Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I won't connect my dishwasher to your cloud

jeffgeerling.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 682 posts

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

#371

Post by AnthonyMouse »

kube-system wrote: post #202
wkat4242 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an anti theft feature. Intended to make the phone useless to a thief. It doesn't work very well, thieves manage to get around it somehow (not so much with Apple's version) so it ends up annoying the users more than it does deter thieves. Apple is really really difficult about getting these unlocked. The carriers can't do it, you have to show them proof of purchase and have an enterprise support contract. With…

It is a very good thing that Apple is tough about it, given the high value of the devices, and how people carry them around in public. I very much want my devices to be useless to thieves.

It's still not clear how this requires Apple to do anything or why it should have anything to do with any cloud service.

The IMEI is burned into the phone. They should definitely make it hard to change the IMEI; but they do. If the phone is stolen then the IMEI gets reported as stolen and anyone who tries to activate the phone with a wireless carrier gets caught.

Why does Apple or Google need to inconvenience people who forget their passwords or encounter the conglomerate's bugs?

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

#372

Post by varjag »

floating-io wrote: post #353
colechristensen wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hi…

If your hardware has a clock >32Khz, you need FCC certification. It doesn't matter if it deliberately uses radio or not, last I checked.

Intentional radiators have additional certification requirements.

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

#373

Post by harvey9 »

darkwater wrote: post #354
inferiorhuman wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The previous generation of Bosch dishwashers in the US were WiFi free. The current generation went through a round of cost cutting and added WiFi bullshit to everything. No idea what the state is of their appliances sold in other markets. As far as I can tell Electrolux is the only manufacturer selling "dumb" laundry kit in the US these days… which is probably part of why everyone's favorite LG shills (Yale Appliance…

> The current generation went through a round of cost cutting and added WiFi bullshit to everything I'm no dishwasher expert and I guess they did their homework but over a period of 10 years, how can be cheaper to remove the local functionality, add a wifi chip, redo the manuals, and pay for the datacenter costs?

I would guess they used cheaper materials for the moving parts and case.

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

#374

Post by jmward01 »

I want fun features, but my trust in these companies not to abuse that is -1000% (I minored in math). The company and Consumer Reports need to be blasted here. Yes, Consumer Reports. This is a lemon of a feature. They should be warning people that you need a cloud account/app to use the advertised features and dropping the score on these things because that is clearly not consumer friendly and will lead to features being unavailable when the company decides to turn them off. Oh, and they definitely are selling your info to someone so there is that.

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

#375

Post by Nursie »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #258
Nursie wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this just an american thing/model? I have a Bosch Series 6 dishwasher here in Australia. It has physical buttons for all the stuff he mentions - Machine Care (self-cleaning), HalfLoad, Eco, and Delay start. I did connect it to wifi which allows me to ... do the same stuff from their app. It's next to useless in my use pattern of "load the dishwasher, run the dishwasher". Literally all it adds is the ability to mor…

The previous generation of Bosch dishwashers in the US were WiFi free. The current generation went through a round of cost cutting and added WiFi bullshit to everything. No idea what the state is of their appliances sold in other markets. As far as I can tell Electrolux is the only manufacturer selling "dumb" laundry kit in the US these days… which is probably part of why everyone's favorite LG shills (Yale Appliance…

The ones on the bosch US website do have different model numbers and a different look compared to Bosch UK/AU/DE, which is a little odd. But even then there are models similar to mine, which have Wifi but don't rely on it - https://www.bosch-home.com/us/en/mkt-product/dishwashers/fro...

Seems like the "top control" range, which I can't even see in other countries, might be what's presenting the problem to the author.

IDGAF about appliances being dumb or smart, but I agree it's not a great thing if you have to use smart controls. Provide both and we're all good IMHO.

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

#376

Post by squigz »

tzs wrote: post #225
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…

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…

> The way "Smart Diagnosis" in the app works with the WM3400CW is that the washing machine sends the data to the app acoustically. Press the button sequence to start a diagnosis on the washing machine and it sounds very similar to an old analog modem. The app listens to that with your phone's microphone.

This sounds far, far better to me - and just goes to show it's not necessary for everything to be connected to the Internet...

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

#377

Post by vladvasiliu »

LocalH wrote: post #331
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dishwasher electronics are subject to elevated heat and humidity levels. A DIY solution will be extremely unreliable. An amateurish job on the power electronics can be a fire hazard and will void any insurance policy if they find out what you did.

The world used to be driven by DIY. Now, people are afraid of it (or advocate against it) in some way. What changed?

People living in shared spaces. If you burn down your house in a village, there's a good chance this can be stopped before it reaches your neighbor's a few hundred meters away. If you burn down your apartment, there are now multiple neighbors without a home.

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

#378

Post by varjag »

powersnail wrote: post #249
kube-system wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a very good thing that Apple is tough about it, given the high value of the devices, and how people carry them around in public. I very much want my devices to be useless to thieves.

I want to know whether this actually deters thieves. Anecdotally, from what I heard, it seems that phone stealing is very much still a thing in areas with active pickpocketing.

When five years ago thieves broke into my sons' class locker room, they stole all android phones and cash but didn't bother to take iphones. So yes it works or at least it did back then.

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

#379

Post by h0l0cube »

moepstar wrote: post #316
h0l0cube wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there's an opening in the market for an appliance company that brands itself on self-repair and self-hosted connectivity? All most people want is "push button and do the thing as long as I live".

Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. I mean, we all know what people say they want and what they'll do when/if they buy something may be two totally different things. And: creating a dishwasher (or $appliance) that does its actual job good enough to be worth buying isn't something that can be hacked up in a weekend or two. Edit to add: maybe - as Bosch pretty much has figured out how to make good diswhasheres - it'd be…

The calculation about whether to repair something or not usually hinges around labor and material costs vs replacement cost. The more difficult something is to repair, and the more expensive the components are, the less like it is to be repaired.

It's probably also true that high turnover of goods across brands due to early replacement allows for slimmer margins and higher yields, and hence lower cost of purchase. So on the other extreme, make things break more often and sell them cheaper and more often, which seems to be the status quo.

The economic problem to solve, then, is how to encourage brands to increase the durability of their goods. There are some review publications that perform stress-testing, but few keep metrics on long-term durability in a real-world setting. At a minimum, I check consumer review sites before I buy just to avoid the worst brands, and there you do see some people coming back after a few years to leave a warning to other people. And perhaps this kind of feedback has some effect.

Hopefully people start prizing 'dumb' products, and start leaving bad reviews on products that rely on an internet connection, when they're left stranded after the connection drops out.

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

#380

Post by agent86 »

I'd like to play devil's advocate for a minute and ask a question:

Does anyone know exactly what the Bosch service sends the dishwasher?

While I agree that connecting a dishwasher to the Internet should not be necessary, it does open the door to an interesting scenario if what gets sent to the dishwasher is not a command to run a mode but an actual program to control the dishwasher. In theory that would mean that Bosch could alter the programs that get sent to improve the dishwasher over time.

On a dishwasher with no connectivity the modes simply are what they are from the factory. But on a connected dishwasher if the Bosch engineers figure out that when in ECO mode using every third sprayer saves water while not altering the cleaning performance expected of that mode, they can update the payload and make the dishwasher you already have even more efficient. They could also in theory create a whole library of modes for specific use cases or scenarios (All glass, hard water, etc.)

Of course, this has potential drawbacks as well. They could change a mode and alter behavior you expect, and it could potentially be a hacker's playground, but if done well it could be a net positive.

Post reply on HN