this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
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I'm OK with it for some things tbh. With a wifi fridge for example I can know if it stops working and the temp starts rising before I have a fridge full of spoiled food. With an oven I can know if I left the house with it still running. With the washer/dryer I can get notified when I need to fold the cloths before they get wrinkled. I think connected appliances have more useful applications than people give them credit for.
A built in alarm sound would achieve the same goal without running the risk of your fridge becoming part of a botnet
Alarm is going to have to be pretty loud for me to hear it many miles away.
The notification on your phone or whatever also isn't super useful if you're many miles away.
Yeah, honestly I don't want to have to stress about something that can't be fixed and might otherwise ruin a day out or vacation.
If my dog dies don't tell me till I'm back from vacation kinda thing.
Sure it is. I have family friends and neighbors.
K, but if you're expecting someone to be at your home to immediately inspect your malfunctioning refrigerator, then we're back to an audible alarm being just as good
You're making up a hypothetical situation where it might not work. I've literally done this and my brother saved hundreds of dollars of food from spoiling while I was on vacation by moving it to his fridge/freezer.
I'm glad it worked out for you in that one instance, but I'm not worried enough about my fridge breaking down to where I need to constantly monitor it remotely. Refrigerators are an incredibly old, well developed, reliable technology. The added hassle of an Internet connection isn't worth it to me. If it is to you then fine, but your single anecdote is worth about as much as my hypotheticals, unless we're talking about some novel, untested refrigeration technology.
My anecdote at least happened. Your hypothetical by definition never did. The internet connection I haven't thought about since I installed the fridge. Not sure where the hassle is.
Also I don't understand why you think refrigerators are incredibly reliable. Compressor pumps and start capacitors are damn near consumables now days.
I've never experienced any critical part of a refrigerator break in my >30 years on this earth. Sorry you can't say the same.
The hassle isn't just in connecting it to the Wi-Fi, it's in securing and monitoring it to ensure it stays secure, so that I'm not giving people a foothold into my home network.
In my 40 years on earth it's happened to me 3 times. 2 times the food was lost. The most recent time I saved the food because I knew about it and could ask someone for help. Progress.
Get a bigger speaker
You can also do that with a simple smart plug with energy monitoring. You can get a 4 pack for $35.
"not that iot device, use this one instead and get less function out of it"
Something that might happen once in ten years isn't worth the additional security surface exposure. IMO
I have a small child. It's not just mechanical failure. Then again, I've got a separate network for IoT things. They can't see anything by each other and their controller. Unfortunately, most of the IoT appliances do NOT like this setup.
What security exposure? Any modern router has a way to isolate iot devices. I'm risking people knowing when I open my fridge?
Most people wouldn't bother.
And the risk would be more a foothold into your network as a staging point to attack other devices, as I'm sure you know .