Did you say that this could be used in the oven? Can you insert it at the
beginning of cooking? If so, I'm very tempted to get this. It makes more
sense than opening the door and inserting a thermometer every 5 minutes and
letting all the heat escape.
Thanks,
Lois
-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Howell
Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2012 5:36 AM
To: viphone@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: iGrill (bluetooth thermometer review
Scott,
I would suggest you send your request and concerns about the app to the
company that develops iGrill. I know they are rather pleased to have made
the accessibility changes and may be willing to make a few more tweaks. I
have found in more cases than not developers who are willing to make
corrections for accessibility. I had considered the Igrill as well, but your
review has certainly peaked my interest again. I like to smoke meat as well
and this would be a nice solution and especially when we put turkey on for
smoking around THanks Giving. I might have to send you a private note to get
your thoughts on smokers since I just had to trash my old bullet smoker
which gave up the ghost.
Thanks for the great review.
Scott
On Jun 2, 2012, at 11:38 PM, Scott Bresnahan wrote:
Greetings,
I do a lot of grilling, and more important, slow smoking of ribs, brisket
and pork and other great meats. (It's times like this I feel sorry for
the vegetarians out there.) But, one of my biggest problems was getting a
meet and grill temperature reading during the cooking process. About a
year ago, I noticed a product called iGrill by iDevices Inc. The url is
http://www.igrillinc.com/ that had a wireless bluetooth digital
thermometer and iPHone/iPod/IPad application. I instantly downloaded the
free app, to see how well it worked with voiceover, and was disappointed.
Last week, I noticed an update for the app that included a bug fix bullet
item reading "improved voiceover support". I downloaded the app and
checked it out. Things looked very very promising, but I didn't have the
hardware. That all changed with a recent UPS delivery. I'm very pleased
with their progress, and feel it is a very useable solution with most
features accessible, and I'm sharing my review here.
I opened the box and it came with a base unit, two temperature probes, and
batteries. Without reading a thing, I was able to install the batteries,
and plug in the two probes. The front of the unit has three touch
sensitive buttons. Not my first choice for a blind user, but they are
dimpled and distinguishable. At this point I ran the iGrill application
on the phone and listened to the getting started instructions. The three
buttons are power and plus and minus The plus being above the minus and
the power being to the left of those two. However, other than the power
button, the device can be controlled entirely from the iOS application, so
you really don't need to worry about the plus and minus buttons on the
unit.
As instructed by the online documentation accessible via the application,
,I pressed all three buttons to enable the device to pair, and sure
enough, in Settings, General, Bluetooth, on my iPhone, the iGrill showed
up and could be paired.
.
The key to this product is in the iGrill application, a free download
from the Apple App Store. In the iGrill app, there are Four major button
tabs. Cooking, Tools, INfo and Settings.
The "cooking" button is where you have access to the remote temperature
probe data. If the device is off an not paired, this section will read
not connected. If the iGrill is on, you will see readable data on two
probes with current temperature, user defined label, and alarm label.
Flicking works perfectly and all data seems easily and quickly accessible.
You can rename the two probe labels to anything you wish. Since I smoke,
meat, I have one labeled as meat and the other as grill. Logical examples
might be fish or chicken. The device comes with two probes designed for
food. An ambient temperature probe for grill surface can be purchased
separately. What I was stunned and pleasantly surprised to see, was that
there are a slew of predefined temperatures for a range of foods that you
can pick from that have the right temperature already defined. Want that
tuna the right temp, pick tuna. Want a chicken done just right, select
chicken. And, you may add your own items to the list. Basically, this is
a Label with a target temperature. All totally accessible and properly
labeled with voiceover tags. Now, what's nice for the smokers out there,
you can also specify a temperature range. Smokers generally like to keep
their grill temperature between 225 and 250, and for any probe, you can
specify a target temperature or a range of temperatures. The target temp
will alarm when the probe hits that temperature. The range temperature
will alarm when the temperature goes above or below that range. Both the
target and range temperatures work great.
My only complaint on the cooking tab is that for both probes you have the
option of facebook and twitter buttons. In my opinion, a waste of space.
Just because you can integrate easily with social media via the iOS API
doesn't mean you should. At the very least, I wish the buttons would go
away of you don't have a twittter or facebook account. Maybe they'll
read this review and make it a preference. I'll save my diatribe for the
insanity of facebook for another post.
The Tools tab has three items: Timers, Graph, and Globe. The Timer
section allows you to create either count up or countdown timers.
Unfortunately, the UI for this feature is not Voiceover friendly. You can
create a number of named timers, but picking the time is done through a
horrid number of button items. And the granularity is only to the minute,
not second. Basically, you have to scroll through page after page of 60
buttons, one for each minute between 0 and 60, plus buttons for hours.
It's the craziest UI I've seen for a time entry field. Popup picker
items, or simple text field entry areas would have been much more useful
as well as voice over friendly. I would say the Timer area is not
practical for voiceover users, but the inclusion of a Timer at all, is a
feature that goes above and beyond the core functionality of the product.
The next item is Graph. This is not useful for voiceover users, since it
shows the temperature over time visually. A great feature for smokers who
can see, but you can export the data to a csv file and email it to
yourself. But within the app, the raw table data is not available or
voiceover friendly.
The last item is Globe, and this is more social media from what I can
tell, but I will not review it since I do not participate in those things
for privacy and identity theft risk.
The third main tab is Info. This has Links to video guides on youtube for
the iGrill. There is a slight incompatibility with voiceover in that if
you double click on the popup video item from a picker selection list, it
does not launch. For some reason, you have to pick it and then close the
picker with the done button, to have the application send you to youtube
to see the video. This is where you can learn about the features of the
iGrill as well as have access to phone and email support and the iGrill
store.
The last tab is Settings, where you can select your preferences regarding
sounds for the alarms, how you wish to see the degrees in C or F. And
finally see the version of the iGrill app itself.
Overall, the iGrill by iDevices provides a totally accessible two
thermometer probe unit that works with voiceover with your iOS device. It
absolutely solved a problem that I have, and I suspect others out there
might appreciate this product. The lack of usability for some features
that are beyond the core features of the device seem less important. I
was able to take the device from box to grill without any assistance.
What I can't speak for now is the battery life or how the product will
hold up over time.
The list price of the device is $80 and the Ambient probe is an extra $20.
I found mine at amazon.com for about $72. In my opinion, they should
bundle a version with one food probe and one ambient probe for the smokers
out there, but I think overall, the device is a useful product that works
well with voiceover. I'd recommend this product for people who cook and
want to know the temperature of their food and grill or oven.
The bottomline: I like it and it works well with voiceover. I suggest
you read sighted reviews on amazon for additional details, but the
voiceover side is working well for me. The negatives include the lack of
a physical on off switch and the use of touch sensative buttons on the
device, and some extra features of the application are not voiceover
friendly.
Overall I think it's a great product and demonstrates how a mainstream
product and iOS app that's coded with accessibility in mind can solve a
problem for both sighted and blind user alike.
Hope you found this post useful.
--Scott
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