Calculates time for an oven or grill to heat (or cool) to a given temperature, allowing you to start a timer and estimate progress of temperature to the desired set point. You can go away and the app will send you a notification when it thinks your oven or grill is ready.
We use a first-order linear thermodynamic model to quickly estimate the time required to go from one temperature to another. It is pretty simple, but works well enough and it's about the right amount of fidelity given how hard it is to account for all the unknowns. Glad you asked?
Within less than a minute on the systems we test. However, all ovens differ, ambient conditions matters, and so your mileage may vary, perhaps greatly. However, the system will adapt and learn your oven over time if you give it feedback by telling it when the oven actually finishes preheating.
We took time versus temperature measurements of several real ovens and grills, fitting our model parameters to the data observed.
If the oven completes preheating before the time goes off, hit the "done" button in the app and the app will record the data and adapt its model. If the oven isn't yet done preheating when the timer goes off, swipe up on the notification and select the appropriate button.
It's wasteful to leave an oven on longer than is necessary. It wastes energy to keep the oven hot, and often wastes energy as the house needs more air conditioning in the warm months to offset the heat from the oven. It's also nice to be able to have an estimate of when a grill or oven will be preheated instead of just watching the blinking light.
You can't. They just count up. This was a deliberate design decision. We felt that people generally know how long they need to cook something, and the important thing is to make it easy and quick. There's nothing quicker than just hitting "start" rather than having to select a desired time. In addition, once timers go off they stop timing. So, if your food isn't quite done you lose track of how much more you've cooked it with a standard countdown timer. That said, we're happy to hear feedback on this and implement countdown timers if there's enough demand.
If you want, you can keep track of how long you've cooked each side of something. Click "turn" every time you flip the item and it will keep track of total time cooked on each side. It also keeps track of the total time.
No. However, the documentation (i.e. this screen) is web-based, so we see the IP address from which you are connecting (as does any website, by necessity) but with no other identifying information included.