[spiznnx]

I used to help teach a undergraduate senior design course, and the number of students who want to do exactly this is staggering.

I don't know if its really that bad of an idea, but we didn't allow projects that had been done before so they were all rejected.

[derefr]

Really, you can predict goods spoilage just given how old stuff is. You don't need a smart fridge; you just need an ETL pipeline from a ScanSnap (reading in your grocery-store receipts) to an inventory tracker app. You've got "smarts", but they're not in the fridge.

(And in the end, that's better: an inventory-tracker app that's on your phone is able to tell you to throw stuff out without you needing to own a "smart-home hub" or configure your fridge to connect to your wi-fi; and, unlike the fridge, its notifications will probably keep working even if its manufacturer goes out of business.)

[chrisweekly]

I can't recall where I came across this idea but how about fridge shelves that (like mini moving sidewalks) slowly move food towards an edge to drop to a lower shelf and eventually to a composter or trash -- the idea being to put food items at a certain spot on a given shelf based on items' expiration date. Wildly impractical IRL, but clever enough to be memorable (for me anyway).

[sonofgod]

https://xkcd.com/1109/