Being able to remotely preheat my oven could be useful. But not enough to justify the risk of someone else remotely preheating my oven.

> How could an oven

Starting pre-heat before you get home. Monitoring temperature away from home. Leaving a dish in the oven and starting it at a specific time, say an hour or two before you leave the office and head home for the day. Checking if you left the oven on after you left home.

> or washing machine

Notifications for the end of the cycle. Status of detergent levels if equipped ("Do I need fabric softener?" whilst at the store). Starting a load (similarly to the oven above) while you are on your way home so you don't end up with wet clothes sitting all day, so they're ready for the dryer when you walk through the door.

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I get your popular cynicism, but c'mon now. None of the stuff I'm outlining there was researched, it was all off the cuff and I live in an apartment with "dumb" appliances from 1996.

Can connect with Google Home or Alexa or Siri and do phonetic commands like start program or stuff like that I guess.

I'm a new dad and when we both are busy with work, chores and the baby I find myself wishing I had IoT devices to automate a couple of stuff home.

My new oven has bluetooth and wifi connectivity. I obviously thought this sounded completely insane, but I went ahead and googled to see what people were using it for. I was actually surprised and impressed.

First, there's a way to do sous vide cooking without one of those big circulators like the one I use. They sell a device that is a little bluetooth thermometer; you can put it in a pot of water, and the induction range can keep the water at a precise temperature. No circulation, but more than good enough imo.

Then you can use the wifi to operate it remotely. So as a case scenario, one could fill a pot with ice and water and a sous vide bagged steak, then turn it on remotely, say an hour or so before getting home. Or one could conceivably leave an uncooked cake in the oven?

I will probably never bother to enable any of this, but yeah, there are uses. I don't want it, but I get it.

I guess people who cook more than I do could find it useful.

But then again, if you’d asked me 4-5 years ago if I could see the usefulness of smart radiator thermostats, I’d probably have said no. The ability to remotely turn on/off heating is not that big a deal (to me).

It’s only when coupled with AI to optimize savings it becomes a great thing. Since installing the smart thermostats, I save on average 30% on my heating bill, and save the environment from 30% of my CO2 emissions from heating.

The AI part learns about how much the house heats up from a given amount of sunshine, coupled with outside temperature and heat loss, and controls the thermostats accordingly. If the indoor temperature is 1C below the target at 6am, but it’s expected to be sunshine, it simply won’t turn on the heat.

remote pre-heating of the oven, remote alerts when the laundry is done. Non-connected versions of these appliances just make a really loud alarm sound when they need someone to pay attention to them, but a small notification on a phone would be more effective and less annoying.