrzBio
— Mark Rittman (@markrittman) October 11, 2016
Some were sceptical about the existence of Mark’s device…
@internetofshit is this a real product?
— John Burton (@JohnBurton) October 11, 2016
It is, and OK apart from flaky WiFi connectivity; main issue is that there's no IFTTT or HomeKit integration, so hacked that together myself https://t.co/0IjD7q4wzM
— Mark Rittman (@markrittman) October 11, 2016
While others were happy to lend advice…
https://twitter.com/onekade/status/785838900703006720
Mark kept at it, however, and eventually got there in the end…
Well the kettle is back online and responding to voice control, but now we're eating dinner in dark while lights download a firmware update pic.twitter.com/yPTDoUkM9Z
— Mark Rittman (@markrittman) October 11, 2016
.@Nephentur Just in case anyone is thinks I'm nuts, purpose of all this is to create a real-world IoT event src for home IoT Hadoop project pic.twitter.com/WEwH5biBGd
— Mark Rittman (@markrittman) October 11, 2016
Mark’s struggle got attention. A LOT of attention…
Joe Hart, Beyonce and a man trying to boil a kettle using a python script and wishing he'd given it a static IP address rather than use DHCP pic.twitter.com/5fE0dvweuH
— Mark Rittman (@markrittman) October 11, 2016
My work is done. And now onto everything else I meant to do today, after that first cup of tea. pic.twitter.com/bJPuJ85TCT
— Mark Rittman (@markrittman) October 11, 2016
11 hours for a cup of tea? Imagine realising after all that there was no milk in the fridge.
