61–70 of 122 posts
I just want normal buttons and dials back. Not time-based capacitance buttons that take 5.02 seconds to activate, not 5.0 seconds; nor free-spinning encoder wheels that mandate you give it a jiggle before the washer does anything, even if it's already on the setting you want. I want kachunk-a-chunk back first. Then we can decide if it needs smarts.
Can we keep the happy sunshiny tune it plays when it completes the job?
I just want normal buttons and dials back. Not time-based capacitance buttons that take 5.02 seconds to activate, not 5.0 seconds; nor free-spinning encoder wheels that mandate you give it a jiggle before the washer does anything, even if it's already on the setting you want. I want kachunk-a-chunk back first. Then we can decide if it needs smarts.
I feel very sorry for the visually impaired that are looking for house appliances in this decade
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with kerchunk-a-wheels and real pushbuttons (and the not-smarts they imply) is that they're expensive. They're more expensive (and more failure-prone) than the rotary encoders, mush-buttons, and brain-boxes that replaced them. But one cool part about things like motorized kerchunk-a-wheels is that, upon failure, a motivated person on Gilligan's Island can often mend them back into service with a screwdriv…
But these are [often] thousand dollar appliances. "Capacitive buttons are cheaper" shouldn't be a factor. It's hard to understand why companies can't build things to last, use real buttons, provide parts for servicing at cost, add local APIs for anything "smart", forgo any secondary income streams (eg screens showing ads), and still make a profit .
When the electronicals are bottled up behind a sheet of glass or Perspex or whatever, then: They tend to last longer because their operating environment becomes less hazardous to them.
Exact hourly rates vary too much to write about specifics, but whatever they are: Sending a tech out to look at a thing costs real money (in the ballpark of hundreds of dollars, not dozens) that really bites into profit margin of any individual unit sale.
It bites into the margin even if the root problem is that the owner's roommate's friend pissed into the control panel with a head full of acid. They'll still be paying someone to physically go out and make that determination.
So if mush-buttons generate fewer service calls than push-buttons do, then: It's a big advantage to a manufacturer.
So... I think it's quite easy to understand how we got to where we are: Fewer moving parts + better environmental isolation for those parts = less after-sale risk.
(I don't necessarily like it, but there's lots of other things in the world that make good financial sense at the manufacturing level that I'm also not fond of. I can accept this reality without also pretending that it can't make sense for someone, somewhere.
Good answers? Speed Queen, for one, still makes good washers with real knobs and real buttons, for the consumer who favors these features.
Just add a smart plug or current monitoring and an iteration of Home Assistant or whatever running on a sleepy little Raspberry Pi or a VM/container or something to detect and notify soon after the wash is done. End-of-cycle detection is really all that is ever needed for smarts anyway. And that may sound convoluted, but these are smarts that you control yourself and are about as open-source as anyone may wish them to be.
(I don't want an appliance that I hope to last for 20 years or more to be connected to any networks at all: "Wake up, babe; new rootkit just dropped and our clothes washer is fucked" isn't a meme that I want to live through, even if it does have a nice API running on a stack that was last updated in [checks calendar] 2005.))
I just want normal buttons and dials back. Not time-based capacitance buttons that take 5.02 seconds to activate, not 5.0 seconds; nor free-spinning encoder wheels that mandate you give it a jiggle before the washer does anything, even if it's already on the setting you want. I want kachunk-a-chunk back first. Then we can decide if it needs smarts.
Capacitive buttons are very inaccessible it's honestly need to be a crime to be making such appliances I feel very sorry for the visually impaired that are looking for house appliances in this decade
My former cook top was solely driven by capacitance buttons - which became entirely inaccessible the moment there was an overflow, leading to more overflows and a situation that rapidly got out of hand.
The first step in an emergency is switch off the cook top - luckily the breaker switch was nearby.
"A tech-savvy San Francisco resident" Nope. Connecting your washing machine to the internet isn't the act of a tech-savvy person.
On HN or similar circles, maybe not - but that isn't Newsweek's audience.
I just want normal buttons and dials back. Not time-based capacitance buttons that take 5.02 seconds to activate, not 5.0 seconds; nor free-spinning encoder wheels that mandate you give it a jiggle before the washer does anything, even if it's already on the setting you want. I want kachunk-a-chunk back first. Then we can decide if it needs smarts.
Capacitive buttons are very inaccessible it's honestly need to be a crime to be making such appliances I feel very sorry for the visually impaired that are looking for house appliances in this decade
Off topic, but a lifehack for those who have visually impaired loved ones: we use glass paint contour paste on the center of buttons. It's basically used in glass paintings to stop paint sliding from the glass, so it can make a good noticeable bump or line. But – it only works on hard surfaces and if the buttons themselves are not very sensitive.
If you can lightly brush the button while you are "looking" for bumps, then it works.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
my microwave oven has two knobs: how hot and how long. I paid an extra £50 to get a model of fridge without WiFi. sadly my washing machine is already at the free-spinning encoder stage - I don't hate it with a passion, but more of a low-enthusiasm. I dread replacing anything that breaks in the next few years.
Why not get the wifi enabled fridge and just not hook it up to your router? Genuinely asking because I plan to do this once I have to get new appliances, is there something missing that way?
Also the device is generally designed with internet in mind, so certain local-only functions don’t work properly without internet.
I just want normal buttons and dials back. Not time-based capacitance buttons that take 5.02 seconds to activate, not 5.0 seconds; nor free-spinning encoder wheels that mandate you give it a jiggle before the washer does anything, even if it's already on the setting you want. I want kachunk-a-chunk back first. Then we can decide if it needs smarts.
The problem with kerchunk-a-wheels and real pushbuttons (and the not-smarts they imply) is that they're expensive. They're more expensive (and more failure-prone) than the rotary encoders, mush-buttons, and brain-boxes that replaced them. But one cool part about things like motorized kerchunk-a-wheels is that, upon failure, a motivated person on Gilligan's Island can often mend them back into service with a screwdriv…
No, they're not. And even if they were, they're repairable. I can even drill a new hole, mount an industrial 5cm push-button and wire it where the original button was connected. Can't do that with a touchscreen.