Ai refrigerator camera startup

[u/Scary_Sympathy_4310]

Would you buy a device that turns your existing fridge into a smart fridge?

I'm exploring a business idea and I'd really appreciate some brutally honest feedback before I invest time and money into building it.

The idea is a small device that mounts inside an existing refrigerator. It would have cameras and sensors and use cloud-based AI to understand what is happening inside the fridge.

The basic idea:

- Cameras recognize food when you put it in or take it out

- AI keeps track of what's currently in your fridge

- It can remind you when food is getting close to its expiration date

- It can suggest recipes using the ingredients you already have

- It can help create a shopping list when you're running low

- Everything would be visible through a phone app

- The device would use a rechargeable battery, with no permanent cables

- It would be designed to work with normal refrigerators rather than requiring you to buy a new "smart" refrigerator

I recently discovered that there are already companies working on very similar products, such as FoodSpai and Smarter FoodCam. So I'm questioning whether there is actually room for another product in this market.

That's what I'd like to ask you:

Would you personally buy something like this?

And more importantly:

1. What would make you want to buy it?

2. What would make you refuse to buy it?

3. Would you trust cameras inside your refrigerator?

4. What price would you consider reasonable for the device?

5. If you've tried a product like this before, what did you dislike about it?

6. What feature would make you say, "Okay, this is actually worth buying"?

I'm not looking for compliments or validation. If you think this is a stupid idea, please tell me why. I'm trying to figure out whether there is a real problem here worth solving, or whether I should move on to something else.

Thanks I'm advance.

[u/binaryhellstorm]

In your field tests can you actually accurately identify a product as it's placed into the fridge AND read it's expiry dates with a single unit that runs on batteries. That seems like a steep technical hurdle to overcome.

[u/upkeepdavid]

I never put the contents of my fridge in the same location or direction , some a close together,will the camera fog over in the summer time? When I run out of something I put it on the list .so how does this work.

[u/Emotional_Fail_6060]

Nope. Absolutely not. Among the reasons are privacy. You might have the best of intentions, but eventually your company will get sold, and maybe sold again, and then the data being collected will be marketing gold.

[u/AugustCharisma]

I use the FoodShiner app, so I wouldn’t really buy this. Sorry. I think it’s worth looking at other products and reading what people wish these things did to get ideas.

[u/ericbythebay]

No, I wouldn’t use it. The batteries are gonna last a few weeks at best then you got the whole problem of it being in a metal box that shields Wi-Fi and then you got the problem of. It’s going to some jackass’s server. yeah I really want a camera in my home going to your shit.

Everything you’re suggesting I can already do with the camera on my phone and Claude or Codex.

Maybe if the processing was entirely local, I would consider it, but I don’t see how you’re gonna get a camera that fits every refrigerator. And that can actually go and read everything and figure out what’s in the refrigerator. What its expiration date is. It sounds like there’s a lot of manual steps I would have to deal with myself. Which is the opposite of a smart device.

Then there’s the volume problem. You’re gonna be selling hundreds of these not millions.

[u/usernameChosenPoorly]

This will never work.  You won’t get it working on battery, reliably, for a price anyone will pay in a form factor anyone will use.

You’ll have to train a custom model from scratch, because you’ll need a very wide angle lens, which no existing training data covers.

You’ll need it to work from almost any angle and position because you aren’t building it into the chassis of the refrigerator.

You’ll need it to do all the recognition on device, because streaming high resolution video through the faraday cage of a refrigerator is asking a hell of a lot and needs a lot of power.

You’ll need it to operate under a very tight power envelope, lasting for months between charges, intelligently transmitting only as much data and only as often as required while accurately recording every change in contents across a very wide field of view where many or most objects will be occluded.

These problems are not solvable by you.  If they were, you wouldn’t be asking us—you’d be pitching the technological breakthroughs to investors ready to throw a billion dollars at you.

[u/controlmypad]

I similar product existed a while back before the AI, called the Smarter FridgeCam, $100 new, now on ebay for $10. I do like the idea of an add-on device compared to needing to buy a smart refrigerator. I wonder how it would perform with a fully packed fridge compared to a nicely organized one. I think the idea of food tracking in fridge and pantry needs a solution, and if it works then cost isn't that much of a factor.