I bought a cheap Duxtop model & have been really enjoying it. Much more efficient than gas, and less need to run the stove vent which sucks all the conditioned house air up & pushes it outdoors. Heats very quick. The main downsides are some liability to trip breakers if I'm also running other appliances, and the induction coil is kind of small (7 inches?) so there's some hotspotting.
This Impulse stove got submitted two weeks ago & was pretty popular. The title here is useless as heck, but it was a mind blowing brilliant idea to me. Having a couple kwh of onboard batteries lets the inductor run at mind-blowing power level for a little while, while still using a boring 120v wall socket. It's an amazing idea. https://www.impulselabs.com/https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38910734 (52 points, 92 comments)
Thanks for linking to the prior discussion, regarding
"Having a couple kwh of onboard batteries lets the inductor run at mind-blowing power level for a little while, while still using a boring 120v wall socket."
I went down a hole of looking at commercial induction hobs years ago noticing they all had a peak power limitation due to 120vac outlet limit. I think a fun project would be to make a pizza oven around this plug+battery concept, combining the high power induction surface with a bit of convection heat. Of course my mindset and interest has changed since then and find myself interested in more 'appropriate' technologies like a rocket mass oven.
What I really want is this induction stove like this but that also has a single gas burner. Induction is great, but there are some things you can't do with it, but it covers 90% really well.
I guess the alternative is to get a portable high-output single burner butane stove that I can pull out when I want to arroser a steak, for example.
I would definitely want to see one in action before plunking down that much money for a cooktop. Their website is big on hype and short on details of operation. And if they fail, are you SOL on service?
Yeah 0 chance I would drop that much cash on this from an unknown brand. Even from a reputable brand I would be wary. I still feel burned from buying a few hundred dollars of “smart” smoke detectors from firstalert, a smoke detector company that has been around for ages and is still around. They were a terrible product with terrible support and instead of just hiring better people to rewrite a decent firmware they abandoned the whole product line after a year or two offering a $40 smoke detector as a replacement for the $129 unit that was a buggy piece of shit.
firstalert acquired luma, which had acquired birdi, which was kickstarter campaign smart smoke thing, which shipped nothing to most of kickstarter backers
some m&a execs clearly did not have good vaporware detector there!!
I’d imagine it has to be a regulatory nightmare. There’s really no options on the market. First alert at this point just has the zwave one that can’t be hardwired or interconnected so it’s not to code in many locales. Nest is pretty good but it won’t work intranet only and that’s a dealbreaker for me; I do iot but it has to be gear that can cope with being on a vlan with no internet access. The only other options are sketchy brands that don’t give a fuck about us regulations. Sometimes it’s a chinese company that has some staying power like xiaomi but sometimes it’s one of those random ones that likely won’t exist in 2 years
A shame because I would really like to be notified if my house is burning down while I’m away from it. Would be pretty handy.
I don't understand how this can accurately measure the temperature of the cookware itself. I have an induction stove, and the stoves surface never gets nearly as hot as the pan or pot itself.
Probably by detecting near infrared that is transmissive through the stovetop glass. Just like handheld infrared temperature meters. Silica glass is good at transmitting infrared that is not too far below red light frequency.
I love the knobs on this hob/stovetop.
It took me a lot of work to find an induction top with analog[1] knobs for my mum. Touch "buttons" and sliders are always a sign of absolutely shit usability/accessibility in my experience.
[1] well they were actually digital knobs not analog potentiometers: one of the knobs has a fault in the internal optical sensors or something because it can get into a state of flicking between two digital readings.
Another brand disappears under the counter entirely by relying on a thinned countertop. No more cracked glass and you get a little more usable counter space for chopping when not using the burners.
I want an electric kettle that can run off 120 and has a battery for quick boiling. Bonus points if it's a gooseneck for coffee. I've never found one though.
It is going to be expensive and heavy. 120V can do 1200W. To get that current, you need something like LiFePO4 12V 100Ah battery which can get for $200. Those are size of car battery and weigh 24lbs. Obviously that would go in the base not the kettle but will need to rearrange your kitchen. And that only halves the time, more batteries are needed for more power.
Many offices have taps with instant hot water dispensers. Or just refillable dispenser, popular in Japan - IIRC they don’t waste much energy due to insulation.
Love mine. Boils in less than two minutes, you can schedule the boil, the thermostat is accurate and the gooseneck is accurate as hell, but is only good for pour-overs.
Induction is an excellent technology held captive by absolute shit manufacturing quality, at least in the major brands. Firmware bugs, terrible controls, expensive repairs--all by design to keep the repair/replace grift going.
This Impulse stove got submitted two weeks ago & was pretty popular. The title here is useless as heck, but it was a mind blowing brilliant idea to me. Having a couple kwh of onboard batteries lets the inductor run at mind-blowing power level for a little while, while still using a boring 120v wall socket. It's an amazing idea. https://www.impulselabs.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38910734 (52 points, 92 comments)