This week’s SmartHome roundup features smart kitchen innovations and concept designs that would make anyone enjoy spending a few more hours in the kitchen.

Nutrima Kitchen Scale

People who want to maintain a healthy weight need to watch what they eat to keep from going over their daily calorie limit.  Fortunately this year’s Electrolux Design Lab features some great concept designs revolving around the smart home.

One interesting concept is the Nutrima Kitchen Scale, a device that is able to calculate the nutritional value, possible toxins, freshness of food and ingredients placed on top of it.  Designed by Janne Palovuori, the scale is portable — it doesn’t need an external power source and it’s thinner than a chopping board.  Nutrima combines piezoelectricity with smart and flexible technologies to help your diet stay on track.  It also comes with the Nutrimapper app, to locate the best produce sellers in your area.

Kitchen Hub

Another concept design from the Electrolux Design Lab is the Kitchen Hub, a wall clock-sized device that aims to help you eat healthy, create wonderful dishes from ingredients already available on your kitchen, and not waste food by reminding you which items in your kitchen are spoiling soon.

The Kitchen Hub has a smart stand “ring” that allows it to rest on your desktop for a more comfortable use, and allow the device to swivel when needed.  It has a touchscreen interface, a camera to identify members of the family or the different users to be able to deliver the right diet recommendation, and you can also use it to order products online, as well as get the best deal for high quality food.

Milkmaid

Quirky and GE threw a contest challenging participants to turn everyday objects into something smarter.  Not surprisingly, the winner was a milk jug that is able to tell when the milk is going bad, reminding you to buy more.  Designed by Stephanie Burns, Milkmaid makes sour milk detection easier (and safer) for people.

Milkmade is comprised of two components, the vessel and the SmartBase.  The vessel, where the milk actually goes, has a metal base that is loaded with pH and temperature sensors that take periodic readings and relay that information to the pedestal.  The SmartBase has a weight sensor that identifies when you’re running low on milk, and it acts as the brain of the operation, evaluating the data sent by the sensors located on the vessel.  The SmartBase has LED lights that turn from green to orange to let you know that the milk is turning bad, as well as a GSM radio module, an antenna, a SIM card, and a rechargeable battery.  This allows the Milkmaid to communicate with the user’s phone via an app.