An annoying fridge that beeps incessantly when the door is open too long should be an easy enough thing to fix by disconnecting the speaker, but when as with [kennedn]’s model it’s plumbed in and the speaker is inaccessible, what’s to be done? The answer: create a mod chip for a fridge.
While the fridge electronics themselves couldn’t be reached, there was full access to a daughterboard with the fridge controls. It should be easy enough to use them to turn off the alarm, but first a little reverse engineering was required. It used a serial communication with an old-school set of shift registers rather than a microcontroller, but it soon became apparent that the job could be done by simply pulling the buttons down. In a move that should gladden the heart of all Hackaday readers then, the modchip in question didn’t even have to be a processor, instead it could be the venerable 555 timer. Our lives are complete, and the fridge is no longer annoying.
The 555 is unashamedly a Hackaday cliche, but even after five decades it still bears some understanding.
We use more ice in the summer than my fridge can make with it’s normal cycle. It can just barely keep up if I keep turning the fast ice setting on, but that turns off after 12-24 hours, even when the ice is far from full. I keep meaning to open the control panel and put a attiny85 in there to run a 4 button macro any time the fast ice led turns off.
I’ll probably get around to it a week before the fridge breaks.
If a man says he’s going to do something, he’ll do it! You don’t have to remind him every few years.
You should consider hacking an ice maker into a chest freezer, potentially far larger capacity and more efficient without losing all the cold air every time you open the freezer.
Or perhaps just purchase a countertop ice maker. They’re cheaper, faster at making ice, and take up much less space.
I have one. It is horrible. The bin is so small that it fills only 1 glass. The bin isn’t refrigerated and is poorly insulated, so the new ice continually melts and drips back into the water tank…. which has to be manually filled. So, it is continually making, then melting ice.
Doesn’t mean they’re generally poor or crap, just means you bought/got a model that doesn’t fit your needs.
You could hack together a DIY ice maker where all the user has to do is periodically put water into the freezer in specially-made trays and wait a while for it to freeze and then BAM! Fresh ice! All you can eat!
Of course, you’d have to model up some icecubes in SketchUp, and 3d print them and cast those models into silicone to make your ice trays. I mean, obviously.
And you’d want to know when the ice is ready, so you could just get a raspberry pi and have it run a bash script on boot that runs “sleep 60” 1800 times, and afterwards it then displays “YOUR ICE IS NOW REA…” on one of those little OLED displays so you know that the ice is ready without opening the freezer.
Then when you refill the ice tray, all you have to do is unplug the raspberry pi and plug it back in again to reset the timer.
Genius!
Waiting a while for this one, a hack with a 555 timer.
Could have done it with a couple transistors, a few capacitors, and few resistors. /s
Or a 554…
Or you could close the door I suppose.
True. The alarm when the door is left open is a good thing, although it can get really annoying if one is loading up the fridge from a big shopping trip or doing a clean out of old stuff. My experience is that a quick push of the door button is enough to give one another X minutes before it starts complaining again.
Or people can pay attention. Just like seatbelt annoyatrons. Completely unnecessary. The person can make a choice.
I wear my seatbelt most of the time, but the few times I don’t, I certainly don’t need to be annoyed given I chose to do so.
True enough, but seat belt workaround is way easier: as the contact is NC, one simply needs to disconnect the seat belt connector under the seat (do not confuse with seat pressure sensor nor lateral airbag)
I’ve been doing it on every owned car, and it never failed the mandatory inspection…
You don’t wear a seatbelt?
anybody who doesn’t wear a seatbelt is a fool..
However, the alarm can be annoying – I often carry things in the back seat that set the alarm off. The trick is to always plug the seatbelts in first..
For Ian, below and anyone else.
If anyones not already doing this..
The seatbelts can be kinda handy for a package strap, desktop PCs or restraining pet carriers. etc.
Stops the danged noises too of course!
yes, using the seatbelts as a retainer for stuff is something I do – but sometimes they don’t quite work.
I don’t wear a seatbelt when I’m driving to my mailbox down my nearly 1/2 mile driveway and private access road at a max speed of 15 MPH and I don’t think that makes me a “fool”. Yet my stupid Toyota will nearly drive me crazy beeping the whole way. My Nissan truck just turns on a dash light which is acceptable.
Well, I beg to differ. 15mph is easily enough for you to crash into the steering wheel or window if you suddenly have to brake.
It only takes a few seconds and can significantly help you.
Ignoring the whole safety thing, I’m surprised it’s just not second nature to put the belt on.
Same that I don’t need to think about unlocking, putting the key in, starting, changing gear, indicating or driving in general – just focusing on the road and surroundings, it’s all just automatic to do so – I don’t consciously think to do it, but if the car is moving, I’m buckled in.
It’s not a poke at those who don’t, just I’m curious to why of all aspects of driving, the seat belt has this contention.
Or get a seat belt extender, for free from the dealer, and leave in the buckle. It will stop the alarm and still allow you to buckle up when you want to.
ian 42 – I can’t possibly imagine how the belt could be the only thing keeping someone from serious injury from slamming on the brakes at 15mph… I am not sure I have ever braked hard enough that my seatbelt would lock at such a low speed. But even assuming it would, surely with my foot on the brake and my hands on the wheel I would just catch myself? That velocity is equivalent to falling 7.5 feet, I believe, which is not at all an unreasonable height to expect to jump from unscathed so long as you land properly. Given a car under braking is going to slow down less abruptly than landing on the ground, I just don’t see it.
I’m normally in the “just pay attention” mindset.
But, how does paying attention make the alarm not go off while I’m cleaning my fridge? Or reorganizing it after a shopping trip?
My fridge has a button to push that stops the alarm from going off until the fridge doors are closed again.
And yet we constantly have instances where something horrible happens after a person fails to be perfectly vigilant. These systems exist precisely *because* humans can’t do that task reliably, but hardware can.
It amazes me when people are more offended by a minor irritation than a real threat to their bodily safety.
The issue is HOW to be reminded, beeping like crazy right after inserting the key is a non sense.
Even the more advanced one beeping at 5km/h is still not good, I’ve my mailbox and main gate to check.
I’m not just a user to be screamed about, I’ll keep disconnect it as long as it’s not smart, like speed 30km/h, getting out of private property, pattern learning, etc…
Thumbs up. I lamented my previous fridge’s ‘lazy’ alarm in that if the door was slightly ajar then it didn’t activate cue fridge door open all night. Either the fridge alarm is stupidly short tempered or this dude dawdles too much with the fridge door open – not good for the fridge temperature.
Sigh!
My daughter doesn’t pay for the electricity,
therefore does not see anything wrong with leaving lights on, or refrigerator door open, or using a supplemental heater when the air conditioning is running.
Oh yes.. or leave the car empty of fuel.. or “clean laundry” in the washer for 3 days lol oh yes..
I’d love to know more about the actual use case here – if the door needs to be open longer than a minute e.g. loading up from a shopping trip, why not press the “alarm off” button that already exists for cases like this? OP must have a regular case where they need the door open for a long time, AND the light on, AND they are nearby to be annoyed by the alarm BUT not able to press the alarm off button.
smoke detectors (especially the ones that are better at detecting steam than actual smoke) should have that feature. literally something can be on fire and it wont go off, but boil some spaghetti and it wont stop.
If you have a smoke detector going off because of the steam from boiling spaghetti, the detector is mounted in the wrong place or you really need to run the exhaust fan because that much moisture will cause problems.
it was installed by the building owners. there is exhaust but it doesnt seem to be effective. also 100% humidity is not uncommon here (se alaska is a rainforest).
A lot of the time people install extractors above ovens but fail to connect the pipe above to the outside world, leading to no extraction (Yes I’ve seen this!)
Check the roof space.
That carbon monoxide detector alarm is so loud it gives me headaches
they installed them, but they took the fuel oil furnace out a year later and installed heat pumps. there is no garage and everything is electric now, so they are kind of pointless. probably regulated by the same ordinance that requires our smoke detector to be where it is.
LOL
i for one want to see a return of stupid appliances. that way if they screw up its your fault instead of some programmer somewhere who didn’t account for a common edge case.
I nominate my Hitachi microwave. When the timer expires the beeper keeps on beeping after you open the door!
And they last longer. When it’s packed with electronics, guess what breaks first? My 30 year old washer with a mechanical timer still works great. Just have to replace the plastic agitator dogs every few years.
those mechanical sequencers are immortal. the bearings will rust out long before those fail.
“i for one want to see a return of stupid appliances. that way if they screw up its your fault instead of some programmer somewhere who didn’t account for a common edge case.”
Cars that disable the electric windows as soon as you turn off the ignition, so you cannot close them without turning it on again, or leaving the engine running while your passengers get around to closing theirs.
I did something similar. I use the water dispenser all the time. My brother uses the ice dispenser. every time I want water, I get ice instead. so I used s little microcontroller that would wait for the ice button to be pressed, then wait for one minute, and “press” the water button again.
This is the epitome of a First World problem.
and I live in Argentina
What about a better temperature control?
Gee, getting an email or text every 5 minutes, or better still an annoying noise when the door is left open for too long??Wish I could get that using off the shelf parts and no major electronics skills for my Stoopid garage door that I always leave open. I mean, I can wire up a speaker or switch, but I forgot all my early skills. I would really appreciate it if it was simple, like the door sensor of a house alarm.
I’m 10000% positive that everyone who is like me that reads this site on a semi-regular basis would appreciate an article like that, written for the complete Noob. I once was able to troubleshoot circuit boards, but I have forgotten everything.
Thanks in advance for whatever comes out of this.
There are plenty of door sensors out there that have the ability to send your phone a notification.
Even better, make it part of your home automation, using for example home assistant, where you can set up the notifications based you needs.
For example, if you or your family are not home, but the garage door opens.
No special skills are required.
If a little light soldering is still on the table, you could absolutely get one of those magnet-and-reed-switch combos and wire it to a GPIO on a microcontroller board. The ESP32 series (even the C3) is potentially overkill but to send email you’ll want something with Wi-Fi (or Ethernet, but those are rarer and a bit more expensive). Both can be found for a few dollars each. ESPHome is a good choice for low-code programming if you’re not into that.
Case in point, I recently deployed a small fleet of wireless temperature/humidity sensors built from Adafruit QT-Py boards and SHT41 breakouts. No soldering needed, the breakouts connect via QWIIC cables, all 10(!) were assembled in a few minutes and each programmed in a few more; and they cost less than $20 each, on par with or better than most of the commercial wireless sensors I’ve seen sold online, and fully customizable. If I’d shopped around for cheaper parts and soldered instead of using prefit cables, they could’ve cost even less. Sure, they don’t look as pretty…
Mine has a button. I used duct tape.