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I won't connect my dishwasher to your cloud

jeffgeerling.com

191–200 of 682 posts

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

#191

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…

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.

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

#192

One thing I've learned when buying a full set of appliances couple of years ago: don't read consumer reports or reviews by randos on the internet -- instead, go to industry literature, and read reports by/for service and warranty providers. They have actual hard data on the types and frequency of problems across brands and models. But back to the main theme of the article: hell to the no was my initial attitude, and…

Download and read the manual before buying a product. I avoided buying an air filter recently because the manual made it clear that there was no auto mode, which I would have expected at the price.

Downloading the manual may have helped Jeff dodge this product.

Web search has become a nightmare for consumer purchase research - it's all affiliate driven. Even the old traditional trusted names are just phoning it in with affiliate content churn.

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

#193

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…

> by the time I read that it needs to use their website for some functions. > you cannot use all the functions without creating an account on their website and have them run those functions for you. Which functions? This is a really confusing post without knowing what those functions are.

TFA made it pretty clear that rinse cycle, delayed start, and eco mode require the app.

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

#194
I’m at the point where shopping for any equipment from toaster to car/home, this is the primary thing I’m looking for first before purchasing is I need to know exactly how it works/operates. Everything is Wi-Fi enabled and smart but I need to be sold that I can operate it without connecting it. And if I can’t use the core features, the way dumb equipment would have worked, then it’s an immediate no go. I don’t care about most of the extra smart features I never had before on most things.

There are a few exceptions of course. Where remote access is a major value add. Home security systems, garage doors, deadbolts, etc fall into that cohort but that’s about it so far.

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

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, misrepresentation is basic contract law stuff that would be generally valid in the US too, but: 1. there's probably no evidence of it 2. the workers at the store will deny it 3. the workers at the store likely have no grasp of contract law and will insist on whatever their store policy is 4. hiring a lawyer to return a dishwasher is a waste of time for most anyone knowledgable enough to know that this is a vali…

I will never buy anything Bosch again after reading this thread. What other reason could Bosch have for hiding this functionality behind a website and user account if not to monetize it down the line or worse, bring more of the functionality behind a paywall. We already saw what happened with HP charging to print and even the recent Chromecast outage where something that should be handled locally is pinging back to G…

> pinging back to Google and then working

I still have a bricked Android phone from nonsense like that. If you:

1. Factory reset the phone while not logged in to the last Google account on the phone

2. Have the Google account invalidated (e.g., using an identity verification app on a temp noogler account, ...)

You'll never be able to access the phone again. The "factory reset" maintains some internal state despite a scary message on the screen promising everything is deleted and asking if that's really what you want, and it'll require the last working password.

Alright ... annoying, buggy (the fact that there are two factory resets and one doesn't reset the device is a problem; either fix or delete the broken one, or make the scary message scarier), but fine in my case.

It checks that password against Google's servers though instead of the local hash, and it doesn't even matter if you know the password; the fact that the account is inactive prevents you from accessing the phone.

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

#196
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never buy anything Bosch again after reading this thread. What other reason could Bosch have for hiding this functionality behind a website and user account if not to monetize it down the line or worse, bring more of the functionality behind a paywall. We already saw what happened with HP charging to print and even the recent Chromecast outage where something that should be handled locally is pinging back to G…

> pinging back to Google and then working I still have a bricked Android phone from nonsense like that. If you: 1. Factory reset the phone while not logged in to the last Google account on the phone 2. Have the Google account invalidated (e.g., using an identity verification app on a temp noogler account, ...) You'll never be able to access the phone again. The "factory reset" maintains some internal state despite a…

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 Google the carriers can just do it usually.

I managed a fleet of mobiles at work for a while, this is how I know. It often happened that colleagues returned a phone without unlocking it.

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

#197

This is why I buy “commercial” appliances when I can. My speed queen washer and dryer each have two knobs and a start button. Thats all you need. I doubt I will need to ever replace them.

Speed Queens are great and very expensive. Many consumers will have sticker shock at their price.

But they last 25 years so they'll save you big bucks in the long run.

https://www.donsappliances.com/blog/speed-queen-washers

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

#198
At what point will we grow tired of this and make open standards for control of these appliances like comma, where one can buy an established unit and modify it with a microcontroller. I know there are jokes about the quirks of open source hardware and software, but what if the alternative is almost as bad

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

#199

And all this stuff could work directly locally, it'd even make alternatives possible and it'd be an immensely better experience. It would eliminate the latency it takes for the requests to reach halfway across the world and back. It would also eliminate a lot of the privacy and security concerns. What makes it worse is that these cloud connections also tend to be insecure and unreliable or both. I've seen multiple ve…

Unencrypted protocols basically are open access. It's easy to reverse engineer, and then you can just point the DNS address of their cloud at your server to make it work locally (or worst case hijack their IP). It's the encrypted connections that you need to be wary of.

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

#200
post #182

I recently bought and installed the same dishwasher. I also don't like the app requirement to access some features. But contrary to some of the other comments, I feel the need point out that it's still a fully functional dishwasher even if you never connect it to Wifi. You will miss out on a few "advanced" features, but it washes dishes really well. I read the manual before I bought it, and I got the performance I ex…

> But contrary to some of the other comments, I feel the need point out that it's still a fully functional dishwasher even if you never connect it to Wifi. Thanks. Some of the other comments are implying that they’re missing something important without WiFi but nobody seems to want to explain what’s missing. Can you explain what features are missing without the WiFi connection?

> It says options with an asterisk—including Rinse, Machine Care (self-cleaning), HalfLoad, Eco, and Delay start, are "available through Home Connect app only and depending on your model."
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