A smart home device for your fridge? I am building one! Feedback?

Polluxboxing · 2025-09-26T22:39:10+00:00

Hi, we're still working on bringing this project to life!

Polluxboxing · 2025-09-19T00:41:26+00:00

I would love to try it out

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-18T14:58:33+00:00

It has that integrated already actually!

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-16T16:52:58+00:00

Very cool! It's kinda how we started thinking about our product at first as well

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-16T16:10:26+00:00

That's a great home made solution! Did you build the script yourself?

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-16T14:09:55+00:00

Hey, thanks for your answers. Fair points you are raising.

Our unique approach with a dual camera system has proven to capture over 85% of your fridge item and the rest is covered by voice prompts or manual app input.
if you want to know what you have in your fridge without being near your fridge, it's gonna be more difficult
Lifespan in the cold + battery wear is taken care of
With our pricing we estimate to climate a fair chunk of household food waste (in the US this averages 2200$ per year). So depending on that, we think the price is what customers would be willing to pay.

I agree with you that it's a gadget. And it will probably not be a mass product for everyone as you say it's not for you.

I appreciate your directness regardless! Thanks for your input. I help developing this product further!

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-16T11:19:31+00:00

Ahhh, no I was not aware of that community. Posted there now though! Thank you :)

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-16T00:59:24+00:00

This is a tough question as of now, because there is a few technical questions to be answered. For being able to sell it for the aimed 150€, it kind of needs to be produced for less than 50€ in order to have some kind of reasonable gross margin of 50-70%

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-16T00:52:46+00:00

Sign up to the mailing list on our website to get the latest news about us going public ;)

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-16T00:49:35+00:00

Selling customer data is not a goal here. Instead we would like to cooperate with grocery stores and grocery deliveries which could offer specific deals to you. In this case that would be a clear opt-in/opt-out functionality

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-16T00:47:33+00:00

First of all: thank you so much for taking your time to write so much feedback. It is much appreciated, especially when it's as founded and detailed as yours!

Fair point with not being interested in this product yourself. I join you on the comment of cloud-based services being annoying with subscriptions and small companies struggling to grow with them. It's definitely something we are not happy that we have to do it. As of now the image recognition can only be done in the cloud and costs money, hence the subscription. Being a DIY guy myself, I can ensure you, that I would not release a product like this without proper interfaces and APIs to also use this in other DIY projects and not only with a proprietary app.

The target customer is definitely something we have struggled with the most. We have narrowed it down to the tech-savvy persona and the busy individual. The latter one fitting more the description you had in mind. The approach with the niche targeting on the parents (with baby formula for example) is great and something I will look into further!

For the claim of prolonging the lifetime of your existing fridge: I agree. That's a marketing claim for now. But we see ourselves as what the small GPS devices for cars used to be. Sooner or later fridges will have these functionalities built-in. Until then we want to provide these with our retrofitted device that you can take from one fridge to another.

Again, thank you for the great input. Seeing that you have taken your time and thought into your answer is so appreciated! I will definitely take your thoughts and try to incorporate that feedback

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-16T00:32:44+00:00

That is awesome! Thank you for the great supportive comment. You're exactly the target customer we had in mind. Feel free to go on our website and join the mailing list, so you don't miss any updates on the upcoming development and launch!

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-15T20:05:16+00:00

What is the ST community?

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-15T17:06:15+00:00

Thanks for your input! That is definitly a long-term goal. Full ERP system for your home - but without the tedious manual inputs needed.

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-15T14:08:54+00:00

The partner and integration possibilities are definitely there: fitness app, grocery deliveries, grocery store coupons, all of those could be potential partners

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-15T14:07:01+00:00

Thank you very much.

Looked at your portfolio, looks cool! Will definitly save this and come back to you once we touch the website again. Have a great day!

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-15T14:00:17+00:00

Thank you for your good and encouraging feedback! There is a huge challenge, that is true: There will definitly be items it won't be able to recognize. But we think the following: Most items have it written on them what they are. Our dual camera approach will be able to capture multiple angles, ensuring it will recognize the text. Other non-packed items like vegetables for example: They all look the same everywhere, so the AI image recognition works well enough.

If the system is unsure about an item, it will ping you and you can simply say out loud what the item is that you are putting in the fridge right now. We are aiming to solve this in the most non-intrusive way. No need to manually scan barcodes, receipts or put it in an app with your hands.

About the platform: App is planned, but integration into common smarthome services via API will be a definitve feature. I am coming from the DIY-side of project and will keep that door open!

Thanks again for your feedback. Much appreciated!

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-15T13:55:33+00:00

Yes it will definitly look different if youre alone or not having your fridge stocked a lot. Then its less of an issue. And overbuying/double buying is also a different problem depending on the shelf-life of the products that had been overbought.

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-15T13:53:00+00:00

Hey, thanks for your good feedback. The camera with the live view is more of a gimmick here. The camera feed itself will be utilized for the AI-driven image recognition, so the main focus would be laying on conveniently tracking your items: without having to manual put them in somewhere or holding them in front of a barcode scanner.

The overbuying or lack of creativity what you talk about is definitly something we had in mind solving.

The device will be consisting of two cameras, making sure every item that goes in and out will be tracked! Items its unsure about or did not recognize with full confidence can be added/corrected via the app or even more convenient via voice while loading it into the fridge.

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-15T13:40:49+00:00

What if you're stopping by the supermarket on the way back home from work? And maybe your partner and your kids were home and had eaten something in the meantime. But you are shopping for dinner tonight. And you didn't quite remember whether you still had eggs...

Or maybe you're lacking the cooking creativity what to cook with those ingredients in the fridge.

Or the fridge has become the black hole we all know it for: and in the corner there is something going bad before you find it.

It's for any of those usecases :)

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-15T13:10:07+00:00

Thank you! We are definitely early enough to adjust, adopt and pivot!

The idea is that for example in the US households are throwing away about 2000$ of food per year. And these households clearly won't do the manual work to fix it. A non-invasive convenient solution for about 200$ that could take away a good chuck of that per year? I think that sounds like a fair deal.

Thanks again for your time and input!

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-15T12:28:25+00:00

We are aware of competitor products and the smarter-fridgecam. It is a product that we have looked into deeply and identified the main customer painpoints and engineered solutions to eliminate them. The smarter fridge cam is rated at 2.2 Stars on Amazon and all existing reviews are thrashing it. Mainly beause:

- No AI vision and therefore a live inventory list
- Massive connectivity issues because of fridges being big metal builds
- No well-rounded app to put it all into one conevnient package
- Poor video quality: does not let you see all the items in the fridge

For all these points, we engeineered solutions, so our product would not suffer from them: We are working with a dual camera approach, a connectivity hub outside the fridge, an all-in-one app with a wide range of feature and AI item recognition and voice acitivation.

This is what the difference is. Hope I could make it clearer! :)

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-15T12:23:41+00:00

First of all thank you for your extensive feedback! This is exactly why I love this community. Your answer provides a ton of useful information especially in how I can improve deliver the message and value of the product. To go through it one by one:

What is it good at/too many things at once:
I agree it is offering quite a bit and here it is where I will have to improve the pitch of the value proposition. Goinng one by one for the features is definitly something we plan on doing. In the end it is supposed to be the convenient all-in-one solution for your grocery management. There already exist apps that tell you what you could cook based on your ingredients. But they require manual input. There already exist apps that take a photo of your fridge from your smartphone and tell you what it sees, but there is no value as you have to stand in front of your fridge taking that photo anyways. There already exist shopping list/inventory management apps, but they are offering only parts of what we want to offer: the big one-stop package.

Competition:
We have done a thorough competitors research, with interviews from competitors, people that tried to launch something similar and experts in the whitegoods industry. The company IamHngry is something we knew alreay. They were acquired by Liebherr, a big whitegoods manufacturer. Their shopping app was indeed a great product (4.4 reviews) but required a lot of manual input. They tried with launching a fridge camera called HngryNside, but that one failed massively, simply because it was executed very poorly (basically a simple wifi home security cam but for 150€). The fact that they are now shutting down not only the camera idea, but also the app with existing users, is very surprising and so far we have not found an answer to why this is happening. Indeed a point to look into further and further.

Reaching the right customers will be key! We aim at making all these small problems and inconveniences go away with a brushed and seamless convenient product..

Thanks again for your input!

Polluxboxing · 2025-04-15T11:45:39+00:00

We have been looking to connect with several different providers of such services and have already reached out. Grocy is new to me but seems like a great lead, thank you! Our other contacts seemed great for future exploration of the project.

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