This particular homeowner is baffled that anyone would buy a washing machine that needs an internet connection. I’m all for smart appliances, but a smart washing machine is a solution in search of a problem.
I’m all for smart appliances
I’m personally not. I’m for appliances with a standard interface, maybe, through which it can be connected to some smart home system.
I do not mean internet access or anything else “smart” in the appliance itself. I mean being able to use the same functions as buttons and indicators offer, remotely. I2C will do.
What you have just described could be ZigBee and/or MQTT.
And Z-wave
No need for radio even. MQTT - yes.
I2C is very short range, it’s meant for connecting parts on the same board. You want something like RS-485. The Modbus protocol, which runs over RS-485 would be perfect for this.
Yes, from quick googling seems exactly what I want.
Forgotten laundry leads to mildew. Plenty of home assistance scripts out there to remind users to empty washer/dryer.
Makes sense for manufacturers to want to build this feature into the appliance itself.
Mildew doesn’t grow in 15min, it takes hours to even smell weird and days to grow fungi. It’s literally been cleaned with soap and hot water, there’s not much to grow left.
You don’t need it to be on the appliance itself. Hook a power metering smart outlet and you can tell. Or a shake sensor. Or an open door sensor. Combine them all for a reliable effective way to tell if it’s done and the door has been opened, all for a much lower price than what those “smart” appliances charge the premium for. This way you can also choose vendors that work on local wifi/zigbee/z wave and don’t own a paper weight or part functional item the moment the vendor decides to shutdown the servers.
Agreed, and this is what I have set up for mine… But this is also technologically so far out of reach for >95% of people…
You can also use it to start a load while you’re at work when you didn’t want your clothes sitting after washing all day. True, there’s old school delay functions but this gives a little more control.
Not saying it’s worth it, but a feature I haven’t seen anyone else mention.
If you add white vinegar to load, you won’t get the ick from clothes sitting in washer for hours.
I can imagine that irritates some people’s skin though
I love mine. It reminds me when to clean it, when the drain is acting up, and when it’s done. It can even order supplies on its own. Sure all those things can be handled with a calendar but I’m lazy.
The drain issue might be hard to figure out on your own. Mine has a little notification light that comes on to run a self-clean cycle every x number of washes, but I’m pretty sure I’m the only one in my house who actually runs it.
So it has a mechanism to let you know when the drain is clogged?
Seems like it would be better to spend that engineering on making the drain work better.
Weird.
For me it isn’t about knowing when it’s done, it’s about it continuously annoying me if I still haven’t flipped it an hour later
When your current washer breaks to the point of being unrepairable, you will find the only choice is an Internet connected washer.
I bought the same model Bosch dishwasher that I bought last year ( I have 2 dishwashers). Bosch added Internet to their dishwashers this year. I was enraged but had no choice. They removed some wash features from buttons and made them selectable only from the app. I haven’t turned the feature on but there’s Wi-Fi in my dishwasher screaming to get out to the Internet. It could likely be hijacked with the right bot attack.
We need a law that all antennas come with a physical switch. Wifi, Cell, whatever comes next. They need a physical cut off switch just like privacy doors have become common on laptop cameras.
I simply will not buy a washing machine where some of the options for its regular use require an internet connection. I can see adding Bluetooth to it for things like remote control and phone notifications, or even WLAN support for connecting to some kind of smarthome hub that is internet-connected so you can get those notifications remotely. But the idea that smart == device-level internet connection is terrible. Appliances for basic living requirements, like laundry, should not require an internet connection of their own to function.
I don’t think any need an internet connection…
But some people connect everything they can for some reason.
While I don’t have a smart washing machine, I use a smart power outlet to let me know when the laundry is done, remind me if the load is still sitting in the washer without moving to the drier, etc.
Definitely some legit use cases to make the process smart.
I am completely in agreement and would be even willing to pay more for dumb appliances if it comes right down to it.
I just ordered a dryer that may have to go on top of my dishwasher which is on top of my washing machine - hard to explain why except to say there was no good place for the
washing machinedishwasher in the kitchen.If that happens, I’ll be able to reach the clothes, but the control panel will be a bit of a stretch. In that case wifi control could be clutch.
Edit: my brain can never sort those two out.
Also I understand this is not the intended use case, I just think it’s funny.
Removed by mod
There’s no dedicated spot for a dishwasher under any of the benches, and to get a hose out from the sink would need holes drilled that I’m not prepared to do because it’s a rental. Also, all the wall area is spoken for, and there are doors immediately next to the kitchen on both sides. One of those doors is the laundry, so I just stuck it in there. It’s a small laundry though, so there’s no space side by side for anything. If the triple stack doesn’t work, the dryer can go on the opposite side of the kitchen under or over my small freezer, since it doesn’t need water. That’s where my dishwasher would’ve gone if not for the hoses that would’ve needed to go across the floor.
I don’t know if the stack will work, unless you have tall ceilings. Standard dishwasher is 3ft, a miniature dryer is 2ft, and a miniature washing machine is 2ft. That’s 8ft without stacking hardware, and standard ceilings are 8ft 2in.
Before I spent hundreds of dollars on a dryer I did measure the space. Also, “standard” ceilings where? Given you didn’t specify, I’d assume you mean in the US.
In the US, the standard size ceiling is due to the length and width of 2x4s. 8ft 2in is an 8ft 2x4 plus the top and bottom plate minus the flooring and ceiling drywall. In newer and more expensive houses, 9ft is starting to become more common as people are spending more and more on building.
If you’re putting in a dishwasher just drill the holes. Your landlord will thank you for saving them the trouble of having to do that themselves some day.
I don’t think any normal landlord would give two shits about some dishwasher-hose-sized holes drilled under a sink, between internal cabinet walls, that no one will ever see. Such holes are so far back and out of the way… No one would ever notice unless they’re missing.
Those aren’t the holes I’m talking about, I would drill those in a second. I’ve done it before.
There’s enough information in my post to explain why it’s not as simple as you seem to think, plus the other issues with doing it this way, and I can unpack it for you, but I’d need you to tell me you were interested in the information first.
Idk, in my particular situation I would like a smart washing machine. I have a smart fridge, that is essentially useless, but a smart washing machine would tell me when my laundry was done so I can switch it into the dryer. That actually seems useful in my particular situation.
There are situations where you might want to monitor water use (someone mentioned delaying cycles based on water softener status), or people like me who might need a phone reminder because I’ll forget I put a load in and get busy with something else and it’s nice if I don’t have the extra step of setting a timer and trying to get it just right.
The problem isn’t the connectivity, the problem is the proprietary cloud ecosystems. HomeAssistant is already a brilliant home automation hub, just make devices repairable and with local control and I’ll be a customer.
This is an old article and iirc this was a reporting issue with their router. The wash machine was not using that much data.
Who’s to say it isn’t acting as a gateway for other smart devices that aren’t connected to the Internet? Or part of a bot net?
Another relatively innocent reason for the supposed high volume of uploads could be an error in the Asus router firmware.
Note the language could be.
This nonsense keeps getting reposted, when it was discovered previously it was a router reporting error
Why the fuck does my appliance need wifi? It’s not ordering refills for consumables when low at a great discount nor is it going to schedule it’s own maintenance as it passes lifetime milestones or detects errors.
I don’t want my fucking washer/dryer to text me when the load is done and I definitely don’t want my fridge to alert me I’m low on milk or bread, or the door is open. That’s such a huge backdoor for anyone looking to maliciously gather data and peer into my life, definitely without my consent.
My fucking washer has NFC and I cant even figure out why I would ever need that, let alone WiFi?
Features for features sake, I guess? Another bullet point on the features list.
It’s not very useful. But, I can start a program from an app which is a lot easier than understanding all the little logos on the unit. Plus I have more flexibility to tweak it, like be faster or gentler or schedule it to cheaper electricity hours all much more easily and intuitively than in the panel.
Also timer, remote start, and letting me know when it’s done are something I might use once in a blue moon.
Can I live without it, hell yes, but is it a totally useless gimmick… Well 50/50.
Glad I bought a non-smart washer and dryer. I’ve yet to encounter any situation in life where I thought, “too bad my appliance doesn’t have Internet”. Not once ever.
I like my old dumpy dryer. Its a motor, a belt, and the most complicated component: a timer. Ive fixed the thing several times, still runs fine despite being 15+ years old.
I think my oven/stove can be connected. I have never tried because I don’t see the need to preheat my oven when I am not home.
When your washing machine tries to download Baldurs Gate 3 because it’s bored too
Botnet node? 3GB sounds excessive even for a company that’s notoriously invasive.
I’m sure this got posted before and the most likely reason was that it was downloading some sort of update and failing to apply it repeatedly.
Data laundry.
Now the Chinese government knows exactly how many socks have gone missing, but no it won’t tell you where they all went.
They can’t because even they have no clue where those socks went. The inter-dimensional portal is very well hidden.
You already have a phone in your hand just put an alarm on there. There are you eliminated the supposed use of internet on a washer.
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Newer washing machines vary in time depending on how dirty your clothes are. So the same program may take 50 minutes or 90 minutes. This cannot be solved with a regular timer.
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If you have a job with varying hours, you might want to start the washing mashine when you’re heading home. Then you’re clothes are ready to be hung as you arrive and they aren’t laying around for hours.
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If you own photovoltaic, you might want to time energy intense home appliances such as washing machines, dish washers etc. to a period of overproduction.
Not saying, these issues are super important but there definitely are use cases for smart devices. However, I’d always recommend using a local / self-hosted rather than a cloud-based solution.
y’all are min-maxing life a bit hard there.
I just want a washer that can work with the water softener to determine if there’s enough soft water for a load or if it should request the softener regenerate first. So the smart home I’d like to have is one where sometimes it will advise against doing laundry until I’ve acquired more salt. All without any data leaving my home network, and if I’m accessing it remotely, it’s by accessing my home server without any other computer needing to be involved.
If smart options were actually smart you could do that.
With the right devices I’m certain this can be done with HomeAssistant, but everyone who makes these appliances wants to wall you into their cloud ecosystem and harvest your activity data.
Yeah, technologically, it’s not only possible but even simple. It would come down to the washer knowing how much water it needs for a cycle and the softener knowing how much soft water it can provide, a means of getting that information from each of them, and then an if statement with a > check and a way to tell the softener to cycle and washer to start.
I wonder when an appliance hacking community is going to rise up. I know that all that information is available to my water softener controller because I use it to manually check that before running the laundry or dishwasher. So a custom controller could add network capabilities. Then just give it an API so it can be queried and directed and the actual smart software can exist entirely on the server.
Kinda makes me want to buy an extra softener to hack and see if it’s as easy as I suspect it might be, but don’t want to try it with my only one because I also suspect I’m wrong lol.
I thought they go off of weight. How could they tell how dirty they are?
Not a washing machine technician but I guess an optical sensor measuring the light permeability of the water (over time) should do the trick. Similar to a smoke detector. But I guess weight is a thing as well.
That makes sense, wouldn’t be that complicated that way.
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I dunno, isn’t the homeowner an idiot for putting a smart washer on WiFi in the first place? We don’t need smart devices, they aren’t making our lives better.
Homeowner should be baffled at why he was
- Stupid enough to waste money on a fucking internet connected washing machine
- Stupid enough to connect it to the fucking internet
- Stupid enough to be surprised at it doing shady shit.
Solution in search of a problem.
I guess a mobile alert that lets you know the cycle is finished could be handy? Ability to schedule a load to start later? Maybe a maintenance or problem alert? Depleted detergent and fabric softener reservoir?
Possibly an energy usage chart for the nerds out there who like that kind of thing?
But damn, all of that shouldn’t need more than a few kb a day max.
For most of these events an internet connection isn’t necessary at all.
My machine shows the time that is needed for the program when I start it. I know when it will be finished right from the beginning. There’s no surprise, no message necessary. If I tend to forget the time, then I can set a reminder in my smartphone.
I can program the machine while I load it to start the washing later. Why load the machine but then program it from a distance? Makes no sense.
Detergent is filled in before each washing cycle. There’s nothing to be depleted.
A maintenance or problem alert would be the only thing that could be worth a message function. But: My machine works without problems for 15 years now. So: what should it be messaging me? We can really live better without these useless electronics that only push up the price and the distraction.
Seriously; wasnt there a chip shortage?
Yeah, I was reaching for really extreme cases. Maybe an IOT wash machine with a smooth app is easier to program than a machine with a control panel itself.
Who knows, the tech could hypothetically be useful.
Any why don’t we have reservoirs with measured doses of detergent anyways? That would be kinda rad.
I always thought a simple analog speaker output could solve most of those. Let us string a wire to a remote speaker nearer to where we’re likely to be
I have a supposedly smart washing machine that came with the apartment. Setting it up in my locked down appliances network, it didn’t work with home-assistant, required cloud access and wanted me to open up ports in the firewall. Nope. No network connection for you. You are a regular dumb old washing machine.
If you think the useless appliances are bad, just take a look at more critical connected devices.
I needed some POE security cameras, found some foscam ones on the cheap. Plug them up, go to IP, “install our app”… was pleased to find it allowed a local account without the need for an email, but found that half of my network traffic was comprised of requests to their “ivyIOT AI detection”. I didnt measure what data was going through before sectioning them behind a firewall zone.
My fault for not having looked further into other brands, they were still a bargain and work without issue with my setup, but annoying
