I wonder why there's no way to let the router handle the DNS with some sort of registering/de-registering functionality? I would think this to be more robust compared to the broadcasting.

Note that commercial dishwashers are not at all like their consumer counterparts. They don't really wash the dishes, they sanitize them after they have been properly rinsed, and a cycle takes minutes instead of hours.

It's hitting a part of the beast (current vendors) they can't defend against, because their sunk costs make it impossible to embrace repair and keep "forever" - tech.

This is beyond my desire to just keep things simple. What is the point of washing machine you can control remotely? You have to put clothes in at the start and take them out at the end. It offers no convenience.

I also would like phone notifications, it is sort of in a corner of the basement so I don't hear the alarms.

In theory you don’t need a computer/internet to start it later, but that would require you knowing when you want to start it upfront. Meaning there is still a unique capability for the smart washer.

A fully analog/mechanical washing machine is just a big mechanical timer controlled relay behind the knob like a toaster oven. If you set it without power, it just runs through the timer without doing anything.

The machine would need to have a timer mechanism that is turned by an electric clock motor, not a mechanical spring with gears etc.

Or you could possibly set up an electric actuator that blocks the knob from turning. Then trigger both the power-on relay and the actuator retraction to do both at the same time.

Pure mechanical timer based washing machines have been driven by electric clock motors (line powered) for at least 50 years (as that is as far back as I remember knowing how they worked). So if line power is out, the timer does not run.

Of course, the delay timer on the line would need enough power handling capacity to carry the load of the washing machine.

My washer has dials to select the modes and then a final push button that activates an internal relay (guessing from the loud mechanical switching sound it makes when it goes on). If all you need to do is complete the circuit of the push button. You can just unmount that push button and hook its wires up to your timer mechanism which completes the circuit when the timer expires.

The dryer on the other hand does have a mechanical timer. But that doesn't activate until you turn the dryer on with the push button. So you could set the time of the dryer and not turn it on either, and use the same mechanism as above.

Mechanical Washing machines don't use spring wound clocks, they run of the AC frequency of the mains. It generally drives a small solenoid that increments the clock.

My current electronic washing machine saves its current cycle state when it looses power, and happily continues when power resumes 2 hours later (unlike my dishwasher, which does not). Although You'd have to start it before turning off the relay, so not as easy as the old mechanical dials

I can't think of a single mechanical device that is more reliable than an equivalent solid-state version of that same device.

Solid state relay vs electromechanical relay. Timex quartz watch vs. an automatic or manual watch.

Laundry rooms can be both hot and cold, are almost always humid, are often home to caustic chemicals, and a dryer's components are constantly exposed to dust in the form of lint: the perfect use case for solid state.

Spraying a pcb with a coating is much cheaper and more reliable than sealing a mechanical mechanism.

Instead of resisting, the smart move is to agitate for and promote secure, open, standards.

You load the machine say in the afternoon/evening after work etc, and then it decides based on historical data that 02:35 is the local minima and starts. You run the quick 1-hour program because it's Good Enough(tm), then the laundry lies wet in the machine from 03:45 until you wake up around 06:00 to start your day hanging it? In my experience, but perhaps this is just local circumstance (climate etc) you can't leave damp laundry in the machine for hours on end, it will get smelly and need to be re-washed.

Also, not being able to plan when you deal with the wet laundry because of the power price hunting feature sounds super annoying and stressful. Perhaps there's an assumption that after the laundry it will also tumble dry; we rarely do that due to it being bad for the clothes and costly in energy etc.

My washer and heat-pump dryer don't really use that much electricity. They've become super efficient. There are better and lower hanging fruits than such appliances these days.

It’s called “SmartStart”

It works very well in my experience. Load the machine in the morning, and it will start later in the day, then send my phone a notification when the load is done

I found little utility for appliances with remote access until the number of humans to keep fed and clothed grew beyond myself and a partner.

How?

Every little tweak can add up to a staggering amount of time around monotony in a lifetime.

A basic example: https://efficiencyiseverything.com/water-per-second/

The above doesn't apply to me specifically, but I would like notifications when my washing is done and thus when I can put another load in. This can be done with energy metering or sensors that attach to washing machines or tumble dryers, but not done it yet myself, but would very much like to.

So it seems people are willing to pay extra for the feature.

I thought this article would be along those lines except more sophisticated (OCR to read remaining time? sure why not!) and was slightly disappointed

It's normal to want to have control over every detail of where your furniture goes and how your home is decorated, and plants in your garden, without consulting some external source of control. Why isn't it normal to have the same level of control of your appliances and your digital life?

Previous standards didn't require this either, and yet every single manufacturer made their devices only work through an internet-connected hub.

... it was $6000 for a 30" range but it's more powerful than anything other than commercial gear. you really do have to pay up for simplicity. iirc it was more expensive than the equivalent wolf, viking, etc. and weird european brands like la cornue don't make 30".

most people say they're willing to pay more for this kind of thing, but very, very few people actually do. it's also made in the US, another thing people claim they will pay for, but usually don't.

it came down to a choice and the range was more important to me. i did get the awesome matching vent hood though... and learned a lot about sheet metal ducting work because the installers botched that with a half-ass rush job. i got a refund on the install fee.

protip: never schedule installs on a friday afternoon.

Perhaps he imagined American-made carried a 30% price premium over Chinese-made, but instead found it was more of a 300% price premium.

He also at one point pursued a diet in which he'd eat vegan as long as it was the best option available. And it was just like ... that's almost what literally everyone else does? He seemed to believe most people just ignored certain menu options by default, versus ordering the item that seemed most appealing to them. He thought people looked at a menu and thought "oh, that eggplant vegetable medley sounds amazing! Drat, it doesn't have chicken, guess I'll just get the cheeseburger."

The first, and most obvious, reason is that getting your phone and (all) your appliances on the same network is non-trivial. Especially for a novice user. Sometimes the washing machine is in the basement and can't connect to your WiFi. Or maybe you're simply outside your house in your car and can't connect to your local network. The cloud approach solves this.

The other, not so obvious reason, is that the manufacturer made a ton of devices. Some of them a decade old, with very rudimentary interfaces. Originally the App had to handle special cases and workarounds for dozens of devices. This became a problem once they tried to port it to multiple platforms. For Android and iPhone they started with a shared C++ library. But that quickly became a problem, once they wanted to interface with popular home network and automation solutions.

To solve all this they decided to build a cloud API that would resolve all these problems in one go. A single, unified API with a modern HTTP interface and available via the internet. That solves the workaround and compatability issues by having a single abstraction layer (instead of one per app). It solves the "on the go" problem when you're not in you local wifi. It enables you to control devices outside your home network in a true IoT sense.

I totally agree with you that, if you're not in an urban environment with good internet and cell coverage, the advantages dwindle away. Also, of course, there is the privacy concern that is very real. At the end of the day the cloud solution is selected for the same reason companies select Electron. It saves development time and is very easy for the average end user to use. At the expense of performance and privacy.

It solves everything except for the fact that, for people like me, it means we'll never actually give network access to the devices.

What other networks do homes have? Every WiFi ISP router I have used provides a single network and DHCP server. Perhaps some routers provide both a public and private WiFi and the consumer doesn't understand which one they should pick but that is the fault of the ISP.

> Sometimes the washing machine is in the basement and can't connect to your WiFi. Or maybe you're simply outside your house in your car and can't connect to your local network. The cloud approach solves this.

How does the cloud fix poor/no WiFi signals? This is pure ignorance. Perhaps you are confusing cloud with "stick a SIM in everything" 5g marketing which isn't really a thing yet. I stopped reading the rest of your post at that point.

[1] Not something we'd /normally/ do, but when that was going on... You just had to get people working.

If users can't set up routers and extenders properly, that may say more about the designers of the routers than the people using them.

I'm nominally an expert user, but a lot of these products make me WTAF regularly.

Think of times when your phone might not have connected to WiFi because you just got home, or are in some random dead spot. Or it just... isn't for a moment.

From the perspective of many consumers, without that always-available-via-cloud central point, it's then "broken".

Put it all in the cloud and so long as the phone and the device can get to "the internet" it'll be working.

How would the phone know the /right/ network? All it can really know is it can't find the appliance.

Actually, many provide multiple SSIDs (5GHz and 2.4GHz). While you’d think these would be interoperable, it’s a massive pain in the ass. IoT devices only have the 2.4GHz antenna. And you want your main devices on 5GHz for speed. If you combine the 2.4 and 5 networks into a single said and let band steering work, IoT devices often don’t place nicely. If they’re separate, then you have to rely on the custom local app to see a server running on the other ssid. Another issue on top of that is apps on iOS will be required to use SSL for HTTP connections, and making sure your washing machine has always up-to-date certificates is also not simple.

...snip...

>The cloud approach solves this.

How? You just stipulated the machine can't connect to wifi

They clearly stated that getting devices on the same network is non-trivial. Obviously, at a place where no network access exists anyways, neither local nor cloud solutions will work.

Even just paying multiple times more for reliability in the forms of quality components is a hard sale. What if I move? Do I want to have to bother trying to take it with me and potentially replacing it for the next buyers? What if a new dishwasher in a decade is as much better than this one as this one is compared to the one I had ten years ago (seems unlikely, but possible?)?

Hard to justify 2-4 the cost when a consumer has no idea if it will last 2-4 times as long (or the warranty will be honored).

How willing would you be to pay 1-2 factors less for the Shenzhen clone that hits market 1-2 weeks later based on the same open designs?

There's a reason these companies don't exist, you have no competitive edge except good will.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Rule #0:

> Be kind. Don't be snarky.

If you did start that kind of a company, I'd love to be made aware of it.

So yeah, some fundamental restructuring would be good here. (BTW, to be fair, the controller was made by Diehl Controls, not Bosch.)

Well maybe with ChatGPT 6...