Donโt know why the downvotes. You are absolutely correct.
My fridge doesnโt 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.
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.
Iโm 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.
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
Alarm is going to have to be pretty loud for me to hear it many miles away.
Something that might happen once in ten years isnโt worth the additional security surface exposure. IMO
What security exposure? Any modern router has a way to isolate iot devices. Iโm risking people knowing when I open my fridge?
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.
โnot that iot device, use this one instead and get less function out of itโ
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 donโt 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 youโre already gone. Also, who sets the oven on before leaving the house? Thatโs just an oddโฆ like, really odd thing to do. Like, senility/dementia level odd, at which point what difference is a notification? And the dryer thingโฆ well, thatโs nothing a 15 minute wrinkle cycle doesnโt already solve on a dumb dryer.
โnot that iot device, use this one instead and get less function out of itโ
Wrinkle cycles donโt work as well as getting the laundry while itโs still hot. It reduces it some but not as much as getting the laundry when itโs still hot. It also wastes a fair bit of energy to run the dryer for another 15 minutes instead of just telling me when itโs done.
And itโs not a dementia thing, itโs an adhd+generalized anxiety thing. Piece of mind is pretty valuable to me and mine.
To be fair, making a device wifi connected is stupid cheap nowadays. That being said, you bet your ass theyโre harvesting data.
My parents got a fridge with a similar feature and no screen (they didnโt 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 sensorโฆ
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.