I can live without this fancy fridge and the commercial irritates the heck out of me.
I mean, why is he calling her in the first place if he can look in the damn fridge himself?
:shakes fist at tv:
Print
Ka-Ching!
“Glad you’re Banging a Sexy Babe; Best Reprogram That Fridge If YOU Want AID.”
“WTF does THAT mean Dax?”
“Shit! I thought it was Over!!! Put On some Damn Clothes! The Fucking Zorgons Are Back!!!”
You’re right, a fridge cam isn’t for you, what you need is: Quirky Egg Minder review: This egg tracker is underdone - CNET
Amazon sells Bluetooth-enabled reordering tabs for different products, which you stick up in your pantry, laundry room, or bathroom cabinet. Running out of laundry detergent or toothpaste? Click the Tide tab or the Crest tab, and Amazon registers an order.
I have a three-year-old in the house, and I would not want to set up a scenario where his fetish for pushing buttons would bankrupt me. Other people may find this useful, though.
I can see what going on in my house with an app. I can control my thermostat with an app. I can open and close my garage door with an app. I can turn on the lights in my house with an app. Of course I would like to see what’s in my refrigerator with an app.
I believe those Amazon button tab things will ignore repeated presses, exactly to prevent a small child from bankrupting you. But I agree that it seems a stupid idea. How often do you need laundry detergent or toothpaste that you need to have a button to automate the ordering? (I did read articles by people who were experimenting with the buttons and figuring out ways to hack them and use them for other purposes.)
This and other similar comments in this thread make me wonder how much of a luddite I am.
We keep a pad and pen on the counter next to the fridge. When you finish something we generally stock, we write it down. When we are planning on going to the store, we open the cabinets and fridge to see what we might need, and add it to the list. Sure, I could imagine someone keeping the list on their phone - just not how we operate.
It generally isn’t a problem buying something we didn’t need. So what if we have an extra jar of mayo or spaghetti sauce in the cabinet? If we happen to screw up and buy something we already have - well, unless it is highly perishable, we just eat that a little more frequently til it is gone. Most other foods can be frozen or stored in the cabinet for quite a while.
I acknowledge I do not have a ton of apps on my phone, and prefer to use it to make and receive phone calls and texts, and otherwise to look things up or get directions/weather. Using one’s phone for something that impresses me as so straightforward and easy to do without a phone, just strikes me as so unnecessary and undesirable – an expensive solution to something that is in no way a problem.
To reiterate, this is all just my personal opinion/preference, and I fully expect to become more and more out of touch should I live another couple of decades. When I see so much technology I do not personally want or perceive a need for, I try to assess which are going to become indispensable in the future, and which will rapidly fade.
I would sell my first-born child for this. Especially if I could also link it to my calendar and GPS so that it would know: a) it’s 5:30 and I’m on my way home from work; b) based on traffic I’ll be home by 6:15; and c) my kid has swim class at 7:00 which is 15 minutes away from home. Then it could tell me what could I cook that can be on the table and eaten within half an hour.
Bonus if, on my way home, it could tell me if I’m missing an ingredient for a recipe and which grocery store I’ll pass that has that item in stock. I’d sell the whole family for that.
Not picking on you…
People don’t seem to consider that if they can see into their house remotely, unlock the doors, change the lighting or the A/C, so can other people! And see in when you are home.
Why aren’t people worried about security of these home “security” systems?
Maybe I’m just too paranoid. I believe that on-star employees randomly listen in on cars during their down times.
No kidding. My wife and I have the situation where we usually have a variety of meat/fish/poultry in the fridge, and a variety of vegetables in the fridge/freezer. It sure would be nice to have something tell you that you have all but one ingredient for a set of recipes, all but 2 for another, and everything for another set of recipes.
For us, the usual issue isn’t so much that we lack something, as we don’t realize we have everything to make something. Like for example, we may not realize we have a jar of artichoke hearts in the pantry in the back, so we didn’t even consider anything that might need them.
My sous vide device is wifi and Bluetooth enabled. It does take a while to preheat though, so if I’ve set it up earlier it is convenient to use the phone to start it from a distance, or to change the temperature on the fly.
Really? Spam directly to the fridge? For free? These things will sell like hotcakes in Hawaii!
I agree! I’d love this… except, wait… if I sold my whole family, I could just stop on my way home and grab a burger at a bar and not have to ferry a whiny kid to swim class when they’re not even going to be a professional athlete that can support their old man in his dotage… hey, do I get a better price if I sell the family as a bundle?
Yeah, I guess compounding my confusion is my wife’ s and my limited palates/menus. Whether when we were wrangling 3 kids, or now with just the 2 of us, it is rare that we made meals that depended on lengthy lists of complicated ingredients. We had our 5 or 10 “basic” meals involving limited ingredients which were pretty easy to keep in stock. Pretty easy to make arrangements if planning something special. We perceived no need to do that “on the fly.” And if we happened to eat the same meal 2 nights in a row, well, that wasn’t the end of the world.
Brown rice, spaghetti sauce, tuna, a couple of cans of soup and/or beans and boxes of mac and cheese, some spices and condiments… We generally had some meat that could be grilled or stir-fried. If you don’t have fresh veggies, keep a couple bags of frozen veggies in the freezer. And - if all else fails - cereal, scramble up some eggs, or PBJ.
I think we ate/eat pretty well, just didn’t make it complicated. The MOST important thing was to have everyone sitting around the table as a family, not what was on the table. And - to that end - we intentionally kept our schedules from being so hectic that we had to plan things down to the minute more than rarely.
I just don’t understand why people intentionally make their lives so hectic and complicated, and then look to technology to somehow make up for that.
My thought exactly, it does me no good to know there is an egg carton in the fridge, I need to know how many eggs are in that carton.
I’m glad your family was able to plan things so well, but we don’t all get that luxury. I live in an area where I can leave work between 4:30 - 5:30 every day and never know what time I’m getting home. It’s generally somewhere between 45 - 90 minutes later. So if my kids want to do anything, any evening, chances are high that we’re going to be rushed. And we don’t like eating the same foods over and over and over again. At a certain point it becomes no better than fast food, emotionally.
So, I have a different point of view than you about meals. Because my family is so often in a hurry, it is important to me that the food we’re eating has care put into it - and that to me means that it’s tasty, it’s varied, and it’s home cooked. In my family, everyone seems happier, or more generally satisfied with life, when they’ve had a meal that is more than just a couple of things thrown together. Or at least is something we haven’t eaten 100 times in the past month. And I know that for my family, when we eat a meal that is delicious and satisfying, everyone tends to talk about their day in more positive terms. Which I find immensely important. So it’s worth it to me to put more effort into cooking dinner, even on the days we’re busy. As it stands now, I usually prep dinner while I’m cooking breakfast and lunch in the morning. But we all know that life is just life - inevitably there is a day where permission slips need to be read, or someone is looking right at their shoe but can’t find it, or somebody decides today is the day they need to be the cleanest they’ve ever been and take too long in the shower - and dinner prep gets thrown out of the window.
That said, I don’t have unlimited time to look through the vast amounts of recipes on the internet and find new ways to season my salmon - but my pantry would, and it’d be great to have the help. Especially since, if it could only use items in my pantry, I would never have to worry about wasting time looking through recipes only to find that they list an ingredient one of my kids is allergic to, as those items would never be in my kitchen.
And rat you out to health authorities when your diet isn’t up to current standards.
Regarding the Amazon Dash buttons: I got one for essentially free. ($5 but with a $5 credit on your first order.) After doing that, it’s … just for fun now. The “buying” part is blocked and I have things set up so a push of the button causes a given action to happen on a PC. E.g., start/close something.
They’re no selling ones specifically for this purpose, but the price has gone up.
The real dream: they have a microphone. Program it so that you can press and talk to it like a certain other product Amazon sells. For far less money.
I must join those wondering why the heck should I allow some system I don’t control to keep a log of how often I raid the refrigerator. And besides why interfere with the proud tradition of bachelorhood that affirms that until a foodstuff evolves into some other life form it stays in the back of the lower shelf? I built a serious resistance to spoilage toxins during my 20s and early 30s. Or maybe cut my expected lifespan by 15 years but hey, that’s the bad years at the end…
And yeah, a lot of my fridge is “nondescript containers # 1 through 5” ; “object wrapped in foil, # 1 through 3”; “package that originally contained 12 units, closed”
Had side-by-side doors and a pseudo-drawer (actually, swing-out basket) bottom freezer at home in 1970. Autumn Orange with “woody” door panels, baby!
We had the pneumatic tubes at the hospital I worked at in 1985. Was quite the trip.
EXACTLY!!! You have that application, you paid out the wazoo for it, USE IT!!! Don’t interrupt the busy wife to roleplay as the clueless husband (unless that’s what you two are into to spice things up, NTTAWWT).
Then the toilet can monitor the end result and make changes to your diet.