I modded my fridge... I went armed with an Arduino... And when I got to the fridge main control board I found it was already an Arduino! Or at least it was an atmel 168p running the Arduino bootloader with the distinctive 1 second startup delay.

It is a US style fridge freezer, but made in Turkey for the EU market. 1 compressor, 2 fans, 1 defrost heater, 1 door edge heater, 2 door switches, 1 light, 4 temperature sensors, an LCD screen, 2 status LED's, buzzer and a button.

Alas - I couldn't be bothered to reimplement all the fridge functionality or disassemble the assembly code, and I realised the mod I wanted (disable the door edge heater) could be achieved by simply unplugging the wire.

Meta discussion: The article is brilliant (my fridge hassles me too!) but makes two small word usage “errors” by using the phrase “dawn it’s Freon cap”

The first “error” (I’m mostly a descriptivist) is incredibly common: using “it’s” when “its” is “correct”. The second “error” is much less common: using “dawn” when “don” is “correct”.

Is this just a case of autocorrect being “helpful”? :D

Most of these built-in fridges have some (non-obvious) method to remove them from the wall fairly easily. Typically, built in fridges are mounted using a couple screws (check the manual) to the underside of the top cabinetry, and are simply slid into their slot.

This may be useful information in case you decide you feel like cleaning the condenser fan, which may help the fridge work better and more efficiently.

We need technology to be either so stupid it's easy to adapt, or so smart it adapts to us.

But not smart enough to betray us.

I’ve lost count of the similar mods I have done on various household items over the years. Often timer related like this one… but I would have used an attiny85 or similar MCU instead of the 555 because of the lower parts count and less analog parts to drift out of spec or dry out. I’ve found that just with a drawerfull of attiny chips I don’t have to keep a cabinet full of other stuff, and so far I’ve only noticed improvements in reliability despite the fact that I’m throwing 100,000+ times the complexity at the problem to be solved. For many jobs it’s 6-8 pins and you’re done, and a dead-bug SOIC in shrink wrap is tiny.

Interesting not seen a fridge that beeps like that before.

Thought the article might have been going to be about removing the thermostat and adding your own temp controller. I did that and switched to using an electronic temp controller, for use during fermentation.

cool hack and all, but id question what requirement there is to intentionally leave your fridge open for more than a minute and waste copious amounts of energy to get back to original temp.

Love the lengths some people will go to to solve a (für other people at least) minor annoyance.

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those