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LG washing machine sending 3.7GB of data a day

tomshardware.com

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Re: LG washing machine sending 3.7GB of data a day

#71

Post by userbinator »

redbell wrote: post #31

> An LG washing machine owner and self-confessed fintech geek has asked the Twitterverse why his smart home appliance ate an average of 3.66GB of data daily. What about non-techies?! How would they notice and react to such data harvesting behaviors in their homes' appliances, computers, phones, gadgets? I believe there must be a bare minimum of self-awareness to deal with the ever-evolving digital world we live in.

Awareness is the last thing the companies who create these things want users to have.

Re: LG washing machine sending 3.7GB of data a day

#72

Post by whstl »

jliptzin wrote: post #39
mft_ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm totally with you, except a notification that it's finished would actually be really helpful. It's apparently possible to track a washing machine's progress with a smart switch that monitors power draw; I've got one lying around so might try to implement that soon, to complement my hacky RPi-Ring-doorbell-announcer :)

This is the best approach, if you can do it. Keep the devices dumb and add in whatever modules you need on top to make them as "smart" as you want them to be.

Some Ikea stuff does it halfway. Local-only Zigbee, so it's not exactly dumb, but if you want to go online you can buy a gateway.

Re: LG washing machine sending 3.7GB of data a day

#74

Post by vsgherzi »

stock_toaster wrote: post #63
yakz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Ubiquiti UniFi UDM is not good at device identification. It's kind of annoying because I have this big list of devices on the network and it's peppered with devices that I know don't exist. I'd appreciate it if it said something like "Maybe iPad Air", instead of just "iPad Pro 2nd Gen" when I know no such device is on my network.

ios devices (unsure about android) use random MACs on wireless networks by default. https://support.apple.com/en-us/102509

Random aside for this, I believe this functionality existed for many years but actually hasn’t worked until recently. (Take this with a grain of salt)

Re: LG washing machine sending 3.7GB of data a day

#75

Post by noirbot »

poisonborz wrote: post #69
mft_ wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our washing machine offers various programs between 30 minutes and 2 hours and 40 minutes. Yes, it's not hard to set an alarm, except the timing on the washing machine is unreliable (I've lost count of how many times I've set an alarn with a few minutes extra and still had to wait longer.) It would just be nice to have a little notification - making that chore 1% pleasanter. :)

They all make a sound when done, you could set up a SoC with a microphone to listen to it. Or monitor power draw. Many ways to do it externally.

My worry would be that you'd have to do some diagnostics on the audio to determine the actual sound. The loudest noise my washer makes is the spin/rinse cycle, which is right before the sound it makes when it's done. You can't just key off of "loud noise" and I don't know how hard setting up to listen to specific frequencies for alerting is.

Re: LG washing machine sending 3.7GB of data a day

#76

Post by jethro_tell »

poisonborz wrote: post #62
gberger wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 12 bytes per second, or less than 1kB per minute. Doesn't seem like much.

For telemetry on a washing machine, it is enormous.

That's WiFi/Bluetooth signal strength mapping amounts of data.

Re: LG washing machine sending 3.7GB of data a day

#77

Post by tzs »

For those who do not want WiFi on their appliances you still can get highly rated reasonably priced washing machines without WiFi, even from the companies that are putting WiFi in nearly everything.

E.g., I recently bought an LG WM3400CW washing machine for $650. On Consumer Reports it is tied for 3rd on the front loader ratings list. The LG 3900 and 4000 are tied for #1 with overall scores of 87, then the 3400, 8900, and 3600 tied for #3 with overall scores of 85.

Nearly every LG has WiFi nowadays, but not the 3400. Consumer Reports says it does but I think they probably got confused because it has LG's "Smart Diagnosis" which lets you get diagnostic information via LG's mobile app.

On models with WiFi Smart Diagnosis does indeed use WiFi.

On models without WiFi it uses sound. The washing machine plays sounds that sound similar to the sounds that acoustic modems made back in the pre-broadband internet days. Their mobile app listens to those and extracts the diagnostics data.

Re: LG washing machine sending 3.7GB of data a day

#79

Post by account-5 »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #45
H8crilA wrote: post #38

Why hasn't anyone mentioned a botnet yet? Those devices are perfect targets for Mirai clones. (yes, you still cannot run a mailserver at home, currently because we live in the age of Internet of Shit).

This was the first thing that came to mind. Imagine a fleet of laundry machines each sending 3.7GB of data. That's the perfect way to run a DDOS, and nobody will ever notice.

For some reason the scene in the mall from The Mitchell's Vs the machines popped into my head:

> delicates, fluff n fold, carnage!

Re: LG washing machine sending 3.7GB of data a day

#80

Post by notpachet »

tzs wrote: post #77

For those who do not want WiFi on their appliances you still can get highly rated reasonably priced washing machines without WiFi, even from the companies that are putting WiFi in nearly everything. E.g., I recently bought an LG WM3400CW washing machine for $650. On Consumer Reports it is tied for 3rd on the front loader ratings list. The LG 3900 and 4000 are tied for #1 with overall scores of 87, then the 3400, 8900…

> On models without WiFi it uses sound. The washing machine plays sounds that sound similar to the sounds that acoustic modems made back in the pre-broadband internet days. Their mobile app listens to those and extracts the diagnostics data.

That's actually pretty cool! I think we should use this for more stuff to help usher in the R2-D2 future.

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