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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

#311

Post by nullify88 »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #140

I have this exact dishwasher. To connect the app to it you have to go through a cloud account, but to its credit, you can turn the cloud connection off afterward and the app will then only talk to it through local wifi. The dishwasher answers on SSH port 22. I suspect that the app's direct connection uses this and exchanges credentials via the initial cloud setup (so no cloud, no app connection either way). I've foun…

Yes, I have the same one and I'm surprised the switch to disable it's Internet connectivity was missed and instead everyone's raging about IOT. The app is able to establish a local connection to the dishwasher and it's one of the few that can do this.

I'm very happy with the app. If you didn't already fetch electricity prices, it can display them in the app and automatically delay washing until it's cheapest. The dishwasher can also be extended by downloading additional wash programs.

It seems to be well thought out. LGs app in comparison is absolute pants and has no option for local connectivity.

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

#312

Post by rkagerer »

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…

Out of curiosity, how long did 'ya spend on that blog post, the YouTube video, and various platforms reading/answering comments related to this experience?

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

#313

Post by necovek »

Larrikin wrote: post #82
financetechbro wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How complicated of software does one need in a dishwasher? Feels like a solution looking for a problem

How do I use Home Assistant to run my dish washer, charge my electric car, start my washing machine, etc based on the capacity of my solar array's battery and the fluctuation of electricity prices day to day to pay the least amount of money without software connectivity? All of this is possible today with the right hardware. It does NOT need cloud connectivity and all of these devices should be able to communicate lo…

I agree that's the goal we as a community should steer to.

But on how we do that, my opinion seems to differ.

I postulate that it's hard (expensive) to do what you suggest: finding people to build that for every customer, while not increasing support costs is tricky today.

Just ensuring your personal computing device (a phone, laptop or server running home assistant) can see and talk to your device is a hard problem (which is why the go to solution is poke a hole in your router fw by pushing data to a server, and have mobile app only talk to the cloud).

Can we, as a software development community, come up with an approach that makes this easy to do for local first but remote enabled?

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

#315

Post by hommelix »

I've got a few Bosch appliances. I like the Bosch website where I can get spare parts [1]. When the door spring of my 15 years old dishwasher broke a couple of years ago, I went to the Bosch website, enters the model number and got an exploded view with all the parts. I ordered the spring and replaced it myself. A few minutes of work. Much faster than finding a repair guy with a free appointment slot. My Bosch washing machine has a WiFi label on it. Never connected it. Only using the buttons on the front panels. On the same website, you can get the instruction manual PDF, so I usually have a peek review in the manual of a device before buying. I don't know if that spare parts service is available everywhere but I have used it in 3 European country so far.

[1] https://www.bosch-home.com/de/produkte/ersatzteile

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

#316

Post by moepstar »

h0l0cube wrote: post #136
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has to be some backpressure on the supply chain. I appreciate that you used your clout to make the issue public, but sometimes I worry that it only goes so far as our little echo chamber.

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 easier and more approachable to hack, rip out, replace the control electronics. Chances are this is going to work on more model than the one...

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

#317

Post by necovek »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #223
necovek wrote: post #59

While it's utterly true these features will simply get abandoned by the manufacturer, people seem to discount how hard (read: expensive) it is to develop local-first software, especially the one you want to just work with a mobile app that might or might not be on the same local network or subnet (try explaining that bit to your regular Bosch customer). Since we are, ultimately, such a minority, I am sure that not ev…

people seem to discount how hard (read: expensive) it is to develop local-first software How hard and how expensive is it? It used to just be called "software" for four decades and literally everything was made this way up until a few years ago so I think the evidence is against you on this one.

It was made for different use cases.

Nobody had a personal computing device in their pocket 90% of their awake time.

Now the goal for product department is to make their newly "smart" devices accessible to said computing devices.

The simplest solution that (almost) always works on home networks is to initiate an outgoing connection to an external server (the "cloud"), push notifications and poll for commands; after, have the mobile app only talk to the server.

If you do anything else, you are at the very least setting yourself up for support nightmare: "I am at home and I can't access my washer through the app" (are you on the same network? maybe your phone has wifi turned off?)

For usecases of the sort, this is one general solution that — from the perspective of a PM — always works.

By simply discounting reality that it's more expensive to implement both locally accessible smart devices, yet keep remote capability, and discounting that support costs are going to balloon too, we are not driving to a positive outcome for all of ourselves either.

I think we should focus on getting the cost down, by building better tooling and protocols and patterns that make it easy for a mobile app (or any client) to discover and talk to any smart device, making it simple for a customer to decide if they want remote capability or not.

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

#318

Post by mock-possum »

cocoto wrote: post #267
bandrami wrote: post #261

I live in an apartment building whose walls don't really attenuate RF at all. And like most of the building I have a Samsung "smart" TV. So most evenings I get three or four screencast requests from neighbors' phones that I have to deny. That's annoying enough but it also stops whatever I'm watching in the process. The manual didn't include instructions for turning off Bluetooth, and when I called Samsung they said y…

Simply rename the device “malware” at this point.

It wouldn’t make a difference

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

#319

Post by jart »

Jeff, you left out the juiciest part of the story, which is that the Bosch Home Connect iPhone app hoovers up your Search History data. Anyone know how much that data is worth? I made the same mistake of buying the 500 and it's just so ridiculous that I need to reveal my most intimate Google moments to a dishwasher in order to use its advanced features which I won't. When I was building Internet technology in the 1990s and optimistic about the future, never in my fiercest nightmares could I have predicted that this is how normies would use it and that it'd be considered normal. What kind of monster do you have to be to use home appliances as leverage to spy on people? There seriously needs to be a different planet for people like us.

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

#320

Post by i2shar »

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…

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