Two London designers decided to come up with a get-rich-quick scheme whilst waiting for a bartender to mix their drinks. The result? A kitchen appliance which could communicate through Twitter. And what kitchen appliance would any self-respecting Englishman choose? An electric kettle, or the Twettle.
When we first saw Tweeting appliances, they were a laughable novelty: a Twittering toilet designed to show up the banality of most Tweets, for example. But as the network has grown into a ubiquitous and always-on tool, a tool designed for fast, short and current messages, using it to tell you your toast is cooked now seems a lot less trivial.
Designers Ben Perman and Murat Mutlu decided to put their circuitry inside a kettle, because a) tea is “the cornerstone of British culture” and b) an actual working product is a lot more sexy than a circuit board and a bundle of wires. It is also a device which benefits from remote monitoring.
The Twettle’s production story is long and fascinating, and as far from a cable-sprouting Arduino hack as it could be. Mutlu’s blog post takes us through the process, including the design decisions needed to make a kettle that could connect to the internet but still be simple enough to use and setup. The tech is also designed to fit into any other appliance, like a washing-machine, so that needed to be considered, too.
The Twettle works via WiFi, connecting directly to the internet and tweeting when it has boiled. Now, if you switch it on yourself, you know that the kettle will boil in a minute or two, but in, say, an office, it might be helpful to know that the water is done so you can rush to the kitchenette with a sachet of powdered soup, or even to catch up on gossip as others make their tea.
But putting WiFi into a dumb appliance isn’t easy. You need, for instance, a way to get the network password into the wireless radio (housed in the kettle’s base). The simplest way turned out to be a small screen, something that microwaves and other appliances already have. You also need to enter Twitter account details.
The Twettle also has an API (application programming interface) to allow others to hack it and add functionality. For instance, you could actually switch the kettle on via Twitter Direct Message (useful in student houses where nobody wants to leave the sofa – or the joint – to make the tea). Or the Twettle could be told to “boil” at a lower temperature for making coffee. The API also allows for stats, as seen below. You can count how many cups you have made, for instance, to make sure you reach the weekly quota required to remain in the country.
Putting refrigerators and other kitchen devices on the internet has been a weird obsession of manufacturers for years now, but it is finally starting to make sense. Only instead of automatically ordering milk when you use the last drop, the Tweeting fridge would just remind you to grab a carton on the way home.
So when can you buy yourself, or your favorite Englishman, a Twettle? It might be a while. The biggest challenge for Mutlu and Perman turned out not to be the design but the manufacturing costs. If they aim for a price of £75 ($115), then the required production run will cost around $500,000. The boys are looking for funding. In the meantime, they can enjoy a nice cup of tea.
Twettle. The Kettle that Tweets [Mobile Inc. Thanks, Murat!]
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