h a l f b a k e r yWhat's a nice idea like yours doing in a place like this?
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"I have never eaten so well" ... Quote from my brother when he departed after living with us for a year.
But there are competing forces at work here - I grew up in a food challenged household, and to waste any food causes me grief.
My wife grew up in a house with no food shortages, but parents
who screened everything for potential MSG, and also encouraged eating disorder patterns in order to remain fashionably slim. She was adopted, and has an open minded palate, while her parents were more limited.
Anyway, on to the idea. The challenge is to eat things before they are past their prime, even when there are multiple leftovers in play at all times.
The Leftover Lights are small battery powered devices, with an array of LED indicators ranging from green to red. When you put something in the refrigerator, you add one of these. A moments quick programming allows you to set the time frame and LED color for a range from "Only a day old, even better than when you made it" to "Eat this next, or it goes to waste" to "You screwed up, toss this now".
Ideally you would open your refrigerator door and be greeted by all green with a few yellow and one red lights.
Panopticon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
Big Brother is watching your snacks. [pertinax, Sep 07 2026]
Timing Tape
Timing_20Tape
Simple. Cheap. No batteries. [minoradjustments, Sep 07 2026]
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So, the output is an LED; what are the inputs? For food still in its packaging, you might be able to OCR the dates on that packaging, but only if your fridge is somehow a panopticon. For food that you've already unpacked and cooked, or food that didn't come in a dated package ... ? |
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Maybe each item has its own clockwork timer, and you wind that up appropriately when you put the item in the fridge? |
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Yes I want it. Each of the tags could be programmed by touching against the appropriate expiry day on a calendar wallchart. |
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The LEDs would turn off in the dark obv. |
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Batteries. Programming. Calendars. Lights. Too much attention for leftovers. |
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Norm inspired me to propose Timing Tape. |
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Yeah ... When I wrote "A moments quick programming" it felt false. Batteries I can live with, I already do batteries life. |
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"food that you've already unpacked and cooked, or food that didn't come in a dated package" ... I'm operating on decades of experience for those two, and there is the freezer if there are doubts. |
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Camera in the fridge with small computer. Takes a picture of food going in. Recognises food that was taken out earlier and doesn't reset the clock for those items. |
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Current AI is notoriously not good at object permanence. This probably gets even harder if you've taken a bite out of the object in between times. |
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