Project: Kitchen OS

[e30drift]

Long story short, I am a widowed, single dad working in the IT industry (IT Director) and I have a unique knack for cooking.

I moved into my new apartment a few months ago and have finally amassed a decent amount of kitchen gadgets and essentials. The one thing that I hate is a pile of recipes printed out from the web and put into a binder and scraps of paper with recipes scribbled on them. Last week, I got fed up with having the binder around and scraps of paper after spilling a bunch of hot soup on my binder, I raged all day. Needless to say, my 3 year old was mad dinner was late.

Being the IT nerd that I am, I figured I would create a database full of recipes and import them in from various websites like epicurious or foodnetwork. That turned out to an epic failure. I hate coding to parse text... failed that Computer Science course... miserably!

Seeings how I have a spare laptop and 20 inch LCD collecting dust, I knew that this would be a great alternative to the binder!

So, here is what I got and would love some input from you guys...
Hardware

• Mount the LCD in a Portrait layout to a new kitchen cabinet door (stupid apartment life)
• Run cables to top of the cabinet
• Mount laptop to the underside of the cabinet or on top (haven't decided)
• Wireless Networking
• Wireless keyboard/mouse

Software

• Ubuntu 9.10 - bare-bones installation (Gnome or KDE)
• Gourmet Recipe Manager
• KRecipe
• Firefox 3.5

I created a VM in Virtual Box to test different apps like Gourmet Recipe Manager and Krecipe and with different flavors of Ubuntu: Gnome, KDE, server, mini and netbook remix
All are 32bit (no need for 64bit) and based on 9.10

The laptop I want to put this on is an old Centrino Duo 1.6Ghz, 1GB and a 60GB 5400 RPM HDD (btw, that HDD is dog crap slooooow) More than powerful to run what I want, but I want the bare minimum apps and services running. *yes, I could upgrade the RAM and HDD, but trying to keep costs to a minimum and inspire others to recycle old hardware! SSD, maybe

Here is what I have tried so far:

• Ubuntu Server w/ Gnome core (super bare-bones Gnome)
  Ubuntu NBR - epic failure... interface is nice, but Gourmet doesn't look right.
  Ubuntu (Gnome)

Installed Gourmet Recipe Manager(GRM) on all 3. Each one seems to be ok, but I am torn on GMR's Pro's and Con's...
Pro

• Easy to Use
• Import Feature - URL is nice!
• Export to XML
• Timers (makes hyperlinks with in the instructions to builtin timer)
• Multiple Timer support - VERY IMPORTANT!

Con

• Comes with NO recipes
• Import feature not as good as you think - Must edit and tag everything
• Crashes when importing recipes from TXT files (encoding issues)

Need to test:
Kubuntu (Krecipe)
Ubuntu Mini - seems like a dead end, but I'll try it.

I know I can run KDE apps in Gnome, but installing the KDE packages in with Gnome seriously increases disk space usage and I have heard of cross platform issues with some apps and performance issues. Plus I am too lazy to test that out.

I am installing Kubuntu in a VM as I write this, so I do not have any hands-on experience with KRecipe. From what I have found on the googles, it comes with a Recipe DB(?) or connects to an online one(?). Didn't see anything about timers or like how GRM does it.

Any input would be welcomed!

[Cuddles McKitten]

My suggestion would be Puppy since it's lightweight and easy to set up. Then, since booting would be relatively prohibitive when you just want a recipe, have it hibernate rather than shutting down.

[e30drift]

My suggestion would be Puppy since it's lightweight and easy to set up. Then, since booting would be relatively prohibitive when you just want a recipe, have it hibernate rather than shutting down.

I thought about Puppy, but I like the challenge to mod Ubuntu to do what I want it to do.

I even tried Xubuntu, but I couldn't get past the 90's interface, but I digress.

I was thinking that this could be the best kitchen appliance out of my arsenal.

Plus, I thought it would be bad *** to roll a final product as an ISO and/or VM appliance for Virtual Box or VMWare for others to use.

[synicalx]

My suggestion would be Puppy since it's lightweight and easy to set up. Then, since booting would be relatively prohibitive when you just want a recipe, have it hibernate rather than shutting down.

Agree, you'll want something small and fast - I'm sure you can set it to Hibernate whenever the laptop lib is closed and wake up when it's open? (Linux noob here ).

Also, if your mounting the LCD on a door, be sure to reinforce that hinges or get new ones and make sure the door is made out of tough enough material so that the screw don't end up dragging and eventually coming loose. I've had problems screwing cutlery (yes cutlery) holders into flimsy doors - after a month or to of use, it started to wobble around and after a year it toppled out - leaving sizeable holes in the door where the screws had moved around and shot my cutlery across the room...

[drawkcab]

I really like this idea but you need a touchscreen interface, srsly. Build that and you actually have a marketable product. Quit your job and start selling the kitchencomp.

[e30drift]

Agree, you'll want something small and fast - I'm sure you can set it to Hibernate whenever the laptop lib is closed and wake up when it's open? (Linux noob here ).

Also, if your mounting the LCD on a door, be sure to reinforce that hinges or get new ones and make sure the door is made out of tough enough material so that the screw don't end up dragging and eventually coming loose. I've had problems screwing cutlery (yes cutlery) holders into flimsy doors - after a month or to of use, it started to wobble around and after a year it toppled out - leaving sizeable holes in the door where the screws had moved around and shot my cutlery across the room...

The cabinet doors are made of a very dense particle board so that plus washers should help keep it on the door. as for the hinges, I rarely open that particular door, so it should be okay. Also, the door is held on with 3 hinges, so that should keep the door on with the weight of the LCD.

The laptop will be out of sight completely. I plan on setting up a timer to put it on standby after 1 hour of inactivity. that will save on power and will have instantaneous boot ups/downs. and the best part is that the screen is dead, so I'll be removing it from the hinge to get easy access to the power button in case I need to power it up.

[e30drift]

I really like this idea but you need a touchscreen interface, srsly. Build that and you actually have a marketable product. Quit your job and start selling the kitchencomp.

Touchscreen? why stop there? multi-touch is where it's at!!

Seriously though, I did think about investing in a touchscreen later on, but imagine getting dirty kitchen hands on the screen... and the cost of a touchscreen is pretty high, too.

I plan on wrapping the monitor in plastic wrap (saran wrap) or flush mount a sheet of lexan or plexi glass in the inner bezel.
I already got this: http://www.adesso.com/products_detai...productid=390#
and an old logitech wireless mouse
Those will be wrapped as well too.

[Xzallion]

Maybe look into the new wacom tablets that support multitouch once the drivers develop for them?

Mount the wacom with the lcd and you would have a really snazzy interface for your lcd.

Just a thought.

[e30drift]

Maybe look into the new wacom tablets that support multitouch once the drivers develop for them?

Mount the wacom with the lcd and you would have a really snazzy interface for your lcd.

Just a thought.

Thought of that too. I was hoping for a good onscreen keyboard to use with a multi-touch or touchscreen, but that would be too awkward.

The solution I have is to build a slide out tray under the cabinet and mount that there and put the keyboard on it, secured with velcro tape.

The main objective is to increase usable counter space without having a keyboard or binder of recipes getting in the way.

BTW, I did try out KRecipe and was quite disappointed. There was an online database coming along, but was abandoned. The import feature is so-so and there are no built in timers.

I had a friend come over and check out the progress, she likes it and noted that since the laptop will be running Linux, the whole XKCD punchline: "Sudo make me a sandwich" adds to the hilarity and awesomeness of the project!

[Xbehave]

The laptop I want to put this on is an old Centrino Duo 1.6Ghz, 1GB and a 60GB 5400 RPM HDD (btw, that HDD is dog crap slooooow) More than powerful to run what I want, but I want the bare minimum apps and services running. *yes, I could upgrade the RAM and HDD, but trying to keep costs to a minimum and inspire others to recycle old hardware! SSD, maybe

That system is good enough to run any ubuntu distro, kubuntu or gnome will both run fine (with no desktop effects), the best workaround for the slow HDD is to not shutdown and just suspend when possible.