How to make any fridge Smart

How to make any fridge Smart

While the hi-tech smart fridges come with correspondingly high price tags, we’ll show you how to make any old fridge Smart, at a fraction of the cost.

First of all, what makes a fridge ‘smart’ ? The answer to this question is… (drum roll) a touch screen with an Internet connection. Yep, it’s that simple.

So if you manage to turn this

into this:

you’re golden!

And we’ll show you how to do exactly that, without ordering any fancy tablet holders from… wherever.

Indeed, all it takes is an old tablet – iPad or Android – doesn’t matter (just not too old, so it can still run a reasonably up to date browser), and a strip of adhesive Velcro tape, which you can get from your local variety shop for a couple of bucks.

Cut off a couple of double-sided strips of equal length and stick one side to the tablet:

Don’t worry, it will come off easily enough and won’t damage the tablet.

Now, peel off the top protective paper from both strips and affix the tablet on the fridge door like so:

Gently press and hold the tablet to the door for a few seconds, to help it stick better.

Now, from the hinge side of the door, connect the power cable, and plug in the other end into a power outlet behind the fridge (or place a power board on top of the fridge)

Remember to bring the power cord from the hinge side of the door, so it can open and close, unhindered. If you want, you can secure the power cable to the door with small blobs of Blu-Tack.

And you’re done!

Here’s my setup:

I used an old iPad 1, which is of not much use these days, but is perfect for Dwel.

Now, just in case you’re not happy with the setup for whatever reason, the Velcro strips come off both the tablet and the fridge, without any marks:

You will want to keep the tablet always on, to avoid having to press the button and reduce the taps every time you want to add things to the shopping list, or look up a recipe, etc. Some old devices don’t have an ‘always on’ function – mainly the old Android tablets.
For these, there will be apps in the Google Play Store that will keep the screen on for specified applications, such as the browser.

And if you set the browser to your Dwel’s home page, it self-refreshes every 30 minutes, so you won’t miss any new notices or alerts.

As an added bonus, with each refresh the Dwel home page shows you a random selection of six images/photos from your Binder:

and when one of them catches your eye, you just tap it and make it full-screen: