Originally Posted by
Carsickness
so what's yours? (patent pending :P)
Here's one I was thinking of earlier:
Smart fridge:
So the idea is to have a fridge with the ability to track incoming and outgoing products that you place/ take from it. As well as giving you potential recipes depending on those ingredients.
To do this the fridge would need a bar code scanner, as well as those mobile code scanners (IR scanner?)
Once you bring in your groceries, you would scan in each item as you place it in your fridge. The "smart fridge" would register these and add them to its memory, unlocking new meal ideas.
Once you remove an item you would use the touch screen on the fridge to remove said item from your personal inventory. In increments of 3/4, 1/2, 1/4, or ALL.
As the fridge got more and more popular; more companies would cater to it. Scanning in maple leaf prime chicken might also add new and exciting meal options to your fridge created by Maple Leaf (if you allow it).
See a cool idea on your favorite cooking show? That show could add their ideas as a downloadable option.
Once an option is chosen, the fridge would give you cooking time. Calories, number fed. Stuff like that.
So for example; you add eggs, maple syrup, and toast to your fridge scanner. The fridge would then add french toast to its available recipes. Removing ALL the eggs for another dish (scrambled eggs) would remove the french toast recipe.
The idea could go backwards as well. You could search for meal ideas on your fridge, and see what items you would need to create it. You would swipe over the needed ingredients to a shopping list feature, that would then be sent to your mobile device to take with you to the grocery store (or e-mailed to the husband to pick up on the way home :P).
The fridge would have WiFi capabilities, and could download new meal ideas, as well as the ability to share meal ideas online with others.
I've seen fridges now-a-days with twitter and the likes on them, so this idea really doesn't seem like much of a stretch to accomplish.
Fridges are heavy and huge. So adding computer components to them really wouldn't make much of a difference to the customer. Plus its a fucking fridge, so you'd never have to worry about parts overheating :P.
All you'd have to do is keep up on the scanning process to keep the fridge records as accurate as possible.
The question of "what should I make tonight" would be a thing of the past. Touching one button would give you all the ideas would need.
And for the lazy:
You could just bring random ingredients to your fridge and scan them to get available meals. Noodles and ketchup? Get that "sketti" into you :P
Oh, and it would have a bunch of options, like parental lock, so kids can't load up your shopping list with ass loads of candy.
I just think it'd be really cool to walk up to your fridge, and with a few swipes know exactly what your going to make for the rest of the week.
