Don't forget Temperature Sensors for your Fridge!
Don't forget Temperature Sensors for your Fridge!
Learned my lesson after a trip last week... I have sensors for nearly everything, but somehow totally forgot about the Fridge / Freezer.
A power outage made my fridge lose it's mind and turn off cooling, even after it powered back up. Unplug / replug seems to have fixed it, but all the food was spoiled when we got home. Simple $10 temperature sensor could have saved everything!
Might be a dumb question since I have no experience with sensors. What would you have been able to do if the received an alert while you were out of town is the sensor able to turn the fridge off and on? Is that what you meant by “simple $10 temperature sensor could have saved everything”?
You could then call a friend or family member and ask them to check on it.
Or if you had it on a smart outlet you could try rebooting it.
Ah makes total sense. Going to start looking into sensors for my house now. Anymore obvious locations that haven’t been mentioned yet?
I've been wanting to do this for awhile after having problems with the cooling coils freezing over. My question is, what sensor would you use for this? A battery-powered one would need to be recharged and a wire running into the fridge would break the seal
These are the ones I got, just because they are only $9 each, with a display as well. Each one has 2x AAA battery, so I'd expect they'll last quite a while. HA also reports on battery level - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0872X4H4J
They are bluetooth, but I already had an ESP32 for other sensors. Seems to work great w/ Home Assistant / ESPHome so far!
I bought a battery-powered (2xAAA) zigbee temperature/humidity sensor about 6 months ago and haven't replaced its batteries yet.
A battery powered ZigBee one should last for at least a year...
A fridge that can handle a temporary power outage wouldve saved the food.
We've had quite a few temporary power outages before and there's been no issue when it comes back up. I still have no idea what happened this time. Like I said, even power cycling it again was what "fixed" it (at least for now).
Since I've started automating stuff I've got myself an Acurite wireless fridge and freezer thermometer (initially found out about it on Reddit, before it all went to shit and all). It both has a nice magnetic display and it transmits in 433MHz band, so a SDR dongle plugged into my Home Assistant machine can receive the temp readouts. So far it didn't prevent any disasters, but at least I know how hot it needs to get for the fridge to start having trouble keeping cool.
I also went this route. I've definitely had better luck with the Acurite sensors than I've had with Zigbee/ZWave sensors in terms of update frequency.
Flood/water sensors:
- Hot water heater
- Under kitchen sink
- Behind dishwasher
- Under clothes washer
Smart valve on mains water supply so you can automatically cut off water to the entire house if any of your leak sensors alert.
Most fridges have two smaller lightbulb plugs. A sensor that could utilize one of those for power would be cool. I hate running stuff off battery
Would this not require a battery as well, as usually the light is only lit while the door is open.
Making vacation even worse for said battery.
Just leave the door open.
You're absolutely right and I'm an idiot for not thinking of that :-)
https://xtremeownage.com/2022/06/29/433mhz-fridge-freezer-monitoring/
433 mhz sensors work nicely. If, my fridge/freezer / other freezer gets too hot, I get push messages.
Backup wan connection and a LOT of battery runtime ensures I will know.
If you live in a climate in which you need to winterize your outdoor faucets (e.g. by shutting a valve in your basement, crawlspace, or garage) a temperature sensor on the warm side of the valve can save you from a flood.
I had to replace the garage door opener one winter and failed to notice a new quarter inch gap at the bottom of the garage door. Combine that with a cold snap and the garage dropped below freezing for long enough to burst pipes.
Fortunately I had a Shelley flood sensor on the floor so I was alerted fairly early and was able to avoid serious damage, but had I been paying attention to the pipes themselves I could have avoided a plumber call-out on Christmas Eve!
If anyone has other suggestions for possible 'blind spots' like this, appreciate it!
Water sensor near your washing machine.
And a smart speaker connected to HA in the bedroom to play a alarm once the smoke detector goes off.
I definitely have the water sensors covered, even have a water shut-off valve tied to them (that's the one I'm most paranoid about).
Interesting idea w/ the smoke alarm 'relay'. I have some echo dots, that in theory are supposed to pick up smoke alarm sounds when in 'guard' mode. The water sensors I have throughout the house also have temperature sensors (and I have others from ecobee), I have those send an alert if they ever get way too hot or too cold, and announce that over speakers. In theory that could also help with detection of fires or failed HVAC, etc..
I got this yolink setup June 2022 and it works great. Have not changed the batteries either. The system has notified me a few times like if I've put a case of water and beer in. I don't think this integrates with HA I just needed something that worked and not trying to rig up something. Another must have are water sensors. I'm running 13 govee water sensors and been notified few times also.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08JP39RLP/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Water sensors are the big one for me! I have a mixture of old SmartThings ones, and cheap ThirdReality branded ones (that seem to work fine still!)
My govees were cheap and I needed a ton of them, 13. They got great reviews. Wish they would integrate w HA but not currently without trying with rf reader and it's too important for me I didn't want to risk this. Last year went to Hawaii for 2 weeks and this is the reason I bought this stuff.
The fridge and water sensor stuff is to important and should have had it years ago.
Would you put the sensor itself inside the fridge/freezer, and would it still have signal?
My Aqara sensor has a pretty good signal in my fridge, results may vary as the material of fridges vary.
How is battery life in this cold environment?
Cheers!
Yeap, I put it in the actual Fridge, signal seems fine for Bluetooth at least!
Cheers!
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I've also never had a Fridge do this (even this one that had gone through multiple power outages).
This one does have a function to toggle off cooling on the front controls, why you'd ever want to do that, not sure... My assumption is something happened during power outage to affect the "brains" of the Fridge, but no idea really.
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