Patent ID: 8849430

Claim:
An appliance network comprising: a communication network having a plurality of interconnected nodes configured to communicate across the communication network; at least one appliance configured to perform a cycle of operation to complete a food preparation operation on an article, the at least one appliance having a plurality of components, each component of the plurality of components being associated with at least one of the plurality of interconnected nodes; a cooking sensor accessory connected to one of the plurality of nodes so as to be in communication with the communication network and configured to be in communication with a cooking vessel used to accomplish the food preparation operation and to detect a condition of the cooking vessel; and a software architecture having a plurality of software elements and configured to generate a plurality of messages, with at least one of the software elements residing in each of the nodes and in the cooking sensor accessory and configured to enable transmission of at least one of the plurality of messages between each of the nodes and between the cooking sensor accessory and the nodes wherein the software architecture includes a cycle engine in communication with the cooking sensor accessory and having a first data portion describing a plurality of elements comprising an ordered collection of steps, the actions to be taken during each step, and the conditions under which the current step should transition to a next step in the ordered collection of steps, and a second compiled portion that reads the data portion and builds a cycle structure in memory which can execute instructions comprising the cycle of operation corresponding to the description suggested by the data portion and wherein the food preparation operation is customized to the data portion at runtime.