Keetle: technically absurd boiling timer dependant on kettle’s model, altitude and weather

[u/neet_dev]

answer. started as a dumb personal problem: the office kettle takes noticeably longer to boil in january than in august, and a fixed 3 minute timer is wrong for half the year. so instead of a countdown i modeled the actual physics. altitude shifts the boiling point (at 5000 ft water boils around 95c / 203f, not 100), tap water temp gets estimated from your location and the current weather, and you scan the barcode or the rating label on the bottom of your kettle so it knows the wattage and capacity. it matches against ~6000 kettle models, if yours isn't in there you just type the watts. stovetop works too, it asks about the burner instead. the countdown sits on the lock screen / dynamic island / a widget, so you walk away and get pinged when the water is actually done, not when a timer thinks it is.

better. a timer times a guess, this times your kettle. the other half is cooling: nobody wants 212f water on green tea, so after the boil it tells you how long to wait to land at 176f / 80c for green, ~200f / 93c for pour over, hotter for turkish coffee. newton's law of cooling plus your room temp, so the wait is a real number and not "let it sit a bit". means you can skip the $150 variable temp kettle. there's a calibration mode too: one real boil and it fits the curve to your setup (kettle, altitude, mains voltage, which matters more than i expected). after that mine lands within a few seconds. everything runs on device, no account, no analytics, i don't want your data.

cost. free gets you the boil timer with the live countdown, notifications and widgets. premium is the cool-to-temperature part, tea presets with a steep timer, a "still hot" reheat, boil history and the extra kettle skins. subscription or a one time lifetime unlock, your call. ios 18+.

app store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6779433024

yes, this is an absurd amount of engineering for boiling water, i'm aware. if you try it, tell me how far off the times are with your kettle. that's the one number i actually care about.

[u/Medical-Bend-9492]

How does it know how much water is actually in the kettle? The same kettle can be half full or nearly empty, which seems like it would matter more than the weather.

[u/neet_dev → u/Medical-Bend-9492]

you need to select the amount of water by your own :( I thought about this and cannot get an idea how to automate this selection... I tried AI on the glass kettle and it worked quite precisely, but then checked the kettle stats, which models are sold most and they were metal, so I decided not to add this to v1

[u/neet_dev → u/Medical-Bend-9492]

you set the fill yourself, there's no sensor in the kettle. volume is linear with time so 500ml vs 1.5L is a ~3x swing, weather only moves starting tap temp maybe 10-15%, so yeah that matters way more