The purpose of IOT is pretty clear, although it is also pretty broad. It's a win-win for the manufacturer, but probably a ticking time bomb for the customer.
The Good:
1. Reduce production costs by converting electronic control to digital control with COTS chips.
2. Reduce development costs by reducing the cost of correcting bug-free software. The system requires updates because it assumes that it is faulty.
3. Allow additional services, such as special run cycles, custom control of run cycles, etc.
4. Collecting anonymous telemetry data to determine actual use patterns, allowing for better focus on features people actually use or may want. Potentially allows for increases in efficiency (including end user resource costs like time, water, and electricity).
The Bad:
1. Aggregating anonymous telemetry data to sell to third parties for additional profit.
2. Facilitating planned obsolescence (software EOL = appliance EOL).
3. Denial of right-to-repair (John Deere).
4. Facilitating vendor lock-in.
5. Collecting non-anonymous telemetry data used for targeted advertising.
Being able to ship buggy software, again a benefit to the manufacturer.
More complex controls for more complex cycles etc? Questionable if this kind of fiddling on e.g. a dishwasher is of any use.
Collecting data - because we want to spend Saturday in a spreadsheet, going over our dishwasher telemetry? Oh! Maybe you mean, also only of use to the manufacturer. Not my problem; not a reason to make my device more complicated for me.
Don't get me wrong. I'm extremely skeptical about IoT. I'm an experienced sysadmin, and that means I hate technology. There is a massive legislative need to protect the public from the damage these devices could do to customer rights, and the legislatures we've had for almost as long as I can remember are about as interested in filling that need as they were interested in protecting the worker and the right to unionize in the 19th century. Which is to say, it's more likely that the President will send the Army in to crack skulls than they'd pass a bill to do something right.
But the Digital Revolution doesn't just mean FAANG. It also means the Third Industrial Revolution. That's been going on for 35+ years. It's not new, and it's not going away. IoT will happen because it's simply too good for manufacturing not to do it even if they can't monetize their customers' data. IoT can provide real improvements just like networking computers has. There are unknown gains in efficiency, productivity, and quality of life to be gained here. The Information Age isn't NFTs and tracking cookies all the way down.
> More complex controls for more complex cycles etc? Questionable if this kind of fiddling on e.g. a dishwasher is of any use.
It's just an example, man. I'm not a dishwasher engineer. I don't know what they need to do, let alone to what they are capable of or what they could be used for but aren't because of the current structure.
It's not just about dishwashers either. All modern appliances are digital. What can you make any appliance in your home do with continuous monitoring and re-programmability?
IoT could be done so much better. First, give some benefit (E.g. give you a service call when something went wrong).
And Why not use a simple VPN to the host? Encrypt the link some other way? Hell, require a password?
I've programmed IoT device firmware for clients. I put in security - they want it removed. Because it makes installation harder for their staff. No profit in it.
I'd run from any IoT device today. Until we have some legislation or accountability or even UL rating for security, there will be no security at all.
> The buttons on the front are a few cents.
It's knowing where those buttons need to be that is potentially costly. Offloading that to an app lets you cover all bases of unknown UI desire. Of course its still a terrible argument because dishwashers don't need to also be a disco ball or whatever nonsense marketing there is to justify the obvious money grab.
* Potential for wifi chipsets to collect other data from your network and send to anywhere.
If you are going to do IoT or have wifi enabled appliances, setup a separate network for them to operate on. I find it easier to just not have them, so far.
Ok, but many times this leads to wrong conclusions. Just because a feature is not used by everyone, or used rarely, does not mean it's useless.
Yes, but they're much more accurate than the existing systems: user surveys and focus groups. Those are both notoriously useless because people lie (intentionally or otherwise). Even so, telemetry doesn't wholly replace them. It's on top of them.
Marketing is hard, in part because the data you're working with is either (a) untimely, (b) incorrect, or (c) incomplete. User surveys and focus groups are often all three. Telemetry data is largely just incomplete. That's still a huge improvement. In the worst case, it can be used like grading a test.
> Just because a feature is not used by everyone, or used rarely, does not mean it's useless.
And thanks to a software based interface, maybe you don't need to eliminate that feature. You just don't need to continue to develop it.
Look, whether or not their market data is correct, a company that dedicates their resources in the wrong spot is reducing the value of their product to the customer. It means the product is more expensive for no reason. It means that the majority are subsidizing a feature they don't use in exchange for more development on the core functionality that they do. That's just what that means.
And in terms of probability, the truth is that you've got features on your appliances that you paid for and you will never use. Wouldn't you like your money back on those features? You might be the guy who loves the lilac perfume option in your dishwasher, but you probably aren't if only 5% of people use it. That makes it a luxury feature at best, especially because it might be another point of failure. Let those who want the luxury feature pay the cost of that luxury feature.
Tell me you've never bought an appliance or tool that has a dozen features that get in the way of what you actually want to use it for. How that one time you bought a really nice coffee maker because you want to make good coffee easily, and you ended up spending 10 minutes every morning arguing with it. So you went out and got a coffee maker whose only control is an on-off rocker switch, and you love it because it's dead simple, gives you exactly as much control as you want, and can be operated by the pre-coffee brain.
The manual is here: https://www.mieleusa.com/pmedia/ZGA/TX2070/10546880-000-01_1...
Most of the smart stuff is in "settings" starting on page 64. Stuff like configuring it to run only during a low electric rate period (nights). Notifying you when filters need changing. Keeping track of detergent reservoir levels.
My dishwasher has a start delay function, basically the same... although if it's 'smart' I guess you could align it with things like a smart grid, highly variable rates, solar panels and battery. But that's something for the 1%.
Filters is a double-edged sword, because since it's a consumable, it's in the manufacturer's interest to give false positives for the need to replace filters, like printer ink.
Detergent reservoir levels, I don't know if that's a thing, mine has a reservoir for salt, but I have to put a detergent tablet in myself for every cycle. Would be convenient if it was built in, I guess.
The ability to start it, and confirm it’s started is a game changer. Especially because it’s preloaded with the chemicals.
We don’t want to start it until we’re sure all the floating dishes actually got loaded. There’s a stray dish, a glass, life’s just a little chaotic getting dinner cleaned up and everyone to bed. We forget or we hit start but someone else opens it to add something. Without the act of adding soap and with two or three people adding things it’s surprisingly easy.
A lot of these are features as a single guy I found stupid. Now married with a kid they are just little enablers of greater calm.
But after a 10hr work da bookended by 2 hrs on each side playing with my daughter and 1hr of dealing with life stuff I want to get into bed.
Beds on the second floor…I can get up and go downstairs and check the light. Or I can look at an app on my phone.
I’ll totally admit, I was incredibly anti smart appliance. I don’t want a tablet on my fridge. But done well, done quietly, they can actually put some really nice features in my life.
Washer/dryer - I can keep loads of laundry moving while working in the yard and I get an alert when the dryers done
Fridge- reminds me when it needs a new water filter and let’s me auto reorder it from Amazon. If it breaks a tech can remotely troubleshoot it and bring the right part the first time.
Dishwasher - see above. It also has the little light.
Until I was a parent. I would have laughed at all of that. And I still follow internetofshit on twitter
None of that is necessary, sure. But, also isn't worth vitriol from the crowd that hates them.
why does my fridge need to text me if the door is left open? that's ridiculous!
Well yeah...but if your teenager leaves it open, as teenagers are won't to do, how would I know if I'm in an office in another part of the house? (hypothetical, I don't have teenagers but I was one).
We (partner, me , contractor) are renovating a house right now. There is a kids bathroom upstairs. I FOUGHT and I mean fought my partner and the contractor over one feature I wanted. I won and am so happy. That feature? The whole floor is sloped towards the external wall, the whole floor (from door to door wall to wall) is a three inch high sealed tub, and there is an emergency drain with an oil filled p-trap that just dumps outside. Cost us an extra $1,000. That's less than the deductible on our home owners insurance and way less than the damage a flooded bathroom would cause. The user research here was totally in how many families (including mine) had kids accidentally flood a bathroom doing dumb stuff and ruin the space below it as well.
Features are driven by user research, or should be. Rather than just calling it dumb because it doesn't fit your use case - think about the other users who might benefit. Especially when you are looking at feature that don't make sense if people behave rationally.
We have had to be extremely diligent with our contractors because of the number of times/things they do where they just operate on the autopilot of what is typically done. Its human nature, but the norms in building homes to me are just wildly outdated. Wildly.
Actually, I have a Bosch/Siemens dishwasher with Wifi because it is very good dishwasher, but I've never connected it to my Wifi, because I don't want to think about advanced persistent threads infilitrating my dishwasher.
No one needs an internet connected dish washer.
Just give me something I don’t need to sleep with one eye open all the time.
Why is that? what diagnostics are it running to tell if it needs to run longer?
I thought they ran by timers, in which case cycle times are...cycle times.
Seems fancy but nonsense.
It needs to heat until the desired temperature is achieved. This will take more time in colder weather.
Unless you're actually looking for sub-minute precision on its timing, the cycle time is pretty fixed. Dishwashers don't care about load or dirtyness, they care about the program you select.
Too much user lazyness and machine automatism make things go sideways.
Also, machines that let you open the door while it's running might result in more confusion than anything else (is the cycle just started or it is actually ending?).
As a Linux user I know RPi pretty well but piezoelectric is something I used to light gas, resistors are something I studied at school (and things that heat), a diode... maybe, but clamping? I won't be able to put those pieces together.
I'd buy a smart plug with a http url to call to turn it on and off and make a web app running on a RPi at home to manage that plug.
You'd keep the dumb maximum spray-area approach for the pre-wash & rinse cycles, but replace the main wash cycle with a "smart-nozzle" approach that uses a radar (or some other non-optical sensor) to detect surfaces and apply a directed spray.
Theoretically, that would save on energy costs/impact (heating water costs way more than running a SoC/radar), even if the overall wash quality wouldn't really be improved much in most cases. Plus... the technology would be super marketable, imagine the commercials!
So if the top rack is pretty empty or just glasses which are mostly clean, while the bottom rack is full of pots with lots of grease, it will spend more time operating the sprayers on the bottom rack than the top rack.
Normally I'd say someone should check the numbers, but this time I think you have better things to do...
It's been used for decades and it's extremely cheap and reliable.
It is handy if you have a lot of laundry to do (kids) and you want to be on top of doing one load after another / not forget.
What I did instead was paste an Aqara zigbee vibration sensor to the side of the washing machine. Then a little bit of Home Assistant magic and it tells me when the washer seems to be done. In case I didn't hear the symphony it plays at the end of a cycle.
/the real depressing and scary thing about the above is this comment having to indicate i'm being sarcastic