It has been a little while since I have talked to you, I missed you guys! I’m now working on our app team and I know in the past there has been a lot of feedback regarding how we can make the app better for you. I would love to hear directly from the source what all of you would love to see in the app. Here are a few questions to get you thinking, but feel free to write anything you want!
If some of you are newer users, what information did you wish was in the app when you started?
What frustrates you most about the app?
What do you like most about the app?
If you had a magic wand what would you add to the app?
Are there any old features you want back?
And of course anything else!
Thank you so much! We want to make it awesome for you and promise good things are on the way!
It is still not very obvious how to set manual temp and time in the app. It’s not really a problem for people who are used to using the app and APC, but for those who might not be tech minded. If I was to stick the app under my partner’s nose he would get splinters from scratching his head.
Would still love to be able to control more than one APC from the app (not that I have multiple cookers). But higher on the list for me is the ability to control one APC from multiple devices. My partner enjoys tinkering with cooking too (though I wouldn’t call him nerd level), as it stands currently we’d have to reassign control to his phone so he could watch his cook.
Would really like a Windows based control. Have only 2 Android devices in this house (one of which won’t work with the new app) but a gazillion Windows ones.
@Ember, thanks so much! We are actually working on making the set time and temp more accessible and easy to use, so this issue is on it’s way to being solved. I am starting to lay out a roadmap, so I will definitely keep your other suggestions in mind for a little further out! I love hearing your feedback! If you think of anything else let me know.
It’s been probably a year and a half since I’ve even looked at the app, but here’s what I can remember for what I felt was lacking along with some things I’ve noticed people posting about repetitively.
A way to load in your own recipes, notes or modifications. Having a programmable cooking device is swell, but annoying for the advanced cook when you’re stuck with only someone else’s formulas.
Ice bath feature, I’ve seen a lot of posts about people wanting this back or being disappointed to find out that it’s there anymore.
Ember mentions windows PC (and Mac) based software, this could be useful as one could just leave an old notebook computer in the kitchen for recipes etc and also use it to control the cooker.
Multiple controllers for the same cooker - people have phones and tablets and computers. Most other home automation, security and entertainment equipment (HDTV etc) can be controlled by multiple devices.
Is there a delayed start option? Just because someone has the wi-fi unit might not mean that they want to use it outside of their home network. Or BT units that can’t be used remotely. This all kind of comes back to the Windows/Mac based software option, where you can leave a program running on your computer or tablet etc…
If you can get that working then a temperature logger, so you can actually see if things went awry at some point.
Some way for the phone to play some Kenny Loggins or just scream “Lana!” when the ice bath temp gets into the unsafe temps?
Any way to commit the temperature offsets (correction) to NVRAM on the cooker itself? This becomes important when you start having multiple devices controlling the same cooker. People will forget to enter this information and over/under cook stuff and you’ll get blamed for it.
I’ve seen some posts where people would like to have have a way to disable the beeper on the unit and just have their phone beep.
Maybe you’ve implemented some of these already as I said, I have a BT unit and haven’t used the software in probably 18 months. Unlikely I’ll go back to it, I’m perfectly fine with the all manual approach since I have plenty of stand alone timers (please don’t ever take the manual temp setting dial away from future models - that was a big selling point for me).
I never use the app as both my cookers predate the addition of Bluetooth or WI-Fi. Full manual for me. I never liked setting the timer so I have a dual timer I wear around my neck for timing cooks.
I use the app “Sous Vide °Celsius” because there I can calculate timers based of thickness and cooking grade. And honestly, recipes doesn’t interest me much - the meat/ingredients/sous vide do.
It would be sweet if there was a wifi api. After all, this is a “smart” device - remove the app and you have a “dumb” sous vide with thousands of alternative devices.
Another neat function would be a history with all your previous cooking’s including time, temp and notes (rating?).
It might not be possible but it would be nice with a auto-resume function if interrupted (electrically).
Per your last item - that’s a safety feature that it doesn’t resume the cook after losing power. If your food has dipped into the “danger zone” for bacteria growth during an extended power outage and you were unaware, your sous vide could promptly serve you up a nice dose of food poisoning.
(I always protect my cooks with a UPS, so I don’t have to worry - at least for intermittent outages) - had to toss a couple racks of ribs once because I hadn’t started that practice and there was a power outage.
Fair enough, safety first.
But it is easily fixed by measuring the outage - IF 0-5/10 min = resume, ELSE = abort. If you really wanted to you could also check if the temp reached the danger zone before starting again.
You’d have to have it giving status updates to ANova’s cloud constantly in order to know what the duration of the power outage was.
As to how long the bath was in the danger zone - how’s it going to know? It can’t guess as the size and characteristics of your vessel (as well as contents) will dictate at what rate the temperature would drop.
It can either store the value locally or in the cloud, neither is a problem since it doesn’t need to be very accurate or frequent. I don’t think the temp will go down by much being off for <1 min. And the server can send a notification with that info.
I never talked about how long time it was in the danger zone (although you can calculate an estimate of that too), I said “check if the temp reached the danger zone” aka 54,4°C. It can read the temp when it gets the power back.
I’ve written those on another post, but here they are again for ease of reference:
Functionality:
Multi cook (control more than one device)
Multi step (temp steps)
Support more platforms / release SDK?
The present categorisation is a mess. It should be structured like this:
Type of meat/food (Beef, Chicken, Fish, Pork, Duck, Lamb, Eggs, etc), then under that
Types of cuts (fillet, rib eye, striploin, short ribs, flank, shoulder, leg, breast etc), then under that
The different levels of doneness (with visual representations, pics or video) for that type of cut together with a recipe or more on how to do it / ideas on what to cook with it.
Hey @zqushair the multicook + multistep function is definitely a feature that will be available to the Nano - but it has yet to be determined for our other cookers.
I am currently looking into the plan for SDK! I will update the community once I know (I know this is a very popular question!)
For the last bit - I am going to forward this feedback to the team! I know there will be some ironing out for the app, and that might include some of what you’ve mentioned!
@fischersd that’s a great idea! I think that feature would be super helpful - especially since thickness in meat obviously varies! I will pass that along.
