cott, I had attached my grilling cookbook to my previous message, did you
get it?
Fred Olver
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Howell" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2012 11:41 AM
Subject: Re: iGrill (bluetooth thermometer review
Fred,
I Believe there is at least one company that makes a fork that will audibly
provide the temp. The difference in this case is the IGrill will let you
measure the temp remotely and accessibly wich is rather nice. I have not
purchased one of these myself, but if you smoke any kind of meat I can see
how this device would be very handy and especially if it is really cold
outdoors. :)
And someone was curious if you could use it in an oven and yes you can from
what I was told.
On Jun 3, 2012, at 9:05 AM, Fred Olver wrote:
Gentlemen, There is a facility in San Fransisco which also makes an
accessible grilling thermometer. Can't remember it's name, but will look
it later and get back to you. It does not work with the I-devices, but
looks to be nearly as functional.
See attachment.
Fred Olver
----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Howell" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2012 4:36 AM
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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