It's a true pleasure when my day job (technical consultant) and interest (insanely cool stuff) collide like the did for the project at TCHO Chocolate.

In concert with FX Palo Alto Laboratory, we have instrumented the TCHO "Flavor Laboratory" with cameras, temperature and device controllers, and a web back-end tailored to mobile Safari use with the iPhone. So the flavor scientists at TCHO can, from anywhere in the world, read and set temperatures and remotely switch on and off one or more of the five the chocolate melangers in the lab.

Here are some videos showing how it all works:

I definitely need to thank my FXPAL colleagues Maribeth Back, Jim Vaughan and Bee Liew from FXPAL, and the crew at TCHO. My personal contribution was to build a custom switching box and write the low-level code to contro it and to query/control the various temp controllers.

Lots of good press on this one, from Food Production Daily, Apple, and Cult of Mac.