It’s not everyday you get to have hands on time with a Kickstarter prototype, let alone with one of it’s creators but that’s what I got to do a few weeks ago with the AppKettle.

The AppKettle launched on Kickstarter last week and has so far hit over 20% of it’s funding in the first week.

So, an app controlled kettle. What is it about and why would you want or need one? Those are some of the questions that get thrown about when discussing the concept but when you wind up using the product, it makes sense.

The use cases with heating water in your home, seem somewhat inconsequential, as we have become so used to them over the better part of 100 years. Then over the course of the hands on session, as we discussed all the things people do with kettles today we found there were more than you initially consider. There’s more than just the making of hot beverages and heating water for instance.

All of these activities revolve around manually filling and turning on the kettle. The AppKettle takes care of one of these and interestingly, informs you of how much water is still in the kettle, which helps take care of the other.

That’s the immediate difference with the Appkettle, in comparison to it’s competitors. The other digital kettle solutions only allow you to remotely boil. Fine, but some what useless, if you end up only boring enough water to fill a thimble! Not only is that in-efficent, it’s annoying. The Appkettle solves this issue by having a sensor in the base that can report how much water is in the kettle. 

With that information, the Appkettle’s companion app can inform you of how long it will take to boil (or get to the desired temperature) and will only use the energy required to get to that point. This get’s even better when you consider where the guys are going with the Appkettle.

At the prototype stage, the guys were still pushing on with development to not only integrate the Apple standard of HomeKit, but further developing their cloud and geo-location options. This will allow owners to have the Appkettle boiling, as they walk through the door or for first thing in the morning.

As ever with any new product, the reason why it exists is often more important than the fact that it does exist. Any product that looks to add functionality to a pre-existing technology, must do so to the benefit to customers, rather than doing it ‘just because we can’. Often, that line between ‘benefit’ and ‘because’ can seem blurred to consumers, but when they start seeing their own uses for the new functionality, beyond what the inventors imagined, then the benefit, becomes completely clear.

The Appkettle is making promises to future users and after what I’ve seen and experienced, I think they will live up to it.

You can back the Appkettle on Kickstarter, and as of publishing this article, it’s almost 50% funded, with 15 days to go.