181–190 of 597 posts
I can understand the appeal of most smart devices, but since a dishwasher can’t yet load and unload itself, what is the point of an internet connected dishwasher? You have to have physically loaded it. Why not just push the start button then?
My clothes washer will alert me when it is done. It is handy if you have a lot of laundry to do (kids) and you want to be on top of doing one load after another / not forget.
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My dishwasher is from 1992. It's from the era of packet radio and pre-dates WiFi. I can't imagine using some smart phone app to manage a dishwasher.
The electricity and water efficiency are likely terrible compared to a modern machine.
I have a smart dishwasher. Anyone who doesn't have one and is bashing them simply hasn't had the pleasure of trying them out. They're pure joy. My 2 year old loves to help me load the dishes. She complains if I don't let her close the soap container and then press the button to start the machine. It's never broken dishes on me. Never failed to clean anything. I've never forgotten to start it, or forgotten to add soap…
My bed tried to kill me last week. My bed has an app. Because of course it does. The bed logs sleep (and, presumably, other activities) and then sends all the data to the manufacturer. I don't want it to do this, so I explicitly opt out in the app. The problem is that it keeps asking and there isn't a good way to permanently disable the creepy behavior. Back to the attempted murder - last week, I opened the app to ad…
Looks like a Miele. That menu can be exited (the image where it says "Software Update", the tiny bit on the right... that's a scroll bar of multiple options including the ability to exit this menu), but it does imply that the dishwasher is already connected to Wi-Fi and that it has determined that there is an update available. There are few times that a dishwasher is interacted with, if not when you go into the menu…
> on a VLAN with other white goods, outbound connections to certain domains only ... That probably says what needs to be said about smart appliances. There's a reason that's the right choice. This same reason is the reason smart appliances are a bad idea. Am curious: When the washer is past security updates, are you going to leave it on the VLAN? Would you do that if the washer had a camera or microphone?
TBH I figure that this is roughly the point when the Wi-Fi chipsets can't connect to whatever the standard is at that moment in time.
The only really useful Wi-Fi feature of the white goods in my house would be within the hob and the extractor hood. These communicate over Wi-Fi so that the extraction is automatically turned on at the appropriate speed for however the hob is being used, and turned off 30 seconds after the hob stops being used.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My dishwasher is from 1992. It's from the era of packet radio and pre-dates WiFi. I can't imagine using some smart phone app to manage a dishwasher.
The electricity and water efficiency are likely terrible compared to a modern machine.
In the time that I've had mine, I would have had to replace a modern one about three times. I think that new ones would be more water efficient, but I do not see new ones being more efficient electrically. Mine is plumbed to hot water, so the heating elements are not used much and it dries them with blown air instead of heat.
If I am looking to reduce my electrical footprint there is much lower hanging fruit than my dishwasher. How much energy would go into the manufacturing, delivery, and installation of three dishwashers?
Smart devices are overly complex. The entire point should have been to make devices work for you, but now when you buy a ‘smart’ washing machine, it requires you 30min of setup. Downloading apps, connecting it to wifi, providing GPS location etc. why? What’s the point. We need devices that make life simpler. Straight out of the box.
Are there any regulation barriers to selling "dumb" devices in the modern market? I've made the same point about pickup trucks--the 2002 Toyota Tacoma is a far preferable vehicle than the 2022 Toyota Tacoma for many truck owners, but when I've brought that up, people have pointed out that a number of laws make it impossible to sell a clone of the old version (must have backup cameras, must have X, must have Y, etc.)
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All those things mandated for cars are related to safety. Back-up cameras are required to prevent drivers from running over small children. ABS and stability control to prevent crashes. Etc. And none of them, in a simple implementation, reduce the usability of the car/truck. No such mandates exist for home appliances. The connectivity/apps are purely a money-grab - either people like the general idea of connected dev…
> All those things mandated for cars are related to safety. I believe that the current EU mandate for cars is that they must have cellular connectivity, which is of course for calling emergency services in a crash. I think "ostensibly for safety" is a better description of some of it.