I just fired up my 3D-Wifi yesterday and made a bunch of beef jerky. I'm assuming that Auber actually makes the phone app and just adds Smokin-It's branding to it. My impression is that the app is bad enough that it really takes away from the overall quality and impression of Smokin-It products. Had I not owned a #2 and loved it for the past couple years, and had some advance knowledge of app limitations, and/or paid full price for my 3DW I would have been rather seriously disappointed.
For what it's worth, I've been a professional computer geek for over 30 years. If there is ever an effort to redesign and update the app, I'd love to get involved from beginning to end. This app should be easy to use and knock the socks off of people instead of being lackluster.
In no particular order, here are some quick design issues and opportunities:
This is, by no means, an exhaustive list... I'll probably come back and add some more thoughts. I hope others with the WiFi will also participate in this thread to get a pretty comprehensive list going.
For what it's worth, I've been a professional computer geek for over 30 years. If there is ever an effort to redesign and update the app, I'd love to get involved from beginning to end. This app should be easy to use and knock the socks off of people instead of being lackluster.
In no particular order, here are some quick design issues and opportunities:
- The app should not allow you to enter a temperature of 999. These smokers are never supposed to be run over 325, so it should probably not allow a temp to be entered greater than ~310.
- The program should not start immediately... there should be a start button.
- There should be real alarms that you can set along with selectable alarm tones for each.
- Both of the external probes should be fully supported and not have one of them be just an afterthought.
- The 'Cooking Profile' should be something that can be named, saved, loaded so that users can build a library of recipes.
- Adding more than one phone is a problematic process. This is a technical issue that needs to be resolved.
- GUI needs to be completely redesigned. There is space wasted (don't need to see a picture of a turkey). Very few things are clickable, where most should be and take you to something appropriate. Data export shouldn't be buried. The 'Manual' link doesn't take one to the manual.
- The manual/documentation is terse and insufficient. It needs to be rewritten to be both more comprehensive and more accessible.
This is, by no means, an exhaustive list... I'll probably come back and add some more thoughts. I hope others with the WiFi will also participate in this thread to get a pretty comprehensive list going.
