TOCH SMARTURNS: TRANSFORMS YOUR STOVE TO A SMART STOVE
Have you or someone you know been distracted in the mids of cooking leaving the stove unattended, or unknowingly forget to turn off the burner? The results can be disastrous. The US National Fire Prevention Association (NFPA) reports that 162,400 fires per year or 34% of reported home fires are a result of unattended cooking.
We have seen smart fridges which tells you when the door was left open, smart washer which tells you when your laundry is ready. Technologies come to our daily life to help on those small things. Where is the affordable smart stove which simply tells you when you forget your running burners?
Toch Smarturns automatically monitors your activity within the area around your stove when the burners are on. If you walk away from the stove for an extended period while the burners are still on, Smarturns will alert you through alarms from the hub and a mobile phone notification to return to your unattended stove. Smarturns helps keep your family and home safer from the risk of a fire and helps prevent burnt cookware and food, and energy loss. Your mind can be put at rest knowing that our technology is helping to improve the safety of you and your family.
Smarturns works on most commonly used electric and gas stoves which use knobs to operate the burners.
Toch Smarturns is not “just another IoT Smart Home device”. We started this project with the aim of solving a real problem that we and many others around the world face – helping our aging seniors live independently and safely for as long as they choose to. However through our journey, we found that the issue of unattended cooking is not just limited to seniors. Our Technology is designed to help keep safe, the millions of people who are cooking every day.
It’s for you, your children, and your aging parents who live independently.
Toch Smarturns comes in a package of:
Also a free downloadable mobile phone app that is available for both iOS and Android platforms.
Toch Smarturns making its debut at the 2016 Vancouver Maker Fair where the product was demonstrated. Visitors were able to view and try the finished product. We are constantly seeking user feedback and improving our product!
At local community events:
Everyone. Life is busy. We are constantly working on multiple tasks at the same time and often get distracted while cooking. An automatic alarm will alert you to the unattended stove helping prevent a burnt meal or even a fire.
When away from the house. Whether you are at work or on a business trip, the Smarturn app provides you with real-time status of the stove at home, keeping you in touch with the family and provides you peace of mind.
Seniors living independently. Do you worry about elderly parents and loved ones who live independently and may suffer memory loss due to aging? With more seniors choosing to live independently, being able to support them remotely could be more important than ever.
Tenants living in your basement or Airbnb guests – Smarturns alarms provide tenants and guests with reminders to ensure safe cooking while at the same time informs landlords and property owners of all cooking activities and usage of the stove.
When you are not with your children at home – Smarturns informs you immediately if your child has turned on the stove unexpectedly, or your teenager has turned on the stove and left it unattended.
You may not call your parents everyday but you want to ensure that they are doing ok – Smarturns can send notifications to multiple user’s mobile phone to allow remote monitoring of stove safety
Unsure if you turn of your stove? With the Smarturns app you can easily check the real time status of your stove.
Savings for energy – With automatic notifications stovetop burners will no longer be running unattended, reducing energy usage. Never again will you leave your BBQ still running even after you have completed cooking your meal!
Saving Cookware – Never again burn your favourite pot or cookware.
Enjoy a relaxed, hassle-free cooking experience – Create the perfect meal without over-cooking or burning the food. Cleanup is also easy with no burnt pots or smoke detectors blaring.
Unlike some existing products in the market which may require professional installation at your home, we made it very easy for you.
This is what it looks like in your home
With Toch Smarturns you can turn your existing stove into a smart stove within minutes.
The Toch Smarturns project is based on applying technology to ensure cooking is an enjoyable, risk-free activity for everyone. This technology is conveniently built into precisely-designed intelligent knobs which replace the existing knobs on your stove. Using the provided adaptors, the intelligent knobs easily replace existing knobs on a large number of consumer stoves.
When any of the intelligent knobs are turned on, information is sent to the hub immediately and a mobile notification will provide an alert that the stove is on. The motion sensor located near the stove then monitors movement in the area around the stove (which should be within the motion sensor’s detection range), and also sends information to the hub. When the stove is on and no human movement is detected for 5 minutes (user configurable timer, default is 5 minutes), an alarm from the hub will be activated and a mobile phone notification will be simultaneously issued. These alarms will be triggered every 5 minutes (or as user defined) until the motion sensor detects movement in the kitchen again.
Don’t use mobile phone or don’t have internet connection? You can still use Smarturns as an automatic timer and alarm from the hub. All local communication among the knobs, sensor and hub function on its own network. The hub will trigger an alarm every 5 minutes when it detects the running burner is left unattended. The alarm timer is reset when it detects human movement within the sensor detection range.
Toch Smarturns comes with a free downloadable mobile app. You will need to use the app to connect the hub to your home wifi network for the initial setup – this will allow for mobile phone notifications and additional features to be used remotely. We designed the app to be very intuitive and easy to use.
Cooking schedule Smarturns automatically keeps the records of all cooking activities. It provides daily, weekly and monthly views of your cooking activities. You will have complete stove usage data history, useful information in rental apartment or Airbnb situations.
Automatic timer for your cooking Smarturns keeps track of how long the burner on your stove is on. You can use this tracker as a timer for your cooking.
There are two types of services available for users of Toch Smarturns: Basic Service and Premium Service.
The Basic Services comes free with all packages. With the Basic Service, users gets a free downloadable app and a single registered phone number. Phone notifications on the status of the stove will be sent to a single mobile phone, selected by the user. Additionally, the stove usage data history will be stored on a server for one month.
The Premium Service option enables notifications on the status of the stove to be sent to multiple phones. Users will receive monthly stove usage reports, and will have on-demand historical stove usage data. Historical data will be stored on the server for as long as requested by the user.
We are constantly discovering additional services that are helpful to users of Smarturns. With your help this list will keep on growing.
Combining Design and Technology
Our team has been working hard for over a year on prototyping and creating dozens of versions of the design of the intelligent knob. We have spent a significant effort studying different types of stoves and their associated knobs. We also paid special attention to details such as the weight and tactile feel of the knobs to ensure the highest level of design and function is achieved.
We use off the shelf PIR for our sensor device in the package. It operates on 3V AAA*2 battery. The package includes 2 alkaline batteries.
Dimensions: 105*40*26mm.
The first delivery of Smarturns works on stoves with vertical positioning knobs. Please stay tuned for our product updates for stoves with horizontal positioning knobs.
We have designed 8 different adaptors that will allow the intelligent knobs to fit the most common stoves in the market. These adaptors are designed to tolerate small variations in fixture sizes.
We spent countless hours on making Smarturns the best-in-class and developed a suite of patent-pending technology.
When a device is powered by a coin battery, every uA counts. If using the standard Bluetooth® stack, the CR2032 battery won’t last longer than 10 months. We challenged ourselves and developed TOCH’s own extreme low power wireless protocol, increasing the battery life to up to 4 years!*
Everyone hates false alarms. Thanks to TOCH’s multi-sensors fusion technology, every Smarturns knob’s turning action is recorded accurately and instantly.
Even in extreme circumstances when the wireless signal is jammed by strong interference, the Smarturns solution will automatically recover and report missed events as soon as the interference source is removed. Unlike other wireless sensors, for example a Z-Wave® door/window sensor, when the last open/close event is missed, one will not see the correct status until next event occurs.
*4 years battery life is estimated based on average household cooking usage and room temperature.
Co-founders Jessica and Wei have been friends for years and both have a lot in common. They both worked in product development for many years at Nokia, Motorola and different consulting services companies. Over a family get-together a couple of years ago, they shared their concerns for their parents who live independently and were showing signs of memory loss. This conversation was the catalyst and inspiration for this project. “We cannot stay with them all the time, but we want to know they are safe, and that they are fine. We want to create something that helps them retain their independence, and that provides peace of mind for ourselves.”
During this journey in creating Smarturns we discovered that the risk of unattended cooking does not only plague the elderly. It is rather, the most common cause of house fires reported. Smarturns is an innovative solution designed to keep everyone who uses a stovetop safe
We have now designed and built a best-in-class product. This Kickstarter campaign marks an exciting milestone in making our idea a reality. Building a successful company, growing a talented team, and developing an amazing product is based on hard work and perseverance, and we thank you for supporting us as we bring Toch Smarturns to the world!
Toch Smarturns is just our first step toward the application of IoT technology to enable seniors to live independently and safely. We will be expanding our product line to enable community and family support for their loving seniors who choose to age at home
Thanks for taking the time to view our project and for your support in bringing it to life. An even bigger thanks if you have made a pledge to our project. You are awesome :) To make this product a reality we need your help and support – so even if you can’t support with a pledge, why not help us by spreading the word on Facebook, Twitter and any other social networks or blogs you use, Click any of the links below to share::
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We are fortunate to be surrounded by many supportive people and companies, many of whom have worked hard to help bring Smarturns to life. We could not have done this without you!
Special thanks for Seed Design and Bocajj Studio who worked with us closely for this project and made countless revisions on the designs and videos. Thank you!
The team brings an incredible depth of technical experience with more than 20+ years of working in the areas of product development and operations with technology giants such as Nokia and Motorola. Jessica Yang, Co-Founder & CEO brings her vast experience from leading global development teams at Nokia. She started the Smarturns project because she was concerned about the safety of her aging parents who live abroad on their own. Her passion for technology and applying it to solving real world problems was the impetus for Smarturns. In her free time, she likes to ponder on the latest IoT trends and spend time with her children. Wei Fang, Co-Founder & CTO is a Full stack engineer in electrical hardware, wireless communication and software development. He has an amazing, fully-equipped lab in his basement where our prototypes were born. On sunny days, he enjoys boating with his family. David Xin, Sales and Marketing Director has been involved at various startups organizations, leading their marketing efforts and working with B2C and B2B clients. David is very passionate about innovations that will transform the lives of seniors as they age. He joined the team because he was inspired by Tochtech’s vision, his thirst to learn about the IoT and his concern about the safety of his parents as they age. Tammy Li, Designer and Marketing is enthusiastic about the world of startups and is constantly coming up with new and great marketing ideas. She studied briefly in the UK and loves everything British.