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I won't connect my dishwasher to your cloud

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: I won't connect my dishwasher to your cloud

#321

Post by gryfft »

8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #289
sureIy wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like great use of technology if you ask me. The only thing I'd complain about is that data would not be E2E encrypted :)

Why can't it be E2E encrypted? If you can encode data on sound waves, surely you can encode encrypted data on sound waves.

Seems to me like the overhead it would add would way outweigh the benefit for the use case. I wouldn't want to wait an extra 10 seconds for the audio to finish transmitting every time just to prevent nonexistent spies in my kitchen from listening in.

Re: I won't connect my dishwasher to your cloud

#323

Post by kazinator »

> Cloud should be an add-on.

I don't agree; dishwashers that connect to the Internet should not exist.

At most, a dishwasher's network connectivity should be restricted to the presence of firmware which serves a web UI. Everything should be doable via the web UI, whose commands should ideally be URL-driven, so they can be easily automated with simple requests.

A laser printer doesn't need to connect to the cloud; why does a dishwasher?

Re: I won't connect my dishwasher to your cloud

#324

Post by rendall »

geerlingguy wrote: post #78
klipklop wrote: post #56

I feel Jeff should have bit the bullet and just returned it. I know it's a waste of time, but these products have to be rejected at retail. Retailers will eventually get tired of the extra support burden and demand manufacturers drop stuff like this. They should all get hit with the open box problem from the returns.

I'd love to take a stance like that, but the reality is I've already sunk about 6 hours total into the whole operation, and I have quite limited time for my home maintenance + improvement projects as it is (my bench currently has a new faucet set to fix the leaky bathroom faucet, as well as an exhaust fan to fix the broken one in our bathroom... and those are just the things that are currently broken , not the dozen…

> I've already sunk about 6 hours total into the whole operation...

I suspect you're going to sink a whole lot more time over the unsatisfactory lifetime of the dishwasher. It sounds like the sunk-cost fallacy.

Re: I won't connect my dishwasher to your cloud

#325

Post by imp0cat »

65 wrote: post #206

This is very stereotypical Hacker News blog post. The only thing is, you know you can, like, buy a dishwasher that doesn't connect to Wifi? At this point some things are better with bluetooth/wifi. The laundry machine in my building connects via Bluetooth to an app and I can pay for my laundry using it. Do you realize how much better that is than having to go to the bank every few weeks (during work because of course…

It's a proven recipe that will boost your blog's rankings.

1. Buy dishwasher that requires wifi 2. Complain loudly that said dishwasher requires wifi 3. Post on HN

Re: I won't connect my dishwasher to your cloud

#326

Post by Svip »

dorfsmay wrote: post #131

Bosch! I ran into the same situation. I specifically told the salesperson I didn't want wifi, and they told me it's only if you want it to operate from your phone. I was done installing it and got rid of the packaging by the time I read that it needs to use their website for some functions. Beside the fact that I doubt the store would take it back after using it for a week or two and havi go no packaging, I had no ti…

These days, Bosch is wholly owned by Siemens. And their appliances are basically the same. Except Bosch is now their experimental branch, where they try out ideas for products. Only those that are successful become Siemens products. So uhm, just buy a Siemens dishwasher, it's unlikely to have an app requirement.

Re: I won't connect my dishwasher to your cloud

#327

Post by eisa01 »

Svip wrote: post #326
dorfsmay wrote: post #131

Bosch! I ran into the same situation. I specifically told the salesperson I didn't want wifi, and they told me it's only if you want it to operate from your phone. I was done installing it and got rid of the packaging by the time I read that it needs to use their website for some functions. Beside the fact that I doubt the store would take it back after using it for a week or two and havi go no packaging, I had no ti…

These days, Bosch is wholly owned by Siemens. And their appliances are basically the same. Except Bosch is now their experimental branch, where they try out ideas for products. Only those that are successful become Siemens products. So uhm, just buy a Siemens dishwasher, it's unlikely to have an app requirement.

Also Gaggenau and NEFF are BSH group brands

They all use HomeConnect

https://www.bsh-group.com/

Re: I won't connect my dishwasher to your cloud

#329

Post by colechristensen »

i2shar wrote: post #320
tzs wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had sort of the opposite situation. I needed a new washer and all the top rated ones according to Consumer Reports included WiFi. I asked at Home Depot if the one I was thinking of getting, an LG WM3400CW, required me to actually use the WiFi and they said no. I used it for a few weeks without ever even trying to set up WiFi and everything was fine. Then I found at that when you set up an LG washer for WiFi you can…

Why not just use Bluetooth? I'd be suspicious if the Dishwasher app requested permission to access the phone's microphone

You can implement an audio modem with much dumber hardware and it would be cheaper and less vulnerable to nonsense, especially if all you're sending is a few bytes. Then you also don't need to do FCC certification. Seriously bitbanging an audio modem to broadcast error codes from a $0.20 BOM microcontroller and a little buzzer speaker would be a fun project to give to a summer intern. (If anyone wants to believe a highly falsified resume and would believe I'm 15 years younger, I'd be happy to join your company for the summer :D )

Re: I won't connect my dishwasher to your cloud

#330

Post by Retr0id »

gryfft wrote: post #321
8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't it be E2E encrypted? If you can encode data on sound waves, surely you can encode encrypted data on sound waves.

Seems to me like the overhead it would add would way outweigh the benefit for the use case. I wouldn't want to wait an extra 10 seconds for the audio to finish transmitting every time just to prevent nonexistent spies in my kitchen from listening in.

The data/time overhead would be negligible. Engineering overhead to implement it on the other hand, perhaps not.
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