Start a revolution in your kitchen with Smarter’s FridgeCam

With the ever growing product line of smart technology devices and services it’s hard to keep up isn’t it?! But we find it extremely exciting. We have worked with Smarter for many years now reviewing their Wifi Kettle and Wifi Coffee Machines. Which are amazing by the way. We’re excited that Smarter has used us again to test drive their newest innovation (a world first may I add) in their product lineup. The FridgeCam.

Now I know I know…… you’re currently thinking what the hell do I need a camera in my fridge for. This may or may not have been our initial thought to. However when you look into the reasons it’s actually really valuable in many ways. So we’ll cover those in this review.

The Main Goal

The main goal of Smarter with FridgeCam is to reduce food waste which is awesome since this is something we’re very passionate about ourselves. To reduce food waste and make us more aware of what we are buying and also what we are throwing away. Throwing away food makes us sad. We all do it. How many times have we found some forgotten food in the fridge which is just went bad. It’s sad!!

The Technology

The technology involved is actually pretty cool. The device is WiFi connected and USB rechargeable. Essentially the camera captures a new image of your fridge (with a nifty flash built in too) of the inside of your fridge every time you close the fridge door. This image is then instantly transferred to the Smarter app on your phone. Available in both iOS and Android. This is the same app which controls the Wifi Kettle and Coffee Machine so everything is neatly bundled into one. 
It is actually a world first device! A first of its kind. You can buy expensive fridges with a camera in them now however this is the first FridgeCam which can be retrospectively fitted to any fridge be it 1 year old of 50 year old fridge. 

The Install

This is sooooooo simple. I was surprised. Simply charge the FridgeCam up using the provided USB cable. Download and open the app and follow the setup instructions. The pairing is super quick and really impressive. To position your camera in the fridge only takes a few minutes of playing around to get the best angle and view to capture all your fridges shelves. Once you pick the angle you simply attach the FridgeCam on its mount to the fridge using the included adhesive pads.
The FridgeCam can then be easily removed to recharge when necessary. The app will ask you to set the angle of the door close in which you want it to take the snapshot. This can be re-done again and again if you get it slightly wrong so just play around with it. It’s actually really cool seeing the flash go off as you close the door past a certain point. Super smart! 

Saving Energy

One of the nifty, but rather played down features of the FridgeCam is its ability to remind you if the fridge door is left slightly ajar. Now this happens to us a LOT. Admit it! This has reminded me a good handful of times when the door just hasn’t swung closed completely. It uses rather a lot of energy if it was left ajar all day long so we think this is a great eco friendly feature. 

Saving you money!

That’s a phrase we all love to hear isn’t it! How many times have we went to the shops straight after work to get dinner and thought….’Do I have any XXXX left in the fridge’ only to buy it anyway and come home to find we’ve nearly got a full pack of XXXXX left in the fridge! Substitute XXXXX with almost anything! We’ve all ended up with two packs of something in the fridge by mistake and lets face it, one normally gets wasted or at least part wasted. Now you can simply open the Smarter app in the supermarket and check what is in your fridge. 

The App

We’ve covered the app in our other reviews and it is a really well built user friendly app. It looks great and performs just as well. I love that all the products integrate with the same app. Any service which can reduce the ever growing number of apps in my phone is a winner! Within the FridgeCam module in the app there are a number of sections which perform different functions.

There is a great shopping list feature where you can add items to your inventory in your fridge. When it runs out it gets added to your shopping list. This is all powered by Tesco which is great as we use this but hopefully they’ll build some other integrations in soon too. The best before tracker is great too. Simply add items to this list with their best before date and you can get reminders when somethings about to go bad. So you can easily check this before planning a dinner later that night. We’ve used this a lot!