I can at least understand the TV, which could be useful for people who want to watch streaming shows without a roku box or connecting an Ethernet cable. But I’m with you on the other stuff. I recently bought a new dishwasher and am in the market for a new oven, but it’s getting harder and harder to find large appliances that don’t have wifi, and I have absolutely no interest in having those kind of appliances potentially vulnerable to hacking.
1 Like
I suppose if the clothes washer is in the basement and you’re doing things on the second floor, it might be nice to have the TV tell you the load is done? Our TV tells us if the fridge was left open, which is helpful for Mr. Kidd who can’t hear the high-pitched chime the fridge door makes. 
2 Likes
why you…
2 Likes
I vaguely recall an article here about a company that did something like that, but I’m not going to dig for it.
2 Likes
I have a subnetwork on my main network that has my washing machine, dryer, garage opener, garage internal camera, and doorbell all on it. The washing equipment being on there helps me track it when I’m elsewhere in the house mainly, although I can remotely stop if desired. I did do that once. The garage is because my kids constantly forget to close it so I can open/close remotely (and the camera is so I can tell if they’re just playing outside of it). And the doorbell, well, that’s more obvious these days.
I can’t imagine putting my fridge/toothbrush/shoe rack on there but who knows what kind of interesting future we face.
1 Like
It demands a toll.
4 Likes
To clean dishes well, you need a physical dishwasher that’s designed competently, a bunch of sensors (that won’t clog), and a microprocessor to control the cycles-- which is cheap but overkill. You also need to design a control scheme and display that will allow the user to control the dishwasher. The cpu is cheap, the user interface is kind of expensive for what it is.
In the old days, the upper tier models had a physical button for each feature, and lights aplenty.
My bosch dishwasher doubles up the functions for each button and uses blink patterns to communicate. It is a pain in the ass to customise , and right now, an error display function would be sorely welcome, as one of its sensors is probably clogged. If I could pull up that data on an ipad, it might be illuminating.
The class of CPUs used by major appliances includes wifi by default. An app can provide genuinely useful features (Timers, diagnostics, status), without the cost of a physical interface and a more advanced screen. If I were evil, it might include subscriptions to cleverer cycles-- the dishwashing equivalent of heated seats.
1 Like
I don’t know if all that stuff is actually needed; dishwashing machines have been around in some form or another since the mid-19th century and most of them worked pretty well.
3 Likes
It has to meet modern standards for cleanliness, energy efficiency, noise, and water consumption. The microprocessor helps them do that.
why have a dishwasher at all? I somewhat get washing machines, but I will never really understand the need for dishwashers in private households. or dryers, for that matter. wanna know why? I know this is OT, but I think this is actually important in that regard;
Im sorry, but I feel very desperate, monitoring this above for the last weeks daily. the SST is even worse.
1 Like
You would be using and heating far more water by hand dishwashing, so it would make things worse, not an improvement.
9 Likes
Bending over the sink to do dishes hurts my neck and back. Thats just me though.
3 Likes
you have to make a dishwasher. how much ressources are needed for it? how much co2 is emmited trough production? how often change people their machine-park? my fridge is from 1995, so is my washing machine. my phone is a phone from 2011. most computing is done on an old 40-watt laptop with 2 cores. I dont own a car, but a bike. I am poor (even by german standards) but its actually enough.
2 Likes
Our dishwashers we keep until they fall apart. Literally, the last one was dropping pieces to the floor. About 10-15 years each.
We live in a drought prone area. The saved water is very important. It’s somewhere around an 80-90% reduction of water use for dishwashing.
12 Likes
Ideally, a dishwasher uses less energy and less water than doing them by hand.
5 Likes
oh, no, no, no,. see, living on a subtropical island in pervasively high humidity and salt air, my clothes - drying out on an open-air clothesline - would be damp, yet stiff and sour-smelling, even after all day. tumble drying on low heat is much more comfortable and acceptable in close quarters with other people.
yes, i realize island communities have dried clothes outdoors for as long as folk have worn clothes, but heat and humidity leads to mildew, mold and other unsavory fungal beasties. that stinks - literally!
that said, (and to the topic) my electric dryer does not need to be “wired” to the IoT, nor for that matter, does my toothbrush, or refrigerator.
maybe if i could find a wi-fi connected clothesline, my beach towels and wetsuit could message me before they turn sour? what type of DDoS attack could that get up to?
5 Likes
Very much this. The idea that the carbon footprint of manufacturing an appliance is the only environmental cost that matters is downright silly.
5 Likes
Because women don’t want to add yet another long and tedious chore to our days?
6 Likes
When I was in school (way before large household appliances came with microprocessors) a fellow nerd tried to repair their family dishwasher which was broken somehow. It turns out that the dishwasher was controlled like a music box, with a slowly-rotating drum and pegs that would switch various aspects of its functionality on and off during a run, and during the disassembly most of the pegs (which were apparently only loosely inserted into some of the large number of available recesses on the drum) fell out.
So, on the plus side, hackable dishwasher (which sounds cool on an abstract level), but on the minus side, dishwasher that must be reverse-engineered and reprogrammed from scratch to get it working again, ideally without presenting a fire or flooding hazard. My friend’s parents were not amused. I think he was doing the dishes manually for a long time.
6 Likes
