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

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

#151
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…

> To solve all this they decided to build a cloud API that would resolve all these problems in one go. It solves everything except for the fact that, for people like me, it means we'll never actually give network access to the devices.

Not judging, but you represent such a small fraction of the market that companies simply don’t deem it worth it when looking at the cost of supporting LAN-only. Just imagine the support tickets they’ll get.

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

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can we at least consider that the solution to poorly designed technology is not more poorly designed technology? If users can't set up routers and extenders properly, that may say more about the designers of the routers than the people using them. I'm nominally an expert user, but a lot of these products make me WTAF regularly.

We can consider it, but Miele won’t. Their problem is connecting your washer to your phone and going through the cloud has other side benefits for them as well, such as telemetry, so here we are and will be.

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

#153

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…

We just got a Bosch oven whose timer would count down to 1:01 and stop. Further, it has two timers and only one of them did this, elevating this bug from surprising to nearly inconceivable. Then, to fix it they had to send a repair person out with an entire new controller board.

So yeah, some fundamental restructuring would be good here. (BTW, to be fair, the controller was made by Diehl Controls, not Bosch.)

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

#154

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…

If "engineers worth their salt" would wince at this practice, then who is implementing this "feature" for the manufacturers.

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

#155

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’d pay more for NO firmware in my washing machine. This is beyond my desire to just keep things simple. What is the point of washing machine you can control remotely? You have to put clothes in at the start and take them out at the end. It offers no convenience.

Only the most expensive Miele washing machines have Wifi. The basic models don't.

So it seems people are willing to pay extra for the feature.

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

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with front loaders, and it's a fatal flaw unfortunately, is they unavoidably have mold and mildew problems due to the design. This makes them an invalid option in my opinion as I don't want mold and mildew spores in my home. They also begin to stink and your clothing can pick it up over time as it gets worse. The other problem is many top loaders today are garbage. In order to be effective they do need a…

> is they unavoidably have mold and mildew problems due to the design. Keep the door open. The water evaporates. Never had a problem avoiding mold.

It’s more about residues that get left behind and trapped in the rubber gasket. Keeping a dour open, although helpful, simply isn’t enough. A big part of the problem is due to the limited water use. Things don’t fully rinse.

I don’t know, it’s a major problem that people report and I’ve experienced myself. There’s even a fan you can buy and put into the machine. But hey if you haven’t experienced problems then that’s great.

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

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A mechanical controlled washing machine with a mechanical timer on the plug would, reliably, achieve the same thing. no need for networks and external servers. A timed controlled smart plug, with current monitoring, would be able to achieve the IOT aspect of the problem.

It would need to be a very specific kind of washing machine (that hopefully probably exists) to make your idea work. A fully analog/mechanical washing machine is just a big mechanical timer controlled relay behind the knob like a toaster oven. If you set it without power, it just runs through the timer without doing anything. The machine would need to have a timer mechanism that is turned by an electric clock motor,…

Toaster ovens use spring wound timers, as they are simple and easy to mass manufacture. Its a simple time off delay

Mechanical Washing machines don't use spring wound clocks, they run of the AC frequency of the mains. It generally drives a small solenoid that increments the clock. The control drum is significant more complex than a toaster ovens timer

My current electronic washing machine saves its current cycle state when it looses power, and happily continues when power resumes 2 hours later (unlike my dishwasher, which does not). Although You'd have to start it before turning off the relay, so not as easy as the old mechanical dials

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

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To solve all this they decided to build a cloud API that would resolve all these problems in one go. It solves everything except for the fact that, for people like me, it means we'll never actually give network access to the devices.

Not judging, but you represent such a small fraction of the market that companies simply don’t deem it worth it when looking at the cost of supporting LAN-only. Just imagine the support tickets they’ll get.

Oh yeah, I'm fully aware of that. Somewhat ironically, the one device (garage door opener) that I did allow to do its cloud thing works so poorly that I gave up on trying to make it work and turned off the WiFi. The remote open never worked, the "notify me when the door is open after 9pm" alerts would arrive days later, etc. And, of course, the user interface looked and felt like one developed by an industry where the existing UX was a single button.

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

#159

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 also like this (well I want something entirely mechanical with no software at all) but short of people designing entirely open and 3d printable versions on their own time, this will never happen.

Well maybe with ChatGPT 6...

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

#160
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often wondered why no new manufacturer has appeared with a stacked system that can wash clothes in a top washer and then dump them into a bottom dryer, or even an all-in-one frontloader.

Front-loaded machines with both a washer and heat-pump dryer exists. I've had one for many years. It's quite handy if you have light loads, but I much prefer having a stack of separate washer and dryer, even though it means I have to manually move them from one to the other.

You know I had the vague thought of searching to see if they were actually out there but dismissed it as unlikely (at least in NA) because I've recently been appliance shopping and never saw one in person.
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