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Comment by b112 | Hacker News Reader

Probably not any better than the last two LG fridges which both broke due to compressor issues, causing me to lose $1k of food each time.

In one case, during the high summer, I didn't notice one was slowly getting warmer. I had constant bowel problems, because I was eating rotten mayonnaise. This was compounded by the fact that I bought fancy spicy mayonnaise, which I'd never tasted before, which masked the rotten flavour.

So -- my lessons learned, never by LG horrible fridges again, and keep an analog thermometer, which I bought for $5, in the fridge.

(General FYI, LG has had more than one class action law suit because of their compressors, and, they even make it very hard to obtain replacements. Evil bastards.)

My point is, you should take care with any fridge, new or old.

(edit: some clarity on mayo)

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> $1k of food each time

What, is it chock full of exclusively ribeye steaks and smoked salmon?

That feels like a crazy number. I keep a lot of nice vacuum-sealed protein in my freezer but even then I'd say the value is $300 max.

How do you get to $1K?

Canadian dollars, so 1.45x USD, and some expensive meats.

Lamb is 3x the price of beef, for example. Name brand bacon is not too bulky and thin, 10 bucks for 500g. Some fish is expensive too. It adds up surprisingly fast.

I plan on putting some LoRaWAN temp sensors in my fridges/freezers to alert me if the temp goes out of spec for very long. (As soon as YoLink has their Local Hub available and functioning with Home Assistant.)

I have remote gauges with alarms in my freezers, but I'm in my fridge every day, and nothing beats a simple analog gauge.

In the freezers I also employ either the "freeze some ice cubes and put them in a baggy" or "freeze a small jar and put a coin on top" methods.

If you see the ice cubes have melted and refroze, then trouble. If the coin is not on the top of the jar -- same thing. Fail proof methods.

I doubt you'd be able to get a signal through from inside the fridge. I made a Home Assistant "food safety" dashboard and alerts. I found two challenges:

* Connecting to the outside world. I didn't go wireless because a fridge/freezer cavity is basically a Faraday cage, because I didn't want to deal with replacing batteries, and because high humidity + low temp = wet, sad microcontroller. And even a "flat" 4-conductor telephone cord disturbed the magnetic seal enough that there was a noticeable gap. I ended up buying a 4-contact, 1mm pitch, 200mm flat flexible cable to run across the seal. I separated the contacts with a utility knife, soldering them to other cables on both sides. I also heatshrinked the conductors individually and the whole junction together for strain relief. Then I superglued it into place. And 4 conductors is enough for ground, supply voltage, and either TX/RX or 1-Wire+unused.

* Getting a reading that matches what foods actually experience rather than the air temperature. The latter fluctuates a lot more when you open/close the door or depending on what the defrost/compressor is doing. I ended up buying waterproof 1-Wire temperature sensors (elecrow sells them for $1.20 each + reasonable shipping), 4 oz plastic bottles, cable glands, and propylene glycol (relatively safe antifreeze, though I wouldn't chug it). I drilled holes in the lids for the glands to run the sensors in, then closed the bottles up while immersed in the solution. Cheap DIY buffered temperature probe.

I currently measure buffered temperature, air temperature, and humidity, but really only the buffered temperature matters.

There are loads of 'put them in the fridge/freezer' temp sensors out there, made just for this. I did buy lithium AA batteries (which work down to -40C even) for the sensor end.

My thoughts are, these things are special built, and only wake every few minutes or so to burst send. Batteries tend to last a couple of years (but with the lithium ones!), and I get beeeeps from the receiver if it dies.

(Not knocking your solution, it gives you more flexibility)

I saw a few that were wired with cords that seemed more intrusive than the telephone cord I tried, so I went my own way. And most of them didn't seem to be something I could connect to Home Assistant.

Well amazon has endless examples of wireless working fine. However, as I said, you get more flexibility with your own solution (like using Home Assistant)

I haven't tried yet, but YoLink specifically markets their LoRaWAN sensors as working in fridges: https://shop.yosmart.com/collections/smart-fridge

For the readings, I only really care about catching compressor failure within hours, as opposed to say, days, so for a freezer that's normally set to -18, I figure I'll just do something like "alert if temperature remains above -14 for >2 hours." Of my 4 fridges/freezers, only one has auto-defrost, so I guess I'll have to take that into account there.

Acurite fridge sensors + rtl433 dongle

The YoLink system works great! I was able to spot an issue causing my chest freezer to very slowly increase in temp (roughly -10 to +10 F in a month) and move the contents before losing the food. Across 5 temperature sensors, I've needed to replace batteries on 2 in 16 months.

My z-wave temperature sensor works inside my refrigerator. It's a stainless steel refrigerator with no window or icemaker in the door. Not sure how the signal gets out but it works.

Stainless is not a very good conductor. If it were aluminum or copper there’d be a problem but you can literally bury a bluetooth transmitter in a 16-gauge steel box with very little attenuation. I’ve done so at work.

Convenient too, or wireless relays and power meters within metal junction boxes wouldn't work.

Good news for you, their local hub is available and I currently have fridge and freezer (and a few other sensors) hooked up to home assistant via it right now.

> So -- my lessons learned, never by LG horrible fridges again

You'd need to be careful because many other manufacturers are using LG made compressors in their products.

LG and Samsung are the two that I think everyone should stay away from for major appliances.

GE and it's spinoff brands tend to do better.

You need to smell your food before you eat it. Trust your senses.

Please. I've definitely smelled off food, and of course don't eat it. The mayo in question was some weird spicy stuff, and it didn't smell or taste bad.

Note:

https://www.sciencealert.com/sniff-tests-wont-save-you-from-...

You cannot smell or taste all forms of bad food. At all.

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