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[–] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The door monitor mostly helps when a kid walks off leaving it open thinking they closed it.

The freezer temperature monitoring has saved the contents several times. A breaker had tripped once and I didn't notice, it let me know that I needed a generator during a power outage, and one of the kids snuck an ice cream and left the lid wide open.

So yeah, it's been useful. It's not needed 99% of the time.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago*

    An alarm that beeps when the door is left open more than X minutes (say, 5 minutes) only requires a stupidly simple circuit and about $5 in parts.

    No smarts needed (though it's probably cheaper to make it with a microcontroller than have the timer circuit be done with discrete parts).

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  • Hmm, my fridge is in my kitchen, which is in the middle of the house. I've never been in a situation where the fridge door has been open more than a couple minutes without me noticing, and I have three kids.

    I've had two fridges die (well, the same one twice), and that sucked, but there's not much I could do about it even if I knew a few hours earlier, and I use the fridge enough I'll notice within a few hours. Refrigerator deliveries often happen after a few days, and I'm not going to keep stocking ice during that period, I'll just consume what I can and move the important stuff to the mini fridge or chest freezer.

    It would be cool, sure, but it's not worth having it connected to the internet.

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