Why do I need an online account to control my Joule over bluetooth?

Having become concerned about my privacy as relates to my Joule usage, I signed out of the Joule app and intend to control my Joule exclusively over bluetooth. Why do I need to sign in to the app to control my Joule? This is an appliance that I purchased, and I expect to be able to use it without asking for permission from ChefSteps each time I do.

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hairyotter_273859

Joule has pros and cons, this is one of the cons. We accept the good with the bad when we purchased our joule.

I hate not being able to see the temp at a glance when I walk by my Joule... I haven't tried connecting my joule to my Echo yet for voice control, been too lazy and distracted. I'd still like to see a small screen to verify setting and manual controls on the Joule 2.0

And I don't except the rational that not having a screen is good because then it won't break. The screen has never failed on my anova or PS.

Dear Santa, next year I want my Joule to have visual feedback, big clip and manual controls, then Joule will be "more" perfect. I wouldn't mind paying more if those upgrades were available.

tshewman

set up a new email etc. And use it only for Joule

Clinton_Ingram_416399

Yeah, I understood when I bought Joule that I would always have to control it with another device. I get that leaving controls, screens, etc off the Joule allows it to be smaller and cheaper (and maybe more reliable), and that's a pretty good trade-off as far as I'm concerned. But I didn't expect that all my usage of the device would be monitored and that I couldn't use it without asking permission from ChefSteps. What happens when their servers are unavailable and I can't sign in to the app? The device becomes a paperweight. There's no justification for that.

I also get that collecting usage information allows them to improve the product, and I'm sure most people would offer their data in exchange for the improvements that it allows. I just want to see transparency on that issue, and I want the option to control what I share. And, of course, I want the option to use Joule completely offline, whether by necessity or by choice.

nico.beemster

Wow, this sucks. The other cons suck too.

Really, really glad I got myself an Anova for half the money.

hairyotter_273859

The Anova rocks!

tshewman

Unfortunately, my first 2 anovas were returned. Have one for sale now, barely used. 2 Joule's and PS

JasonWirth_68226

+100 to this.

While I support ChefSteps, this issue isn't addressed well enough. I don't think the monitoring is disclosed as much as it should be.

pgcath

FWIW, I think this is an error of omission or lack of resource not a lack of intent. At the event they put on earlier, Chris mentioned that plans were in place to hand off the back-end off to the community in the event of CS going belly-up.

I'd like to be able to control my data sharing in the app more granularly as well, and have an option to run the device 'incognito' as it were. I'd definitely file feature requests in the app about your concerns, in addition to this forum post. Based on what I've seen in the past, it will get seen, and it will get addressed - keeping in mind that CS doesn't have unlimited resources. On the flip side, I've been the beneficiary of CS being able to access detailed telemetry during the beta, and part of what I love about Joule is that it will grow and learn with the community...

I'm sure we can find a middle ground.

Tim_Sutherland_52834

I've stopped using Joule for certain cooks as the need to be connected is an issue. Some houses I cook at have very spotty cell coverage (even in the middle of Dallas suburbia) in the kitchen area. Forget taking Joule to the deer lease or other rural areas with iffy cell coverage.

hairyotter_273859

That's strange, Wes H. Posted in the joule thread that he has returned 2 joules and is having concerns about his 3rd one. Must have been a bad day at the Anova/Joule sous vide factory in China that day. I've had pretty good luck with my devices.

HammeredChef_DEFINITELY_does_NOT_work_at_22134

I don't understand your privacy concerns....you have an account if you can post here...sign in and let it register your joule...disconnect from wifi and use bluetooth...it asks if you want to reconnect but you don't have to.. pretty simple...

mattpope

Likewise my thought as well. Not sure how privacy is affected if just using bluetooth.

Christo_Haarhoff_282340

So are you saying you need both cell coverage and bluetooth to run it? I thought bluetooth alone is good...

Clinton_Ingram_416399

That was my thought, but it doesn't work that way.

If you sign out of the app, it drops the bluetooth pairing with Joule, and you can't re-connect to it without signing in again. There's no reason for sign in to be required other than to allow ChefSteps to invade our privacy. The app can and should work as a simple remote control in bluetooth mode. Offline operation can and should be possible, but they explicitly disallow it.

Clinton_Ingram_416399

"I think this is an error of omission or lack of resource not a lack of intent"

I'd agree with that, except it's harder to make the app require a sign in before pairing over bluetooth than it is to not do that. Clearly they designed a use case around that and decided they didn't want us using Joule without asking their permission. They even went so far as to code in the error dialog I screenshotted above. That all takes programming effort, whereas removing that requirement or simply leaving it out takes none.

"On the flip side, I've been the beneficiary of CS being able to access detailed telemetry during the beta"

That's totally cool for a beta, as there's no point in allowing people to beta test the device if you can't get detailed feedback. Once the product was released, though, the choice should have become ours, not theirs.

"I'd definitely file feature requests in the app about your concerns"

I had assumed some of the ChefSteps staff participated in these forums, but it doesn't look like that's the case. I'll open a support ticket and see if they will address it that way.

Clinton_Ingram_416399

Because as indicated by the screenshot above, you can't control Joule over bluetooth without signing in to your ChefSteps account from the app. That effectively means every action you take in the app can be traced to your account. The ChefSteps privacy policy even states that if you choose to sign in to the app, they will collect such data:

"When you first activate your Joule, you will have the option to link the device to your ChefSteps account. If you choose to do so, we will collect information about your use of the Joule, including what and how you cook, your cooking and recipe preferences, and any other information you choose to provide through the app."

The problem is, it isn't an option; it's mandatory. They're spying on you. Maybe you don't care about that, and that's fine. It's not the kind of information some people would mind sharing. It's a matter of principle for me.

The more important issue is that because the spying isn't optional, you actually can't use your Joule at all if you can't (or don't want to) connect it with the ChefSteps servers.

fisher23

True but if you are already signed into the app and don't have WiFi coverage you can still use Bluetooth.

fisher23

How can this be a privacy issue when all you need is an email address to set up an account. There is no personal identification data being transmitted. Open a gmail or yahoo email address and sign it with that If you don't want to use your main email. Or even open another FB account and you can sign in with that. As long as you are signed in to the app you can control Joule via Bluetooth without a WiFi connection. However you do need to have WiFi connected to perform firmware updates.

fisher23

My Anova has been replaced twice and was never reliable at high temperatures, it kept turning itself off.

Clinton_Ingram_416399

This isn't an issue I want to work around. When I first got my Joule, I was so excited to try it out, I overlooked what was, to me, a huge design flaw. I signed in to the app and used Joule and really liked the hardware.

I assumed I wouldn't be the only user with these concerns, and I assumed it would get fixed in time. But I've had Joule for over a month now, and that month has seen updates of both the firmware and the app, and these issues haven't been addressed. I think it's time that was remedied. Not everyone who uses Joule is aware of the privacy implications, so I posted here to bring it to others' attention and to spur ChefSteps to action.

It's ok if you're not bothered by this as much as I am, and if you think it's reasonable to have to create fake identities just to use an appliance you've purchased without having your privacy violated, that's ok too. I'm not ready to accept that.

And besides, fake email addresses still don't solve the problem of not being able to use Joule without an internet connection or in the event of a server outage at ChefSteps. It's a bad design, and they need to fix it.

fisher23

I truly appreciate that you have respected my response. The only thing that I would add is that in the future I assume that ChefSteps will add some Premium cooking guides to the Joule app, the same that they have on their website. The premium content is controlled by accounts. I know this doesn't resolve your concerns but it may be their reasoning to requiring people to sign into an account.

Christopher_Parreno_407113

You should sign in because you don't want a crazy ex girlfriend to adjust your chicken to 115F while you're out jogging and she's made a spare key before you asked for it back.

If you weren't logged in, you wouldn't know that changing temperature was ever stopped.

There wouldn't be any record of it

And you will be on the floor.

And your mother will sue Chefsteps WITHOUT REALIZING THE TRUTH

I understand your situation i'm a Libertarian... however..

What happens when we're now able to use more than one joule on the same account? We're going to be needing Identification.

What if that information is stored on your phone and not on the account and you lose it? How does Joule work now?

Clinton_Ingram_416399

I think you're absolutely right about that. That's actually all the more reason I'd like to see the bluetooth control of Joule decoupled from the login requirements in the app. It makes perfect sense to require a login for premium online content. It doesn't make sense to require a login to control an appliance I own outright.

That's also a reason why a fake email doesn't do the job. If I pay for content under a real account, I can't then access that content from the app and control my Joule anonymously.

The best solution would be to include a setting in the app that allows users to control what information they share with ChefSteps. But regardless, a pure offline mode is essential as well.

Clinton_Ingram_416399

I don't mean to offend, but I don't think you understand how Joule's bluetooth control works. You seem to be confusing Wi-Fi control and bluetooth control. A sign-in makes sense for Wi-Fi control. It doesn't for bluetooth.

Today, anyone with physical access to a Joule can reset it and then connect over bluetooth as long as they have the app and have signed in to it (fake email or not). There's nothing restricting use of the appliance based on who is signed in; it only requires that someone is signed in.

I'm pretty new to headless app-controlled devices, but to give an example of something that works well, I got a Segway Minipro around the same time I got my Joule. When I set up the Segway initially, it let me give it a name and set a password for bluetooth connections. That solves both problems you posed. If there are multiple Segways in range, you can differentiate them by name before connecting. And any phone/tablet with the app installed can only connect to my Segway over bluetooth if they have the password I set.

Those are things that could be baked into the firmware of the Joule if we're concerned about unauthorized access or the ability to access to multiple devices from a single app instance.

But unlike the Segway, my Joule doesn't leave the house, so it's much less likely someone will attempt to access it without authorization. And again, if someone wants to hijack a Joule today, the only thing stopping them is the same thing stopping me from using my own Joule; they have to have an internet connection, a ChefSteps account, and a willingness to be spied on.

nico.beemster

I love my Anova but my first unit was returned and replaced as well. Had some problems with heating up (very sloooooow) and it finally stopped working at all.

But, I never experienced any issues with my replacement unit!

pd3ski_278514

Clinton... there are a lot of home cooks at the NSA that are complete shite..... they need this info to help them be better!!

I'm with you as far as being able to operate fully independent on Bluetooth regardless of lte signal... my mom lives out in the boondox where my cell fades in and out... I'll be finding out next week!

mattpope

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Definitely food for thought (no pun intended

)

pgcath

Again, I point out that I share some of your concerns, but...

"I assumed I wouldn't be the only user with these concerns, and I assumed it would get fixed in time. But I've had Joule for over a month now, and that month has seen updates of both the firmware and the app, and these issues haven't been addressed."

... You just posted this thread and opened the request in the app. On a recently launched product. Inside that same month. Agility is one thing, resource constraints are another.

Clinton_Ingram_416399

You say 'resource constraints', I say 'priorities'. It's the same thing, really. Resources are always constrained, so you have to prioritize what's important. I was simply expressing surprise that this issue didn't make it up the priority list. So the development team found time to build a completely optional, gimmicky feature like Alexa integration, but they can't find time to fix an issue that renders Joule completely inoperable for some people? I don't buy it.

And it's not as if this is a newly discovered or difficult to reproduce bug. It's designed functionality that they spent their precious, precious developer resources on.

Clinton_Ingram_416399

Update:

After more than a week (granted, it's the holidays, but still...) I finally got a reply to the support ticket I opened on this issue. This was the response:

"Right now, you need to be online to sign into the app. We may release a version of the app in the future that doesn't have this requirement, but at this time we don't have an estimate of when that will be available."

So there you go. They know about it, and they might fix it or they might not. I'm following up on that reply to attempt to explain to them why it needs to be fixed, but it might be helpful if anyone else who wants it fixed opened their own support tickets. The squeaky wheel gets the cheese... or something like that...

brian_martin2001

@Max_Foster_18996 I think the prevailing bug where the website automatically deletes the comment when a comment chain gets too long has removed your last post. Would you be able to re-comment?

pgcath

Gah! That's actually twice.

Bleah.

brian_martin2001

sorry boss

Clinton_Ingram_416399

D'oh. I have a notification that you replied, but it's gone. I was genuinely interested in your feedback if you don't mind repeating yourself.

pgcath

I'm going to recreate it tomorrow.

Tonight, I'm just a little irked that I lost a few pages of text. The second version wasn't as good as the first, and I'm sure the third draft will be a pale shadow of the second... Darn it.

Clinton_Ingram_416399

Commenting out of place... because reasons...

I thought your reply was quite eloquent, but I'll pretend it was even more so

Thanks for sharing your experience. That does make me feel a bit more hopeful. Unfortunately, my interactions with the ChefSteps support team haven't been as encouraging. In fact, not only have they not confirmed a change will come at some point, they haven't even demonstrated that they fully understand why it's an issue.

At this point, I really just want to hear that they recognize it as a problem and have it in a queue of some sort to be addressed. I can be quite patient if I know a fix is coming. I've decided to return my Joule if they won't fix this problem, though, so I can't wait forever to hear from them.

Oh, and thank you very much for attempting to bring attention to this thread through other channels. I'm crossing my fingers...

pgcath

I've got to tell you that I am sorry that your interactions haven't been great - they really are a good bunch of folks. I do know that this thread has sparked discussions at CS, and I'm betting as more folks weigh in, it informs their development choices going forward.

Reading the CS tea leaves, it does seem like something will be done, they just aren't coming down solidly on when. But again, I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt, so take that with some fleur de sel.

Perrine_744176

This is the main reason I hate the Joule. Just let me fucking set the temp without connecting to the internet you shmohawks.

brian_martin2001

There are many other options out there that do not require you to log in. If you want to use the joule, it's just something you have to accept, for better or worse.

Kobe_Smith_668355

So it’s been 5 years since this thread was started. There has been no resolution. Calling it a future “feature” to not log in to CS servers just to use Bluetooth unmolested and in private seems more than disingenuous at this point. Five years ago this was their response:

“Right now” was five years ago. I mean, no estimate us one thing, but blatant disregard for a feature many have been clambering for for years is quite another. Since then the barrage of recipes, articles, offers and other completely unwanted detritus has exploded. It’s nearly impossible to simply cook food without “interacting”. And by interacting I mean donating one’s personal data. (Yes, that’s right. Check the privacy policy.)

I’m sorry, Max Foster, but it seems CS turned out not to be the good corporate citizen you portrayed. The clever, beautiful, powerful, slim device was a ruse. The real reason it has no buttons or displays is to force customers into wading through a mire of unwanted “upgrades”, and more importantly, to sell users’ personal preferences and habits to internal and external data mongers.

I bought the Joule because the design, construction,, power and usefulness were unsurpassed at that time. But I have to say I have used the thing all of about three times because it’s sooo frustrating to use. I have been going to my trusty, big, bulky, cracked suspension ring, out of date Anova instead. Compared to Joule, is the Anova hardware as good? No. Is it easy to clean? No. Does it heat as fast? Not really. So why do I reach for the Anova over the Joule?

Because it minds it’s own darned business! Because it works on WiFi and Bluetooth, but doesn’t require either. Joule requires logging in and remaining logged in for the duration of the cook even on Bluetooth. (Save your breath, defenders; I know CS says you only need to log in to turn on Bluetooth, but just try staying connected if your web login fails.)

In conclusion I guess I should have known all along. If something looks too good to be true, it probably is…

Sincerely dismayed by the SF bay,

Chris_1254919

I came to complain about the same thing... It's 2024... This was a gift so I'm going to deal until it fails and I'm never touching a chef steps product again. It's almost as predatory as hp and the printing cartridges... You can shove your proprietary software and connection locks.