Eh, for a toaster it at least makes some sense to have 'smarts' for ensuring various types of bread reach the desired crispynes (Lathough none of that needs internet or anything close to 400$ in value). So it would still be more usefull then smart fridge.

So does mine but I actually like it. Not for the reason it was put on there, god no, but I can use it in my Home Assistant automations. Now whenever I brush my teeth my bathroom speaker starts playing the daily news highlights.

You could use it for other things too, like a reminder if you forgot to brush, could be good for kids. But the default functionality is complete garbage. Why they thought you'd want an app to time brushing your teeth when the vibrate function does the same thing is beyond me. I just got them because they were a good deal at Costco and I didnt pay extra for the bluetooth.

tft lcds got in this too because they’re so dirt cheap and capacitive touch interfaces are cheap as fuck to manufacture. Even if the parts costs are a tiny bit higher relative to physical buttons and interfaces the money saved on assembly makes up for it (and in some cases the parts actually are cheaper

Plus in a kitchen or bathroom setting this is much easier to make water and dust resistant, which is an actual benefit tbf, but at the expense of ergonomics and accessibility

You can literally go on Amazon right now and search LCD toaster. There’s the $4-500 ultra bougie American designed (not made lol) smart one but then there are a ton of Chinese designed ones that are like $50-60 because it’s a $20 toaster with a (when bought at scale) $0.95 lcd strapped on

Marketing is dumb, this is why I left ui/ux/hci work. You can create an ergonomic and intuitive system that is evidence based and the ad men will be like “but can we pander to the lowest common denominator by ruining it with some useless feature that’s objectively worse to use?” And then they just dropped the pretense and said fuck ux, embrace dark patterns

I could bitch about this for days

My electric toothbrush has bluetooth.

Someone bought it before it got to you. There is likely a version without bluetooth that was not purchased.

If people keep spending more money for it, they will keep making it.

See that’s utility and depending on the sensors you choose that can definitely be local only

But skimming the page for a Samsung smart fridge none of this is in the features. It’s that it can play music, you can put notes and pictures and shit, there’s an “ai camera” that can tell you what you need to buy (though something tells me that struggles if your fridge isn’t set up like a stock image and is actually loaded with like food and condiments and shit like a normal person)

A Bluetooth speaker can do the music part likely with much better sound quality, a smart speaker can handle the typical kitchen tasks like setting timers (which can be done purely in HA, you don’t need Alexa or whatever), a dry erase board and magnets can cover notes and pictures, and the reminders app on your phone can probably do a much more accurate job of keeping a shopping list. Then you can buy a fridge that doesn’t have a 32” proprietary lcd that is a major point of failure, and you can literally save thousands of dollars (quick search shows these fridges are 3500-4k, which is insane for a fridge, even a fancy huge one).

The market for these is people who have too much money (or are willing to take on credit debt) but also can’t be bothered to spend the 1-2 hours it takes to read up on how to do what you’ve done. Samsung, Apple, Google, Amazon, etc prey on these people

The top of the line one can make spherical ice though, which is admittedly super cool

I have a tiny, battery powered temperature/humidity sensor in my fridge, connected to Home Assistant.

I don't actually need it there, but I was interested to know if it would work, and it did. So now I know that my fridge maintains a steady 5⁰C.

I installed a smart bulb in my fridge. I plan to set up an automation in Home Assistant to tell me when the fridge has been open too long.

My fridge just beeps at me if the door has been open more than a minute or two.

It's not a 'smart' fridge, either. You don't need anything complex to accomplish that. I guess that the interior fridge light is wired in parallel with a simple timer circuit, and if that timer circuit is energized long enough for its pre-set timer to run out, it energizes the beeping circuit.

You could do a similar thing with your fridge. No need for network connectivity and computers to be involved. Just find the circuit that goes to the light bulb and wire in a simple electronic timer in parallel.

As for the fridge, the only thing I can think of is you're one of those people who constantly forgets what they went shopping for, and need to video stream the interior of the fridge to check if you're out of something.

But how is that smart? It's just a fridge with a camera connected to the internet. Oh, it's like my washing machine with "AI"*: it connects to the internet, and all it can go is start and stop, but there's a caveat... If enabled through online, you cannot start it physically 🫪 it's my brothers old one, never connected to the internet in my house.

Same thing with my e-bike.

Oh shit, man. I kind of want an e-bike, but I'd never want one with a phone app. It had better be usable without one, or I'm saying fuck it and building my own. And if I had the misfortune of accidentally buying one with any sort of wireless connectivity, I'd be sorely tempted to tear its electronics apart and find some way to permanently and physically disable that connectivity.

And I'll bet if it fails the pump stops too and the whole board has to be replaced for $500+.

Likely for ToU rates, I could imagine looking out for weather updates, if there's a likely power outage I could see it heating the water another 5 or 10 degrees so it'll last longer/provide "more" hot water?

le sigh. I'd like to have a home with systems that do things like...synchronize to a clock more accurate and reliable than one I can feasibly own myself, that others such as the utility companies are using. I'd like to be able to get weather alerts and have the refrigerator automatically get a degree colder the water heater get five or ten degrees hotter, run the HVAC a bit, charge batteries, etc.

What I don't want are a thousand little ARM computers each one a member of three different botnets trying to scrape my home network, sending audio, video, FLIR and radar telemetry straight to Kim Jong Fuck's third testicle from the left, while also DDOSing Amnesty International and waiting for the cpu.detonate() command to come down so it's time to buy another fucking desk lamp.

You can likely call the company to tweak the configuration of yours based on the telemetry. Been there, done that with Vaillant. Nice to be able to get help without involving a tech given how expensive they are - and no tech on site will have the data Vaillant has on my heatpump which means that the tech decisions will always be inferior.