IoT: Internet of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is upon us! There are boundless potential applications of IoT technologies that can enhance your holiday. From real-time turkey telemetry to smart kitchen management to gaining more insight into wayward relatives through asset tracking, here are four fun ways to hack your Thanksgiving. 

Turkey Telemetry

Whether you have a smart thermometer snugly stuffed, or an infrared thermopile sensor (like this module from Adafruit), a properly cooked turkey is a juicy turkey. To achieve this, you’ll want the meat to reach an internal temp of 165°F. The USDA has some quick guidelines on cook time, but just as every IoT Applications is unique, so too is every oven—and, more importantly, every turkey. Connecting your food to the cloud can help you make your feast much more delectable.

Image Credit: fsis.usda.gov

If your guests have a tendency to rush into eating, burning their mouths, this is also a great way to gauge when hot food is safe to serve.

Thanksgiving Home Management

Preparing and cooking food can take up the entire day, with multiple stoves and an oven running in the background. Temperature and humidity sensors, like this BME 280 module, can help you keep tabs on the kitchen space, and any other areas where you might be hosting guests. It can inform you when you might need to open a window or turn down the heat. Just wire it up to an IoT microcontroller or Raspberry PI and send the sensor data up to the cloud.  

Keeping Track of Relatives & Guests

Sometimes, loudness is a sign of people having a good time. Sometimes, it’s a sign of rising tensions between disagreeable relatives who may have had a little bit too much mulled wine.

Noises from an exhaust hood or sizzling vegetables in a pan drown out the warning signs before it's too late to de-escalate a potential Thanksgiving family meltdown. Strategically placed noise sensors can help you keep tabs on the situation before Turkey day tensions spiral out of control. This tutorial can help you get started with monitoring and moderating wayward relatives. 

Connect Your Leftovers

Trying to clear out a fridge full of leftovers inevitably leads to a forgotten morsel of food spoiling in the corner of a hard-to-reach area. While smart fridge products can help you reduce food waste, you can build a similar system for a fraction of the cost, with a camera module, a Raspberry PI, and computer vision. Every time you open your fridge, this DIY hack will take a picture of your fridge and use machine learning to identify your food.

Whether you’re opting for a smart, connected holiday, or a traditional family dinner, the team at IoT For All would like to wish a Happy Thanksgiving to all of our readers!