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Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: April 3rd, 2024
  • Toasters could do that in the fifties. Crispiness is directly related to surface temperature and you can detect that with nothing fancier than a bimetal strip and some clever engineering. If you want to use modern technology you could use an IR sensor and a two cent microcontroller.

    Using AI for the task suggests that they stuck a camera in there and use image processing to badly simulate an IR sensor. Less reliable than two metal strips welded together but also way more expensive.

  • Mind you, even relatively simple fridges can technically have firmware because these days the cheapest way to implement something like a defrost timer is with a microcontroller. Of course that firmware is so simple that it doesn’t need updates and definitely doesn’t need to be connected to the internet.

    Other than that I don’t really see what a smart fridge can do that you can’t cover by sticking a cheap tablet on the fridge door. Sure, maybe a smart fridge can order butter from Amazon when it thinks that yours runs out but you can do the same with your phone and “buy it again” in seconds. Assuming that you even want to buy your groceries from an e-retailer.

    It’s definitely a pointless price inflation device that makes the fridge less reliable to boot.