Far Out Tech

This Unassuming Kitchen Tool Blocks Wi-Fi So You Can Take Back Mealtime

Former West Coast Editor

May 11, 2015 2 min read

Sick of family members blankly staring at their smartphones at the dinner table? Give them the grind -- the anti-tech pepper grind.

Sourced from: Dolmio Australia | YouTube

The creative masterminds at Australian pasta sauce maker Dolmio have cooked up a pepper grinder that looks like your standard wooden pepper mill, only it does something way better than crush peppercorns -- it crushes Wi-Fi. With a quick turn of the clever spice mill, the surrounding Wi-Fi signal is killed, allowing you to stealthily take back family mealtime or any other precious human interaction time that electronics have hijacked.

The sneaky Dolmio Pepper Hacker, modified with special electrical components stashed inside, doesn’t just shut down area Wi-Fi. It also disables nearby TVs, smartphones and tablets. Evil, right? Evil genius, we say. All the while, it spices your food to help keep up the ruse.

The grinder’s creators invented the Wi-Fi killer to bring technology-addicted families back together. In other words, less Facebook, more facetime. And drumming up some press doesn’t hurt, either.

Check out the grinder in glorious action:

Instead of a kill switch, the pepper grinder has a kill twist. A quick twist of the crusher shuts down devices for 30 minutes, enough time to break bread and catch up with your fellow humans minus the gadget gazing. To pull off the covert trick, the pepper grinder works with an app called AirWatch, which remotely switches off devices.

While you’re probably salivating over the opportunity to buy one, these handy devices aren’t available to the public just yet. Dolmio produced only a limited number of the tricksters for testing. Still, it’s a cool concept -- nothing to sneeze at.