Will Every Appliance Be Internet Connected?

Smart Appliances have been touted for years but really haven’t become mainstream outside of your living room.  Internet Connected appliances however are invading every room of your house from the Kitchen to the Laundry room.  It will not be long before every device that plugs into the wall doesn’t have some sort of Internet connectivity and functionality in my opinion.  The pure and simple reason is analytics, reporting and assisting.

Smart Fridge: The Ultimate Kitchen Assistant

The normal method people find recipes is to look up a great recipe online, learn the ingredients and then see what they have and what they need, purchase what they need…etc..

However, what about the ultimate in conservation in building recipes around what you have without ever having to worry about needing something?  People can search recipes all day long, but picture this….

One of the best gifts is the Kitchen Assistant so prepare to grab food and start your meal plans.

What if as you put food in your fridge, you scan it with your refrigerator and scan the spices/cans in your pantry or your spice rack with your fridge (or better it detects them with RFID at some point).  Then your fridge daily can show you recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner that only use ingredients it detects you have in your fridge and pantry?  This would be an excellent and convenient way to give you options and use what you have already without having to purchase any new ingredients and may help save from waste.

What if your fridge monitored the types of foods in it, and found that the foods contained within had unhealthy levels of saturated fat and reminded you about moderating the consumption?  Would this be intrusive, a benefit, or would a reminder help you maintain weight.  Many people already log information in their tablets tracking what they eat, calories and much of it involves looking up a food, and entering it after the fact, but what if you tell your fridge as you prepare to grab food what you plan on having and it offers some guidance?  Could this help steer you in healthier eating habit directions?

Smarter Laundry Machines

Internet Connected Laundry machines could help provide analytics reports for how much water you are using weekly, monthly, make recommendations on load cycle sizes and even have pre-set start times where you load and it starts when on off-peak power hours to conserve costs.  Eventually I would like to see the Washer/Dryer become the same appliance, so that the wash cycle ends and the dryer cycle starts immediately with 1 appliance footprint, automation in detection and energy efficiency plus convenience in that you can set it and a whole load wash/dry gets done while you sleep or while you are out.

Do We All Want Smarter Appliances?

People want more information, and smarter appliances will start allowing for more information to be recorded and provided to the owners of those appliances.  This will start with Android/iOS apps that the appliances talk to but eventually some of those functions may move to the appliances themselves or be accessible from any device in a cloud type offering.

You can find all sorts of Internet connected appliances and many of them are available from The Good Guys but don’t think that your Blu-Ray player, TV will be the only internet connected devices for very long, the day is coming where virtually all devices will be connected to the Internet and start collecting analytics.  Much of this information can help you be more informed, know exactly how much water and detergent you are using with each wash, how much power usage with each dry cycle.  Schedule specific start times for certain functions and even have fridges help you plan meals and remind you when you need something thrown out or re-ordered.

What are your thoughts on smart appliances, like indoor grills, refrigerator,washers etc… Do you want your devices to know more about your habits, your purchases and access more analytics, or are you longing for the primitive days of a log cabin, ice box and wood stove oven?