Smartphone talks to Panasonic rice cooker
Japanese market to get a rice cooker from Panasonic that is controllable by a smartphone.
Rice doesn't lack for vitamins and minerals. Or smartphone apps.
There is little left that smartphones cannot do. Or rather, to be more precise, there is little left that smartphones are not capable of controlling. The distinction is an important one. Ultimately, we are the controller. But sometimes it is just more fun to press a button on the phone rather than on the target device.
The new SR-SX102 rice cookers from Panasonic are controllable via FeliCa-enabled smartphones. (FeliCa is a contactless RFID technology developed by Sony Corporation.) Hover the phone over the designated area on the rice cooker (that would be the blue mark) and suddenly the smartphone becomes a sort of remote control for the rice cooker.
It would not be incorrect to view this as a roundabout way of selecting the cooking mode for a pot of rice. However, there is more going on than just a press of a button. The dedicated app also connects to the Japanese Panasonic Cooking cloud server, allowing users to store and download up to 100 recipes.
Even for an ancient grain 100 recipes may seem like a lot, but all that really matters is if it is a lot for you and your family. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. What will be interesting, though, is to see if the use of this technology makes it to the next hundred.
(Via Asiajin)