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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

#91

Post by AceJohnny2 »

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…

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.

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

#92

Post by Jedd »

ryao wrote: post #74

I was in a similar situation with a clothes dryer dying where the repair required a board that was half the price of a new one. A key difference is that I had a professional appliance repair guy look at it and he determined it needed a new board. Rather than buy a new machine like Jeff did, I made the opposite decision and paid for the board. It has been a few years since that and I have been happy with the result. I…

You were prepared to replace a functioning washing machine just to match a replacement clothes dryer?

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

#93

Post by geerlingguy »

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…

Now that I could totally get behind. Built in Matter/Zigbee/Z-Wave radio would be amazing! Might actually make it halfway 'smart'.

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

#94

Post by geerlingguy »

ryao wrote: post #79
AndrewDavis wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or phrased another way, if local first software is so difficult why are we doing it at all when these devices worked BEFORE they had software. The worst washing machine I've ever had is my current one, and it isn't even a "smart" appliance. It has just enough software to be worse than my one with dials for everything.

They have had software for decades. They were run by microcontrollers. The only difference is that it was an embedded system with no network capabilities.

And they switched from tactile controls to touch-sensitive buttons.

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

#96

Post by sitkack »

thombles wrote: post #70

I was pleasantly surprised that Yamaha flirted with this then backed off. My receiver is connected to the LAN since this is helpful for streaming, and it has a companion MusicCast app for controlling it on the WiFi or playing audio stored on your phone. No messing around with accounts, it just works. A year or two ago the app started regularly pestering you to register an online account. I, along with who knows how m…

They will just try again after the old weirdos get sent to the nursing home.

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

#97

Post by myself248 »

cf100clunk wrote: post #26
saaaaaam wrote: post #23

I had this dishwasher in a rental property I was living in. The landlord fitted it a month or so after I moved in because the old dishwasher died. I was very skeptical of a WiFi connected dishwasher. Very quickly, I loved it. It’s actually REALLY useful to be able to get a ping on my Apple watch that the dishwasher has finished. Once upon a time I had a dishwasher where the door popped open when it was finished. That…

Almost any washer and dryer on the market now has an audible signal (some adjustable for pitch and volume) when the cycle is done, but if you need your phone or watch to be pinged then I guess that's a selling point for you.

I always miss the ding (it's in the basement and very quiet), I'd probably do fine if it simply kept beeping every few minutes, I'd eventually hear one. But just one, nah, not nearly enough.

So, I put a magnetic sensor on the door and made a circuit that starts beeping when the door has been closed for an hour.

Simple as that. Door open, machine not in use. Door closed for less than an hour, probably still running. After that, beep until I open the door. No need for anything networked, no subscription, no terms of service, just more beeping.

(Same with the microwave. There's never a reason to leave cooked food in the microwave with the door closed for a long time, so it dings every few minutes until I open the door. My old microwave didn't do this, but my new one does. It's so simple, why can't they all have this?)

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

#98

Post by karaterobot »

> First, it lets product designers get lazy.

Product designers get blamed for this kind of thing, but I can all but guarantee the product designer just worked on the how, they didn't decide that your dishwasher needed this feature. We rarely go rogue and create a whole new system that nobody asked for, then convince a bunch of product managers, VPs, and engineers that what they thought was a shitty idea is actually worth doing. Ideas like this get given to us, it's our job to execute on them, just like engineers implementing shitty features to the best of their ability. Product designers are usually the ones who complain about bad user experience, and get told it conflicts with business goals.

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

#99

Post by belorn »

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.

Those products will earn profits to the producers after sale by bundling ads onto the app. Since the cost of producing the networking is less than projected sales, every unit will sooner or later have said networking and app. The app-only dishwashers will then out compete other dishwashers, slowly replacing all alternatives to app-only dishwashers outside "industry dishwashers" which will be app-free but cost 10x that of a dishwasher sold to the private consumer.

Try buy a TV without smart features. You can, but then you got to buy one intended for hotels and pay the market price for products intended for that market.

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

#100

Post by sitkack »

NegatioN wrote: post #49

When buying a new washing machine and dryer, I actually spent hours extra to find models /without/ app requirements last summer. There were so few of them that did what I wanted, and also didn't require internet access that I'm worried the next time around there will be no more options where I can elect to keep them off the net. :/

While CR has the ability to filter by Wifi or not, as time goes on, this will drop to zero. What they don't do is say if the functionality is gated behind 1) an app and 2) behind internet connectivity, they aren't the same.
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