For that use case a picture would be good enough tbh. Still not going to buy a smart fridge because it sounds stupid to me, but it’s gotta cost less than 20 bucks per fridge at scale for the hardware to do it, so it’s pretty trivial.
even the system that does that would be insane to run on the same voltage as the condenser (make-cold part). computers are cheapest to build cheapest to run and most durable for low voltage. so basically you’d have the wall plug go straight to a split where one side (the smart bits) steps down to like 1/50th-1/100th depending on your wall voltage, and the other runs the fridge parts.
I could see it easily costing 200 in parts and labor to do it well. electronics get weird with temperature, you’d need to build the cameras into the walls without sabotaging insulation, defrost cycles mean water exposure. its not completely trivial. and that’s not what most smart fridges do anyway.
I wasn’t implying that my use case was trivial, but general smart fridge features, like having a camera inside, an LCD panel on the outside, and having and esp32 or some other SoC to drive them are trivial. But manufacturers use those to spy and force ads on the consumer, which is why the association with them is negative.
that’s not trivial, and your fridge can’t do it. not with good accuracy. at best it can show you a picture.
For that use case a picture would be good enough tbh. Still not going to buy a smart fridge because it sounds stupid to me, but it’s gotta cost less than 20 bucks per fridge at scale for the hardware to do it, so it’s pretty trivial.
even the system that does that would be insane to run on the same voltage as the condenser (make-cold part). computers are cheapest to build cheapest to run and most durable for low voltage. so basically you’d have the wall plug go straight to a split where one side (the smart bits) steps down to like 1/50th-1/100th depending on your wall voltage, and the other runs the fridge parts.
I could see it easily costing 200 in parts and labor to do it well. electronics get weird with temperature, you’d need to build the cameras into the walls without sabotaging insulation, defrost cycles mean water exposure. its not completely trivial. and that’s not what most smart fridges do anyway.
I wasn’t implying that my use case was trivial, but general smart fridge features, like having a camera inside, an LCD panel on the outside, and having and esp32 or some other SoC to drive them are trivial. But manufacturers use those to spy and force ads on the consumer, which is why the association with them is negative.