Hello,
I'd like to address the few follow up questions that came up after my post.
Digital thermometers in general, use a metal probe that you press
into the meat and leave there. The probe is probably about three
inches long and then has a 90 degree bend, so it looks like a capital
L. Then, running off the end of the probe, is a 48 inch insolated
metal wire. At the end of the wire is a plug much like a head phone
jack, that plugs into one of two jacks on the base unit. There are
two types of probes, one designed for meat, and one designed for
ambient temperature. The unit comes with two probes designed for
meat.
Yes, this device works fine in any oven or grill. It is designed
that you close the lid or door on the small metal wire, and I've not
found that to be a problem on the oven or grill.
The device is designed for temp ranges between 32 and 400 degrees
Fahrenheit. So, for very hot ovens or grills this may be a problem,
but for low and slow, it's well within my range that I'm looking for.
My smoker is a charcoal smoker made by the Weber company. It's
called the Weber Smokey Mountain. I use a web site at
http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/ as my Weber smoker resource. I'd
say this is a fairly dangerous thing to do for a blind person, but I
lost my vision over time to RP, so I have a lot of mental muscle
memory for this process. The riskiest thing I do, is pouring hot
coals into my fuel chamber from a chimney starter to get the grill
going. Once that's done, It's just a matter of playing with the
vents to produce the right temp. A pair of kevlar oven gloves does
the trick of keeping my hands safe.
Hope this helps.
--Scott
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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--Scott
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