I've been cooking sous vide for the better part of a year now maybe (first used the cooler method) and last winter I upgraded to the anova circulator. Absolutely love sous vide...I probably use sous vide 60-70% of the time (still has novelty this my wane eventually). One of the only down sides to sous vide (other than me wanting to buy gadgets to along with all this high tech cooking methods) is cooking times, specifically on proteins such as steak or chicken or something simple. I've been thinking to myself, there's got to be away to automate this like some of the fancier crock pots. I recently came across the mellow sous vide machine... Between the wireless login controls (i wish the new anova had this ) and the chill to cook function..the things ingenius. But alas, its a year away, a little too bulky for my counter top, and not quite big enough for cooking large pieces of meat, and the price is a little too rich for my blood. So I was sitting around today thinking , surely there's gotta be away to automate sous vide.... I mean if I can cook steak with a cooler and a tea kettle and thermometer...I can do this. So I put the old noggin too it...and this is what I've figured out. All the sous vide machines out there are useless if you wanna try and hack something...unless you know something about programming and electronics. Alas I am firmly grounded in the social sciences, and despite having done a small stint as IT recruiter , I know nothing of either about these subjects. So being at a loss, I did what in sane person does...I grabbed a beer. Now I'm a homebrewer, and I've even got a keezer (deep freezer converted into a kegerator). In order to convert the kegerator into a refrigerator (and thus not have frozen beersicles) we use a little device that lets you set a temperature that you want and then (using a temp probe) it cycles the keezer on/off to maintain temperature- so me of us homebrewers even use similar set ups with minifridges to control fermentation temps. So I was looking at the temp controller, and low and behold its essentially the same as dorkfood dsv. Thats when the muse struck me. Dorkfood + crockpot + appliance timer + iceI decided to go and test my fermentation fridge with the same controler and heavy duty appliance timer and hooked that up to see if the basic concept of using a temp. controller and a appliance timer would work....it did. So this is the plan. Set the dorkfood dsv at the temperature wanted, and use the appliance timer to time the sous vide set up to cook dinner for around when I'll get home. I would use ice/ice pack to keep it "refrigerated" until it was ready to cook. Example, I plan on getting home at 5:30- set the appliance timer for say 4:45 that way when I get home its almost time to pull the steak out. Thoughts on this idea? Worth pursuing? Sound crazy? Too much work?