Thought it was worth setting up a thread to collect suggestions for updates and improvements to the Anova App in a single place. I did have a look around for such a thread, but the only feedback thread was ancient with little activity.
I’ve been using the Android App for setting time and temperature on my Anova device because let’s face it, manual control setup on the APC is just ludicrous. I use the App on both my Samsung Note 3 and a cheap 'Droid tablet. The automatic setting of APC with the recipe base works well. But the app design could be improved regarding manual setup.
It would be nice to have the ability to add our own recipes to the app’s database, a suggestion I’ve seen made before.It would also be great to be able to add notes to existing recipes. I’m enough of a nerd that I have a tablet dedicated for kitchen use even prior to needing a device for APC control.
Something that could be improved is the manual setting of time and temperature via the app. This is not obvious enough. On both of the devices that I use the manual setting is accessible from a tiny ribbon at the bottom of the screen. I know my partner would struggle to use this with his big, blokey fingers… plus he’s not the most technically minded individual.
And the spin wheels for setting time and temperature on screen could also be enlarged and made more dynamic. Personally, I’d prefer to key in my desired time and temp. It would allow more precision, and that’s what the APC is all about after all.
A nice addition would be a widget to display time and temp large and clear on the home screen, so that progress can be checked at a glance.
Awesome idea to make a thread! We are working on getting our developers on here so they can work directly with everyone on the community site (you guys have some awesome ideas and suggestions)
Thanks for starting this, I’m looking forward to what everyone will post
I’ve only used it a couple of times so far, so I may be wrong, but it seem to me the app doesn’t use the standard Android notifications, instead it puts a popup on the screen. The reason being that the popup just appears on my phone screen, but normal notifications can be routed to other devices like my watch or pc
Also I’m not sure that it does the notification at all when the screen is off, or the app is in the background? Surely the point of an app like this would be that it should run a background service to do all the monitoring and notifications.
If you go into the settings screen on your app you can set the Push Notifications to be either those from the Anova device or those from new Recipe content, or both. I’m guessing that when the app has installed for you the push notifications are off.
It would definitely help if there was a clear tab for manual settings. probably along the bottom tab with the other tabs like recipes etc would be a good spot rather where it is now. The anova did work great as a whole though with the temperature pretty stable throughout the cook.
An alert in the app would be helpful when overrunning the amount of water (the minimum and/or maximum indication is on the Anova itself and unreadable when in the water).
Agree, the manual in the app is absolutely insufficient and of a questionable level. EG how can I without using the app control my device? It is nowhere to find. A simple instruction would be very helpful.
I would really love to see more like the Food Lab Time and Temp guidelines, where I can choose what I am cooking (cut of meat, fruit, veg, etc) and fill in the variables (amount, desired doneness, etc.) and have the app provide the Time and Temp. I enjoy looking at recipes to get ideas for new flavor combinations, etc. I rarely follow an actual recipe when cooking (or use a pattern when sewing), I use them as inspirations for doing my own thing.
Another thing that has been annoying me over the last couple of days… You should be able to control the APC from more than one device. I’m not talking ‘control wars’ here, but there shouldn’t be the need to go through the full setup routine just because you want to use your phone to set the APC this time and you used your tablet last time.
If the APC is connected to the WiFi network it has been allocated an IP/Mac address. Any 'Droid or iOS device should be able to connect to it at any time. I should be able to set the time and temp from my kitchen tablet and check progress from my phone from the garden. I should then be able to set the temp and time from my phone next time without having connection issues.
I’m not sure if this is a fault of the APC or the app. I have forced an update on the app and been able to reconnect to the APC, so it would suggest the app is the one at fault.
Should also be able to cross between using a 'Droid control device and an iOS one. I don’t know if this is currently possible because I only run 'Droid currently, but some may need it.
There should also be the facility to control more than one APC from the app too. Again, I’m sure there will be situations where people have more than one cooker in use. Again, having the unit connected to a WiFi network means that each unit will have a unique ID allocated so there should be no major issues with identifying them.
I’ve also noted that the Android app has a much poorer interface design than the iOS version. Surely they should look the same so that control can be instinctive from either device. From what I have seen pictured of the Apple controller it has big clear, easy to read times and temperature alerts. This is one of the things that 'Droid users have been asking for. For actually setting the APC the Android app is only a small step up from the APC’s fairly bad manual interface.
basically during the “wifi pairing” process there’s a negotiation between the app and cooker (possibly api server too) in which a shared secret is issued. every time you do this, the secret changes, so other installs of the app no longer know the secret.
a very easy to implement way around this would be allowing the cooker_id and secret to be shown in the app, and to also be set in the app. this way you could pair once, and just copy the info to other installs of the app. something like a qr code might make this easier.
i think it’s fairly likely that anova will implement a system to have this information registered against an account. so you log in from a new install, all of your “paired” cookers show up.
Anything to improve on the current issue would be good. I’ll admit to being a nerd, but my whole cottage is ‘connected’ with a device of some sort, so I expected I would be able to control the APC from each room without any hassle. I figured that having told the APC connected to the network should be enough to have it permanently registered and the router would take care of the permissions.
We really need the ability for more than one device, we have a iPad in the kitchen that we use for timers recipes etc…wanted to add the app to that but want the phone as well to monitor from elsewhere. Think this should have priority over recipes that one can find anywhere
I would suggest two things i believe are missing form the current version.
1- After preheating, we get a notification to drop the food and the counter immediately starts counting forward. In my opinion this needs to happen after a user action. Often the water temp is ready, but the food is not. and then i need to reset the whole thing.
2- The done beeping. it needs to shut down after some time of after some user action. When im out of the house it keeps beeping until i get home… getting on the nerves of everyone…
Just fix it. Since the merger of the wifi into the regular app, my iPhone loses the cooker constantly, which causes it to have to reconnect, and it never sees the cooker when I’m not on the same network. In other words, if I start a cook, and leave the house, the connection to the cooker is lost. I can’t see the cooker. I can’t change the temperature. I’ve lost all the extra functionality of the wifi device vs the Bluetooth device. This never happened under the old wifi app.
The new app has been buggy as hell since the merger, and there’s no update on when this will be fixed. The old wifi only app worked fine. It’s frustrating that you removed its functionality and that we have no communication on when the bugs will be fixed.
At this point, I’m recommending to people to stay away from Anova. There are competitors now who are producing devices and corresponding apps without these problems.
Hi @brosen72, thanks for letting us know about the connection problems. @gusAnova, do you have any insights to share with @brosen72 to convince him not to recommend people stay away from Anova? I know we’re working on solving connection problems so hopefully situations like this will happen less often.
