I recognize a carnival-styled UI with a naked eye. When the UI feels like ADHD distractions, you know marketing tactics are the purpose of the toys. We know that’s expectable with free web services, but costly consumer products need to offer a fully-controllable experience to exclude statistic-mining spyware.
For what it’s worth, I wish I had this feature on my garage fridge. It’s getting older and sometimes the door just doesn’t close all the way. Because of the way my house is laid out, you can only hear the beep if you’re in the kitchen (and even then it’s not very clear) so it might sit open for hours before being noticed. Granted, this feature is definitely not worth buying a smart fridge and I probably wouldn’t want one in my garage, but I wish I had something to fix that problem.
If the other tips don’t work you could add an smart powerplug that measure the consumption and then figure out what pattern you have when it is open and then send an email or sth. (I hope such power plugs exist)
Id reckon it’s a slow play to make connecting devices more normalised and therefore make it easier to take your data. It may sound like an unrealistic dystopian future but I reckon we’re gonna get alot more dystopic before we become utopic.
Edit: the app u connect through also probably spies on you but I’d reckon the other prediction is true too just not as sure sbt that onr
Easy fix just have an options menu in the cloud that you need access to to enable it. Charge for the account to login lol. I’m going to start my own fridge company now
Samsung Appliances don’t have the best track record for being reliable… Something tells me if they did add something like that, within the first year it’d either break down OR work too well and result in a number of loss of limb lawsuits against the company.
That’s a hilarious thought. The good ol scientists at Samsung, we could just use gravity and design the front to lift up a little, or we could add ridiculously machinery with the power to remove a limb. But they all agree gravity doesn’t tick the box of new technology, therefore they have to go with the latter option.
We added some small wood pieces under the front feet to do this. Solved a lot of marriage problems with this one simple trick that actually works. Number 2 will shock you.
Not because it’s a bad idea, or it should have been better, but because, to me, it seems like any obvious idea about how to make smart things do stuff that’s actually practical like this is usually behind some walled garden, and different walled gardens don’t really work with other walled gardens.
Like with having smart things (the Samsung product line) and Google home, and Philips hue smart bulbs, you now have three things all working “together” … “In the cloud”. And you’re entirely limited to whatever those cloud services and/or manufacturers want you to be able to do with them…
What if I want my smart speaker to play “Ice ice, baby” whenever I leave the freezer open, and have the lights go blue and blink or something? It’s two back to back horribly complicated processes to get SmartThings to talk to the “works with Google” system, same with hue, then a cludge of weird commands that work today, but next week might entirely break, all dependent on whether anything is still talking to eachother, and even if I can do all that, there’s no guarantee that I can use “freezer door left open for x minutes” as a trigger for the activity… Additionally, I need to find a way to source the song on my Google assistant, so now I need to tie in Spotify or YouTube music, or something to my “works with Google” crap… It’s just a lot of work to even get to the point where you can see what options you have.
This is a fairly simple example, but still… And then I have to ask, why the hell does it need to bounce around the “cloud” so much just to perform an action on the lights in my house, for the alert from the fridge that’s also in my house?
Then I also have to wonder, how many fracking devices do they expect me to put on my wifi, and how much more do I need to spend so that I don’t need to reboot my wifi doesn’t every other day, otherwise it drops my “smart” home things?
I can’t drink the Samsung Kool aid exclusively, they don’t make lights or smart speakers, I can’t do the same with Google, they don’t make lights or fridges, and I certainly can’t with Phillips. So I’m stuck with some internet reliant thing to do the same job as a $1 magnetic sensor, a cheap speaker, and a cannibalized novelty get well soon card that plays music when you open it… I can add blue lights that react to sound for a few dollars more and get the same effect, and not have to shell out thousands of dollars on a fancy fridge, fancy lights, hours of my frustration, and a fancy wifi system to make it all go.
… To be fair, I’ve done all those things, I don’t have a smart fridge, but I use home assistant, and this gives me an idea. I just need to buy one of those door/window open sensors, and I can get it done.
To clarify, I started in “smart” home stuff with some hue bulbs, partly to see what all the fuss was about, then the Mrs, while away from the hue system, complained that she had to get up from bed to turn off the lights one night and I knew I was done for. Now I have nearly 100 smart home devices, and I still have those hue bulbs. I’m waiting for them to die so I can buy smart bulbs that don’t require the cloud, which I’ve already replaced most of the other lights in my home with. I’ve added smart light switches, so I can trigger scenes and automations from the wall (and keep the power to the smart lights from being turned off), and many many sensors (mostly temp/humidity/air quality)… Everything I’ve installed recently (about 60 IoT things) have been locally controlled via zwave, directly to home assistant, so getting something like the above done, should only need a sensor to know if the freezer/fridge was not properly closed all the way.
Anyways. Prior to migrating to home assistant, I was doing the “works with Google” dance and it was not fun, and suddenly, anytime my internet went out, I lost control over half the stuff in my home. I hate how reliant we’ve become on the “cloud” to do simple stuff like turn on the lights. I’m not a fan. Thus, home assistant. I have, and will continue to seek out alternatives to stuff like SmartThings, that I can control and manage locally.
My final note is: being able to adjust the thermostat, and turn on the lights from the bed/couch/wherever, is the tits. Carry on.
I’ve heard of this with hue. From what I understand, you basically need to take the bulbs and connect them to another ZigBee hub, since they’re ZigBee under the hood.
But you have to do it using some pretty frustrating methods because they are programmed to only connect to their own hub.
IDK. Only my TV is “SmartThings” so, hopefully I can work on that. I’m not a fan of ZigBee since it shares a band with WiFi. I’d rather just get rid of them, but I have a hard time justifying the cost of replacing that many smart bulbs with basically the same thing because my brain gives me the happy chemicals when everything is organized and works the same way.
Also, the Mrs uses the hue app and I’d have to get her over to home assistant instead, it’s a whole thing. Basically, I don’t have very good reasons to change it, and I don’t have good reasons not to, so I’m at a bit of an impasse.
I also like how you can make your whole house change color with the lights during the day. Blue and bright at noon, red and dim in the evening.
Or how the lights dim when I turn on the TV. Or how the curtains can be opened by just yelling open the curtains. Node Red is super nice with Home Assistant, if you want to do something more complex with the automation.
Just popping in as a former user to say Smartthings is fucking garbage. Use Home Assistant or any other self hosted solution. Don’t waste your effort with Smartthings.
I’d prefer a spring. Atleast for my fridge the beeping isn’t pleasant as an autistic person. Any situation where I need to keep the door open I could figure out a work around like using my elbow or asking a friend to help if I really couldn’t do it. The beeping I can’t work around and if I managed to remove it, which I doubt I could do, I wouldn’t have anything to close my fridge or tell me when it’s open
Still haven’t gotten in to the smart home stuff. Friends who enjoy it as a hobby and self host I can see the fun in it. The consumer stuff just seems like it tells you stuff that doesn’t really matter, or it’s controlling lights on voice command which is cool I guess, but it’s not as good as a self-contained switch with instant feedback.
I love my “smart” thermostat. Being able to adjust the AC or heat a few degrees when I’m leaving work so my place is the perfect temp when I get home is awesome.
I don’t understand why I would want any of my other appliances to be “smart.”
Having my lights automatically controlled is nice. They turn on just before sunset, then I have my lamp in my bedroom turn on just before I head to bed normally so I can get straight into bed and hit a button to make the room dark.
I have a few other things connected to Home Assistant like my 3D printer and an air quality meter just to have a dashboard for how things are in my place. But I have zero interest in appliances being connected to the internet. Especially anything that could be dangerous if it malfunctioned.
I like that I can away from my oven while it’s preheating and it will notify me when the preheat is done and being able to turn it off remotely is also nice. I really appreciate my smart lights, if ni other feature than colour changing.
I love my “smart” thermostat. Being able to adjust the AC or heat a few degrees when I’m leaving work so my place is the perfect temp when I get home is awesome.
We have old European radiators in this apartment. But you can attach these electric valves to it with radios. So now my home assistant can just turn the knobs when the thermometer notices it’s getting too cold or hot. Very old tech combined with smart home automation…
You can have a smart home and still keep your privacy. Home Assistant is an open source tool you install to a raspberry pi, and it lets you control your devices locally without ever sending anything to the internet.
I’ve been using it for years and it is really nice.
That’s what my friends who self-host use, it’s more utility than privacy that’s holding me back though because I’d totally use this option. It’s like “ugh another system to manage” after managing computer systems for work all day. I like my analog switches and a heavy knobfeel, drive a car from the 00s with all buttons.
It’s a lot cheaper to install one sensor per door than it is to install a motor for every moving compartment and a sensor to see if it needs to be closed and that’s just to make sure every door can be closed. A lot of extra circuitry for something they can just do on the cheap.
My 20 year old fridge closes itself if left open due to the angle of the hinges.
The only reason Samsung has the texting “feature” is to sell your data.
To have the ability to text you about an open door it would need to track your usage, have access to your phone number, and access to your home network (unless they put a sim card in there). Having access to all that means they can gather a lot of information about you will little effort.
Edit: Not to mention that by having access to your phone number they can push you ads directly to your phone. Having the screen and internet access it will have the ability to push ads on the fridge itself as well.
And who can forget that by having these smart features that means that the fridge has more systems that can (and will) fail so that you’ll have to replace the fridge (or pay for costly repairs) when they do. Or the features will stop working after a certain amount of time due to a lack of security updates.
“Some features have been disabled due to your product reaching EOL. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.”
While true, unless it gains enough speed it might still not properly close by itself. And the door can also be blocked. An angled door will also be a bit heavier to open and more annoying to use. It’s not a perfect solution, even if it is helpful.
Maybe an always tensioned hydraulic like on a screen door? I realize this is just self closing and not close on demand, but seems like it would get the job done.
Retrofuturism: Clever houses would do everything for you, just get back and relax. Your personal assistant would get you whiskey with ice and put some jazzy vinyl for a good evening.
Actual future: You did what to me stupid human?BTW, there are 99+ notifications from our furniture and our partners. Oh, and your toilet paper subscription is due tommorow, don’t think you’d get away with unscrewing the lock this time, I’d watch the shit of you!
Human, my proprietary water filter needs changing. I can’t let you defrost your vegetables until you change it. It’s not just charcoal and aquarium pebbles in a mesh bag with a plastic tube around it, it’s also microchipped to ensure it’s authentic!
Now I’m going to beep louder than a backing up dump truck until you buy a new filter from us.
If it closed slowly enough you could just measure resistance or voltage of the motor to determine if it’s not moving. The problem is all the other things that you need to do before you can even close a door like shutting a fruit drawer.
This is a problem of the fridge manufacturer’s making.
They chose shitty double doors, then they put in features to blame us for “misusing” them. Single door fridges never had this problem (we all know the slamming sound of a single monolithic fridge door flung too wide, with the rattling of your bottles of soy sauce, and jam jars, ketchup bottles, and the lemon juice you haven’t used in 3 months).
Ours does too, it’s about 12 years old and started not closing properly a few years ago. We trouble shooted it, tried a bunch of fixes to make it seal properly that didn’t work, then gave up and got a child fridge lock for like $15 to just hold it shut. Works perfectly.
The double doors have to seal together in the center, there’s a flap (called an articulating mullion) that swings when you close the door and creates the seal between the doors from the inside of the fridge.
But there are two problems: the force of swinging the flap stops the door’s path and blocks it from closing if it’s misaligned at all (or the seal is misaligned, or loose, or cheap), and it’s attached to one door making one side easier to close than the other.
It makes for a more finicky design.
You can improve the reliability of your fridge closing by organizing the items you pull out the most to the side without the mullion attached.
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