• 𝕾𝖕𝖎𝖈𝖞 𝕿𝖚𝖓𝖆@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Don’t know why the downvotes. You are absolutely correct.

      My fridge doesn’t even have a screen, but it has wifi. Wifi!! You do one thing. You are a box designed to keep my food cold. I set the temperature, and I forget that exists.

      Anyway, we bought it when we bought our house. The previous owner offered to include all the appliances in the contract so it was nice to not have to buy any appliances. But that refrigerator stays OFF my network.

      • barsquid@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I know the real objective is mining your data and acting as an insecure node for identity thieves to access. But what is its stated objective? I have no idea why anyone would think that is a positive.

      • legion02@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        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.

        • Rob Bos@lemmy.ca
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          2 months ago

          Something that might happen once in ten years isn’t worth the additional security surface exposure. IMO

          • cynar@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            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.

          • legion02@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            What security exposure? Any modern router has a way to isolate iot devices. I’m risking people knowing when I open my fridge?

            • Rob Bos@lemmy.ca
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              2 months ago

              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 .

        • Anivia@feddit.org
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          2 months ago

          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

          A built in alarm sound would achieve the same goal without running the risk of your fridge becoming part of a botnet

                • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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                  2 months ago

                  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

                  • legion02@lemmy.world
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                    2 months ago

                    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.

              • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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                2 months ago

                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.

        • TrenchcoatFullOfBats@belfry.rip
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          2 months ago

          With a wifi fridge for example I can know if it stops working

          You can also do that with a simple smart plug with energy monitoring. You can get a 4 pack for $35.

            • TrenchcoatFullOfBats@belfry.rip
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              2 months ago

              You can get 4 ZigBee smart plugs with energy monitoring for $35. These are not IOT devices and if you just want to know if the fridge is running, these will do that, with the added benefit of allowing you to leave the fridge’s WiFi disconnected, which is a security gain.

              • legion02@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                The zwave alliance disagrees that it’s not an IoT platform (https://z-wavealliance.org/ Literally the title of the page calls it IoT). Also, how much power it consumes doesn’t necessarily tell you if the fridge is running and it certainly doesn’t tell you what the temperature inside the refrigerator is. Even a compressor pump zero refrigerant still inside the loop can consume power just spinning the motor.

                Edit: Apparently saw zigbee and read zwave but the point stands https://csa-iot.org/all-solutions/zigbee/ (the standards body that controls the zigbee protocol).

                • TrenchcoatFullOfBats@belfry.rip
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                  1 month ago

                  IoT is essentially a catch-all marketing term, like “organic”, and if I’m not mistaken, the “I” in IoT stands for “internet”. ZigBee devices cannot connect to the internet. Doing so requires a hub or coordinator that contains WiFi or ethernet connectivity. There are many ZigBee coordinators that lack this functionality, which allows your data to stay local, on your own network, without exposing it to the internet.

                  I never claimed that a smart plug could monitor the temperature inside a fridge, but there are certainly ZigBee temperature devices you could put inside your fridge to do that, and they would work just fine.

                  A ZigBee smart plug with energy monitoring would certainly give you enough information to determine if the compressor had failed, as the compressor is the component that uses the most power. If the energy usage of the fridge dropped significantly, it could indicate a compressor failure. While this method isn’t foolproof and won’t detect all possible fridge issues, it can serve as an early warning system for major problems like compressor failure.

                  • legion02@lemmy.world
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                    1 month ago

                    Refrigerators are damn near Faraday cages. Zigbee devices are going to have a hard time getting their 2.4ghz signaling out.

                    A failed compressor doesn’t necessatily use less power. If it’s simply lost pressure and hasn’t seized the motor will still cycle and appear to be working from a power usage perspective.

                    And if the coordinator doesn’t have network connectivity, how is it ever going to alert me to problems when I’m away?

                    I get that you’re very afraid of the security implications of iot devices, but none of the ideas you’re proposing are actually solutions to the problems a truly connected device can solve.

        • tomkatt@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          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.

          You don’t need a wifi fridge for this. My wife and I manage this via Home Assistant and cheap Switchbot sensors. Fully self contained on my network, nothing to phone home anywhere.

          The rest of the things you listed are kind of silly. If you left the oven on, that sucks, but you’re already gone. Also, who sets the oven on before leaving the house? That’s just an odd… like, really odd thing to do. Like, senility/dementia level odd, at which point what difference is a notification? And the dryer thing… well, that’s nothing a 15 minute wrinkle cycle doesn’t already solve on a dumb dryer.

          • legion02@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            “not that iot device, use this one instead and get less function out of it”

            Wrinkle cycles don’t work as well as getting the laundry while it’s still hot. It reduces it some but not as much as getting the laundry when it’s still hot. It also wastes a fair bit of energy to run the dryer for another 15 minutes instead of just telling me when it’s done.

            And it’s not a dementia thing, it’s an adhd+generalized anxiety thing. Piece of mind is pretty valuable to me and mine.

            • tomkatt@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              And it’s not a dementia thing, it’s an adhd+generalized anxiety thing. Piece of mind is pretty valuable to me and mine.

              That’s a fair take. I dunno, the potential security vulnerabilities outweigh any possible gains for me with most IOT devices, and I feel smart appliances are just more complicated to fix and more easily break down. Plus, the last thing I need is my washer to brick or my fridge to stop working from a botched firmware update.

              • legion02@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                security vulnerabilities outweigh any possible gains for me

                Definitely a valid choice, just not one that’s for everyone. I’m content that they’re on a separate IoT network and can’t reach into my main network and will make that trade for the QoL improvements that it buys me.

      • Zombiepirate@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        But if you get the app you can unlock the crisper drawer+ for only $11.99/mo and get those extra fresh veggies that you crave!

      • Zikeji@programming.dev
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        2 months ago

        To be fair, making a device wifi connected is stupid cheap nowadays. That being said, you bet your ass they’re harvesting data.

        My parents got a fridge with a similar feature and no screen (they didn’t know it had that) but I was curious and hooked it to the IOT network. Literally the only smart feature it exposed was a door open sensor…

      • Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        not advocating for all IoT products, but some fridges have internal cameras (allows you i remotely access and figure out what you have and dont have), and some also have product expiring tracking so that it can warn you if something is approaching thr best buy date so you can use it up soon or throw it away.

        washer and dryer IoT projects to me tend to be pretty terrible.

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      But but but but but this is our “upmarket” model and we need some kind of rationalization to upsell people to it over the Profile PFE28/PYE22 which is the same fucking refrigerator mechanically minus the screen and with different handles, but this one costs 30% more.

      • toynbee@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Apparently, some politician tried to shutdown the patent office in the nineteenth century because “everything that can be invented has been invented.”

        edit: no need for “I” there.

    • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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      1 month ago

      Other than keeping things cold, the only tech a fridge needs is a light and a way to see inside without opening the door; which we resolved decades ago by simply using a window, but fridges like that haven’t existed since, like, the 60’s or so.