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Displaying My Washing Machine's Remaining Time with Curl, Jq, and Pizauth

tratt.net

121–130 of 165 posts

Re: Displaying My Washing Machine's Remaining Time with Curl, Jq, and Pizauth

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first, and most obvious, reason is that getting your phone and (all) your appliances on the same network is non-trivial. What other networks do homes have? Every WiFi ISP router I have used provides a single network and DHCP server. Perhaps some routers provide both a public and private WiFi and the consumer doesn't understand which one they should pick but that is the fault of the ISP. > Sometimes the washing…

Many cases I knew, people would have several repeaters and extra routers to extend coverage in big houses, and not set it up correctly in PA/Bridge mode, so peripheral network devices would be locked behind in a separate NAT’ed subnet.

I've dealt with this a ton trying to help troubleshoot people's home network problems during the early days of COVID WFH. [1] Some of the absolute messes I'd see were astounding, and they thought everything worked fine because all their phones and Apple TVs and kids PCs running Steam could all get to their cloud stuff fine, so why couldn't their company laptop talk to the printer they brought home and plugged into the "router" in the basement?

[1] Not something we'd /normally/ do, but when that was going on... You just had to get people working.

Re: Displaying My Washing Machine's Remaining Time with Curl, Jq, and Pizauth

#122
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually worked on an App for a company that made home appliances. Originally they made everything local, so direct App to Washing machine communication. They had a really hard time with that approach for a number of reasons. The first, and most obvious, reason is that getting your phone and (all) your appliances on the same network is non-trivial. Especially for a novice user. Sometimes the washing machine is in t…

> The first, and most obvious, reason is that getting your phone and (all) your appliances on the same network is non-trivial. What other networks do homes have? Every WiFi ISP router I have used provides a single network and DHCP server. Perhaps some routers provide both a public and private WiFi and the consumer doesn't understand which one they should pick but that is the fault of the ISP. > Sometimes the washing…

> What other networks do homes have? Every WiFi ISP router I have used provides a single network and DHCP server. Perhaps some routers provide both a public and private WiFi and the consumer doesn't understand which one they should pick but that is the fault of the ISP.

Think of times when your phone might not have connected to WiFi because you just got home, or are in some random dead spot. Or it just... isn't for a moment.

From the perspective of many consumers, without that always-available-via-cloud central point, it's then "broken".

Put it all in the cloud and so long as the phone and the device can get to "the internet" it'll be working.

Re: Displaying My Washing Machine's Remaining Time with Curl, Jq, and Pizauth

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first, and most obvious, reason is that getting your phone and (all) your appliances on the same network is non-trivial. What other networks do homes have? Every WiFi ISP router I have used provides a single network and DHCP server. Perhaps some routers provide both a public and private WiFi and the consumer doesn't understand which one they should pick but that is the fault of the ISP. > Sometimes the washing…

> What other networks do homes have? Every WiFi ISP router I have used provides a single network and DHCP server. Perhaps some routers provide both a public and private WiFi and the consumer doesn't understand which one they should pick but that is the fault of the ISP. Think of times when your phone might not have connected to WiFi because you just got home, or are in some random dead spot. Or it just... isn't for a…

But it's trivial to have the app display a message "please connect to your WiFi network"

Re: Displaying My Washing Machine's Remaining Time with Curl, Jq, and Pizauth

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What other networks do homes have? Every WiFi ISP router I have used provides a single network and DHCP server. Perhaps some routers provide both a public and private WiFi and the consumer doesn't understand which one they should pick but that is the fault of the ISP. Think of times when your phone might not have connected to WiFi because you just got home, or are in some random dead spot. Or it just... isn't for a…

But it's trivial to have the app display a message "please connect to your WiFi network"

What if the person has two networks at home? Or ends up on the neighbor's that they sometime use? Or their saved guest network? The user could well think "I am..." whether they are or aren't.

How would the phone know the /right/ network? All it can really know is it can't find the appliance.

Re: Displaying My Washing Machine's Remaining Time with Curl, Jq, and Pizauth

#125

>Putting aside any worries about connecting a high-speed rotating device to the internet lol, stuxnet reference? Although I believe the Iranian uranium centrifuges weren't actually connected

Correct, that's why it used a Windows USB auto prompt flaw, it spread via usb flash drives, but only activated if the conditions found in the uranium facility were present

Re: Displaying My Washing Machine's Remaining Time with Curl, Jq, and Pizauth

#126
post #119
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notifications when a cycle is done, time-based starting of cycles (put the clothes in the machine when you leave, but only start the cycle so that it's done when you're back, or just manually start a cycle from your phone while you're away), control your washing machine with voice assistants, maybe a few more things.

That sounds like something a simple timer would be able to achieve. To each their own, but the only thing that is connected to the internet in my home is the phone, and the PCs.

now connect the timer to the network so it can be activated with certain conditions, eg: I'm leaving work, the live traffic estimates 87 mins until I arrive, start the machine so it finishes when I get home.

Or: Energy will be cheapest to buy at 2:30am, start then.

Or: There is currently enough excess solar power to run the machine only using solar (bonus points for checking weather forcasts)

Re: Displaying My Washing Machine's Remaining Time with Curl, Jq, and Pizauth

#127

Great hack, but I’m sure any engineer worth their salt winces at the thought of a machine in their home roundtripping through far away 3rd party servers (I guess they’re the manufacturer’s, but if it’s hardware I own in my house those servers are 3rd party to me) just to notify them of a numerical value when they’re sitting literally 10 meters away (I live in the countryside and experience internet interruptions not…

Personally, "open source" is very low on the list of things that would convince me to pay several thousands dollars extra per appliance. That's just way too much money for something like "avoid pushing the buttons or getting up without needing third party servers." I'll just push the buttons, thanks.

Even just paying multiple times more for reliability in the forms of quality components is a hard sale. What if I move? Do I want to have to bother trying to take it with me and potentially replacing it for the next buyers? What if a new dishwasher in a decade is as much better than this one as this one is compared to the one I had ten years ago (seems unlikely, but possible?)?

Re: Displaying My Washing Machine's Remaining Time with Curl, Jq, and Pizauth

#128
post #93

Great hack, but I’m sure any engineer worth their salt winces at the thought of a machine in their home roundtripping through far away 3rd party servers (I guess they’re the manufacturer’s, but if it’s hardware I own in my house those servers are 3rd party to me) just to notify them of a numerical value when they’re sitting literally 10 meters away (I live in the countryside and experience internet interruptions not…

I actually worked on an App for a company that made home appliances. Originally they made everything local, so direct App to Washing machine communication. They had a really hard time with that approach for a number of reasons. The first, and most obvious, reason is that getting your phone and (all) your appliances on the same network is non-trivial. Especially for a novice user. Sometimes the washing machine is in t…

>Sometimes the washing machine is in the basement and can't connect to your WiFi

...snip...

>The cloud approach solves this.

How? You just stipulated the machine can't connect to wifi

Re: Displaying My Washing Machine's Remaining Time with Curl, Jq, and Pizauth

#130

Great hack, but I’m sure any engineer worth their salt winces at the thought of a machine in their home roundtripping through far away 3rd party servers (I guess they’re the manufacturer’s, but if it’s hardware I own in my house those servers are 3rd party to me) just to notify them of a numerical value when they’re sitting literally 10 meters away (I live in the countryside and experience internet interruptions not…

> I would happily pay several times the price of regular appliances . . . if they were . . . fully open source PCB/firmware/schematics/etc . . .

How willing would you be to pay 1-2 factors less for the Shenzhen clone that hits market 1-2 weeks later based on the same open designs?

There's a reason these companies don't exist, you have no competitive edge except good will.

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