Great hack, but I’m sure any engineer worth their salt winces at the thought of a machine in their home roundtripping through far away 3rd party servers (I guess they’re the manufacturer’s, but if it’s hardware I own in my house those servers are 3rd party to me) just to notify them of a numerical value when they’re sitting literally 10 meters away (I live in the countryside and experience internet interruptions not infrequently, things running locally matter a lot to me).
I was thinking the other day as I was remodeling my kitchen that I would happily pay several times the price of regular appliances (fridge, clothes washer, dish washer) if they were built with a tasteful, minimalist design (eg 1960s Braun style), quality materials, and fully open source PCB/firmware/schematics/etc. I’m probably not the only one. It’d be a weird niche market but perhaps there’s something there.
If you tie it with the building consumer awareness of right to repair, anti consumerism, planned obsolescence, etc, the marketing just writes itself.
Maybe that’s a kind of company I want to start myself, having worked in consumer hardware for a long time and thinking about my next step, but if anyone wants to take the idea go ahead.
I actually worked on an App for a company that made home appliances. Originally they made everything local, so direct App to Washing machine communication. They had a really hard time with that approach for a number of reasons.
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.
Not judging, but you represent such a small fraction of the market that companies simply don’t deem it worth it when looking at the cost of supporting LAN-only. Just imagine the support tickets they’ll get.
Oh yeah, I'm fully aware of that. Somewhat ironically, the one device (garage door opener) that I did allow to do its cloud thing works so poorly that I gave up on trying to make it work and turned off the WiFi. The remote open never worked, the "notify me when the door is open after 9pm" alerts would arrive days later, etc. And, of course, the user interface looked and felt like one developed by an industry where the existing UX was a single button.
> The first, and most obvious, reason is that getting your phone and (all) your appliances on the same network is non-trivial.
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.
Many cases I knew, people would have several repeaters and extra routers to extend coverage in big houses, and not set it up correctly in PA/Bridge mode, so peripheral network devices would be locked behind in a separate NAT’ed subnet.
I've dealt with this a ton trying to help troubleshoot people's home network problems during the early days of COVID WFH. [1] Some of the absolute messes I'd see were astounding, and they thought everything worked fine because all their phones and Apple TVs and kids PCs running Steam could all get to their cloud stuff fine, so why couldn't their company laptop talk to the printer they brought home and plugged into the "router" in the basement?
[1] Not something we'd /normally/ do, but when that was going on... You just had to get people working.
We can consider it, but Miele won’t. Their problem is connecting your washer to your phone and going through the cloud has other side benefits for them as well, such as telemetry, so here we are and will be.
> Every WiFi ISP router I have used provides a single network
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.
> 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.
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.
What if the person has two networks at home? Or ends up on the neighbor's that they sometime use? Or their saved guest network? The user could well think "I am..." whether they are or aren't.
How would the phone know the /right/ network? All it can really know is it can't find the appliance.
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.
If somebody required WiFi in an area of the home where it wasn't already, why not just use a repeater/mesh node? If someone wants their smart appliance online, a few extra dollars on top of a likely three-to-four digit purchase appliance is nothing.
I’d pay more for NO firmware in my washing machine.
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 disagree. I would like a machine that I could start when I want, I don't like when I start a load before leaving the day then having it sit in the damp until I get home to put it in the dryer. I would prefer to be able to start it an hour before I was going home so it would be ready for transfer to the dryer then.
I also would like phone notifications, it is sort of in a corner of the basement so I don't hear the alarms.
A mechanical controlled washing machine with a mechanical timer on the plug would, reliably, achieve the same thing. no need for networks and external servers.
A timed controlled smart plug, with current monitoring, would be able to achieve the IOT aspect of the problem.
It would need to be a very specific kind of washing machine (that hopefully probably exists) to make your idea work.
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.
>The machine would need to have a timer mechanism that is turned by an electric clock motor,
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.
> 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.
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.
Toaster ovens use spring wound timers, as they are simple and easy to mass manufacture. Its a simple time off delay
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.
The control drum is significant more complex than a toaster ovens timer
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 highly doubt a mechanical timer would be more reliable than a micro and some buttons.
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.
I guess there is some utility then. I find that to be very narrow and outside my personal preferences but recognize that you find it useful.
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.
It’s nice, I’m with you, but if your machine have tiny screen with remaining time (yes it’s not very accurate) - “hey siri set timer for 90minutes” works fine enough.
I'm also in favor of simplicity, but I think there is an increase in reliability from a microcontroller-based system over one built from discrete logic gates, a mechanical timer, or electromechanical relays. I get that you might not want updatable firmware or might not want communications off the board, but you probably do want a microcontroller-based (with the associated firmware) machine.
It’s less about desire and imagining there may be perfectly reasonable scenarios that exist without one needing to be aware of them or them having to be universally applicable.
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.
Miele already offer this on newer washing machine. They can connect to your inverter too and start a load when there is available local solar/battery/low spot prices.
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
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.
In Europe spot prices are announced 24 hours in advance so it's actually very easy to this. It's super handy for things like battery-electric vehicles or central heating. For the latter you also take in the weather forecast into your model, and voila, lower power usage, better comfort. For BEV you can easily set plans to charge it even more than usual to take advantage of unusual drops.
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.
I've often wondered why no new manufacturer has appeared with a stacked system that can wash clothes in a top washer and then dump them into a bottom dryer, or even an all-in-one frontloader.
Front-loaded machines with both a washer and heat-pump dryer exists. I've had one for many years. It's quite handy if you have light loads, but I much prefer having a stack of separate washer and dryer, even though it means I have to manually move them from one to the other.
You know I had the vague thought of searching to see if they were actually out there but dismissed it as unlikely (at least in NA) because I've recently been appliance shopping and never saw one in person.
Probably because that would much more mechanically complex and therefore expensive and failure-prone, and the market has decided that the existing options are good enough (I'm not defending this, just describing what I see).
Drying performance is shit. Especially since you can pack a washing-machine fairly full without affecting performance, but a tumble-dryer needs to be loosely filled. But even so, the combo machines don't dry well.
That is an interesting idea. I guess you could probably set that up somehow. Although I’m not sure if you can necessarily access that data live from your electricity company. I imagine you could probably just accomplish the same thing by running at 3am every night.
Depends on the building. The last two apartment buildings I lived in, you could hardly ever hear anything at all from neighbours. One was in a century old building, one was in a completely new building a couple of years back. YMMV.
I’d absolutely pay for some features of a smart washing machine, like a way of telling whether there’s a load currently running. I live in NYC where my building has one (non-commercial) W/D set for ten residents. Climbing up 6 floors with a heavy laundry basket sucks and avoiding wasteful trips would be something I would pay a huge premium for if I could add it on.
Dumb appliances still have firmware on their microcontrollers to control things like wash program, indicators, sensor feedback, you name it. Making a full functioning appliance without the micro would incur huge engineering and BOM costs that can be replaced with a $0.50 micro.
My washing machine displays a remaining time when you start it but is constantly wrong. So you go to the basement to find out it needs 15 more minutes. You go down 20min later and still 5min left. It is very pleasant to know when it is ready without going to the basement
Example of why someone would want to control it remotely: not infrequently, people pay less for energy used between x and y hours that are allocated to them specifically as a customer, or, also not uncommonly, people pay less for energy post-midnight prior to dawn when demand is lower, ergo, they can save a significant amount of money by doing their laundry at 3am.
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.
Me too, and I believe our society could have taken a different trajectory, in which the values you have are norms.
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?
Totally agree. Buying new appliances is hard if you are blind. It's either very cheap stuff that still has buttons, expensive stuff with touch screens which are unusable to me or expensive stuff that has touch screens and an app to control it. Besides not willing to fiddle with a phone and an app for every single action, the expensive stuff with apps will be unusable sooner or later when the software stops getting support and the appliance is still there.
I enjoyed this reverse engineering, using a direct connection within your home network after the keys have been extracted after an initial authorization to the Bosch/Siemens cloud:
https://trmm.net/homeconnect/
a few years ago i bought a bluestar platinum range. that's probably the closest you're going to get these days. it's all gas + mechanical, all stainless and iron, works during a power outage, etc. i looked around and didn't see any PCB's, just wiring for the lights, igniters, and convection fans. the broiler is a gas salamander style top grill.
... 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.
You've reminded me of a friend of mine who reached the point in his life where he was going to furnish his home with new furniture. He boasted how he was only going to buy American and wasn't going to be like everyone else favoring stuff from elsewhere. After one day of furniture shopping exclusively American, he said he couldn't justify spending so much just to buy American. And I was dumbfounded. Like he honestly believed people weren't buying American-made because they actually favored stuff from China. The thought it was a cost issue never crossed his mind until he had to spend his own money.
That's a fair interpretation. Admittedly I've known him long enough that I'm familiar with these experiences of his, so I didn't probe too much into this exact event and what he thought everyone else was doing.
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."
mm hmm. yup. also "justifying" an expense is one of those words i am very skeptical of. you can either afford it, or you can't. fwiw i didn't get the matching fridge, because i couldn't afford both (this was cash out of pocket, not some insane mortgage refi/heloc).
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.
I have recently come to the conclusion that a major problem is that there is no "local" internet. You either have websites somewhere out of local network or some app-based solution, but there's no "dishwasher.local". And you can't burden consumers with IP addresses.
There is “local” Internet, it’s called LAN. There’s “dishwater.local” if someone (manufacturer included, though I’m pretty firmly against IoS devices) bothers to set it up. Local nodes can do multicast/broadcast DNS and discover each other. You’ve probably seen it if you ever used a WiFi-connected printer on LAN.
ah I never knew that the protocols behind the zeroconf services (Bonjour etc.) can also resolve hostnames. Very interesting. Although I have to say that in my experience these things are not robust enough yet. Setting up the printer at work was a pain because it was not automatically found (okay, this is a complex network) and at home I have a few devices that should talk with each other (some running behind switches) but only if I start them in the right order.
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.
I wonder if the Thread/Matter standards will be able to improve on this once adopted. At least they provide open standards and don't require cloud components for supported devices to communicate with your (pocket and otherwise) computers.
> At least they provide open standards and don't require cloud components for supported devices to communicate with your (pocket and otherwise) computers.
Previous standards didn't require this either, and yet every single manufacturer made their devices only work through an internet-connected hub.
For your appliances, maybe look at the commercial market. You usually get minimalism and quality material (lots of stainless steel). Often good reparability, but not much open sourcing I am afraid. And certainly several times the price.
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.
I've had the same day dream many times, we might be on to something. I even have this "playbook" about parts and branding and stuff, all while encouraging third party creation of spares.
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.
I think we need a big community database website full of instructions for taking control of your appliances. I would take a month off of work to contribute to that and get my devices under my control without needless internet interactions.
Personally, "open source" is very low on the list of things that would convince me to pay several thousands dollars extra per appliance. That's just way too much money for something like "avoid pushing the buttons or getting up without needing third party servers." I'll just push the buttons, thanks.
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?)?
We just got a Bosch oven whose timer would count down to 1:01 and stop. Further, it has two timers and only one of them did this, elevating this bug from surprising to nearly inconceivable. Then, to fix it they had to send a repair person out with an entire new controller board.
So yeah, some fundamental restructuring would be good here. (BTW, to be fair, the controller was made by Diehl Controls, not Bosch.)
Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=migRN4P1wGI. Tape on a thing that gets activated by dumb washing machine LEDs and notifies your phone without any third-party server. Really cool stuff!
I thought this article would be along those lines except more sophisticated (OCR to read remaining time? sure why not!) and was slightly disappointed
I don't think it would be that niche given how big an industry home automation has already become. The general public generally don't know what they want until you put it front of them. I hadn't thought about that for a kitchen appliance, but yes, I would buy one, absolutely, that appeals in a huge way.
If you did start that kind of a company, I'd love to be made aware of it.
I would also like this (well I want something entirely mechanical with no software at all) but short of people designing entirely open and 3d printable versions on their own time, this will never happen.
It is notable that washing machines lie about remaining time.
Specifically, there are parts of the wash cycle that are indeterminate. How long will it take to get all the clothes wet with water - well that will depend on the water pressure and how many clothes are inside. How long will it take for the water to heat - Well that will depend on how hot it was when it came in and the grid AC voltage variation. How long will it take to spin - well that will depend how many times it needs to accelerate and decelerate to redistribute clothes to find an arrangement to get sufficiently low vibration.
So... With all these unknowns, the machine simply gives a kinda long estimate, and shortens or lengthens other parts of the washing cycle to 'catch up' with the claim. And if some process takes far too long, it will just overrun. And if you only put one pair of pants in, then it may cut the time back a bit when it weighs it and notices.
We bought a house, and the laundry machines did not convey with it. Feeling a bit tighter than usual, we bought a pair of older ones for $75 a piece from a local outfit that sells reused/unused building supplies.
Having endured precisely the phenomenon you're describing for the last decade, having a washer that reliably gets the job done in 45 minutes or less is pure bliss.
Yeah, it uses more water, but we're on a well and septic. My major complaint from an efficiency standpoint is that it doesn't spin out as much water as a modern machine. The dryer has to do more work accordingly.
Fortunately, we just had a nice day and put the clothesline up.
It may not be as efficient but it won’t need replacement every 7 years. That alone makes up for it.
Plus it’s probably easy to repair. My Speed Queen is made of like 7 parts. Most people will have gone through 3 or 4 machines by the time mine is dead.
Most washing machines will use more $ in energy in their lifespan than they cost to buy. That means it is usually worth replacing an old but working one with an energy efficient one merely for the energy savings.
A modern EU machine will wash a large (10kg) load of clothes for 0.5 kwh of energy and 50 liters of water (13 gallons).
An old 1980's machine might use 4.5 kwh of electricity, and 180 liters of water.
It’s interesting because although not unimportant, the outcome I’m looking for when buying a washing machine is how well it cleans clothing. Of course price, speed, and efficiency cone into play. But I think many efficient machines do a poor job at cleaning.
Of course different people have different requirements. If you rarely have soiled clothing maybe it doesn’t matter. If you have kids and jobs/hobbies that soil clothing you may also have different expectations.
Also where you are in the world. In the USA energy is generally cheap and on many places water is plentiful. If I were in Germany where energy policy has been poorly managed I’d probably have to consider efficiency more.
> But I think many efficient machines do a poor job at cleaning.
Not in my experience. A good high efficiency front loader tends to get the clothes cleaner - and notably with much less wear than conventional top loaders. The money savings also come from clothing replacement as well.
Water use aside it's just better technology. Complexity is an issue, but I've had good luck by staying brands and models proven for reliability.
The problem with front loaders, and it's a fatal flaw unfortunately, is they unavoidably have mold and mildew problems due to the design. This makes them an invalid option in my opinion as I don't want mold and mildew spores in my home. They also begin to stink and your clothing can pick it up over time as it gets worse.
The other problem is many top loaders today are garbage. In order to be effective they do need a good agitator and they do need use a lot of water. The water part doesn't really matter to me though as tap water is so cheap we're talking a few cents per load.
Also speed. A front loader takes a long time. A good top loader (like Speed Queen) is done in 30m.
It’s more about residues that get left behind and trapped in the rubber gasket. Keeping a dour open, although helpful, simply isn’t enough. A big part of the problem is due to the limited water use. Things don’t fully rinse.
I don’t know, it’s a major problem that people report and I’ve experienced myself. There’s even a fan you can buy and put into the machine. But hey if you haven’t experienced problems then that’s great.
As long as we're swapping anecdotes, I spent a day cutting MDF for a project and came home just covered in fine brown dust. The place we rented before we moved had an LG HE front-loader.
My blue pants remained brown from the dust for a couple of cycles. My carpenter neighbor has had the same experience with HE machines and has gone to a Speed Queen top-loader. He finds it much more satisfactory as well.
You don't have to go by anecdotes, you can go by published testing then. Dust may be a special case, and perhaps certain occupations may be better off with a top loader for work clothes, but for everyday stains and body secretions front loaders work better and wear out clothes slower.
I'm not in the anti top-loader Speed Queen cult at all... but it is that on the internet, a cult (when I hear things like mold is "unavoidable", and basically you'd have to be an idiot to consider anything other than a Speed Queen top loader that is my conclusion) -- but most people are simply better served with a front loader.
I’m sure it’s just an example but being european I am surprised at the 10kg load. Most people I know hover around ~5-7 kg max capacity for their washing machines. They’re usually placed in bathrooms or kitchens since not a lot of people have space for a separate washing machine room since also not a lot of people have dryers in the EU (at least they’re not standard, they’re considered extra).
Taking a random appliance vendor's list of machines, there are a good few 9 or 10kg ones, but 6-7kg is also common: https://powercity.ie/groups/view?grp=40&class=01 (the very most expensive one they sell does _18kg_; I had no idea that was a thing...)
Using more water is a feature IMO. I want clean clothes. I don't care insane people decided to live ten million a city without enough water to use, there is more than enough where I live. Why should I be uselessly frugal with abundant resources and suffer as a result.
More water is only a feature if you’re using stone age detergents. Modern detergents don’t benefit from more water, but they do benefit from better agitation.
Modern detergents use enzymes to break down dirt and material to bonds dirt to your clothes (like oils and fats), they need good agitation to physically separate the loosened material, where surfactants in the detergent can then bond to dirt and keep it suspended in the water. They’re so good, at keeping dirt in the water, that you just need enough water to saturate the clothes, and form a small amount of cleaning liquor. A drain and rinse cycle then completely removes the dirt from your clothes.
Adding more water makes the agitation far less efficient, because rather than being able to pick up and drop your clothes on to other clothes, or the hard surface of the wash drum, your clothes hit water first which cushions the impact. Resulting is less effective removal of dirt.
Finally modern detergents work best with plenty of time. The enzymes doing the heavy lifting don’t get consumed in the process, so the longer they’re in contact with your clothes, the more dirt they can break down. (Also worth mentioning enzymatic cleaners don’t damage most fabrics at all, because they’re carefully designed to only target dirt)
More water uses more energy to heat too. And the energy cost of heating water is much higher than even that of desalinating water.
A modern machine makes clothes just a little wet for the warm wash cycle. That detaches all the dirt and gets oils emulsified. Then later it rinses with lots of cold water. That gets you the best of both worlds - you still get really clean clothes, but only had to heat a small amount of water to do so.
Using a lot of water doesn't really correlate with clean clothes. Actually, it may slightly negatively correlate; the biggest water users are old-style top loaders, and per Which, Consumer Reports et al, those are pretty consistently worse at actually _cleaning_ than either modern front load machines or modern high-efficiency top-loaders.
I have done something similar to OP with my Miele washer. Once you start a cycle it begin filling the drum, and analysing how much water your clothes absorb, at which point it re-estimates the wash duration based on the measured load size.
Based on the stats I’ve collected, once it done that re-estimate (which is usually reducing the cycle length slightly), the new duration will be spot on nine times out of ten. Occasionally it take longer than normal to balance the drum for the spin cycle, and I can see the machine adjusting it wash duration in my stats.
I’ve also noticed the Miele machine seems I incorporate info from previous wash cycles. So the initial estimate it provides before you hit start, will slowly adjust to match wash duration of your typical load. As a consequence, if the machine says it gonna be done in 1:40, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be done in 1:40, and probably completed in 1:20-1:30. So more than accurate enough to plan around.
It's a real PITA because the dryer time is fairly consistent. Leave stuff sitting wet in the washing machine too long and it picks up a musty smell, so ideally the dryer is done before the washing machine. But the washing machine is so bad at estimating it's remaining time, and it is dependent on the load.
My drier says its 2 min left but it keeps updating the ending time... well it is somewhere near the end, just maybe measuring humidity and carrying on?
This suggests you are doing multiple loads back to back... Which in turn suggests you are either seperating whites and coloured clothes (no longer necessary with modern clothing, detergents and low temp wash cycles), or you are underfilling your machine (modern machines can wash about 20 lbs of clothes - 100 tshirts - in one go without wash quality degrading).
In my experience, separating whites (not only so they can be bleached when wanted) from darks from colors is definitely still necessary?
I actually turned a beige sweater that snuck into the wrong load beige-blue just yesterday with a pair of AG Jeans that have been washed every other week since I got them two years ago
3 kids and some foster animals, so I have normal full loads plus some stuff that really needs to be washed separately. On a normal day it's not a problem. But if anything happens that causes a washing backlog then it starts getting logistical and that's when the timer makes things harder. I don't separate whites except for my kids karate gear. My washing machine does 10kg which is 22lbs. I try to fill it where possible.
Was always wondering why laundry sometimes takes longer although I put in the same quantity of clothes. Now it makes sense. Thanks for the explanation, very informative!
I use a zigbee smart outlet with power monitoring for this. If it's using power for awhile, set to washing. If power has been zero for awhile, and it's washing, set to done (and send text-to-speech event that goes out on all house speakers).
This is a little Node-RED flow on top of Home Assistant.
I use CT (current) sensors on the circuits for both washer and dryer and a small XBee ZigBee device using its ADC pins to transmit the current readings. On the server with an XBee coordinator, I use a moving average window to cover points where the washer or dryer use very little current. It's then pretty easy to detect on/off, and even where the current cycle is. The obligatory Home Assistant integration notifies household members.
Plotting the dryer data, you can see how it works. The heating element turns on for a period, then turns off and the humidity is most likely read at that point. The gap between periods of the heating element on increases, and the heating length of time decreases, until if stops spinning. Cool DIY project.
This! I am doing a similar thing with only Home Assistant, i.e. without Node RED. No need for „smart“ appliances and reverse engineering their protocols if all you want is to be notified when the washing cycle is over.
This is a clever way to make non smart appliances smart, it works for washers, dryers, dishwashers etc. You could even use this to detect when a dehumidifier fills its tank and stops itself.
I've just had a "Smart" Samsung washing machine installed.
It says it is Internet ready. I am not sure what they mean by internet ready, it seems I have to change the name of the WiFi point to have no crazy characters, and just have 2.4 Ghz, turning 5GHz off in order to connect it.
But this means my smart scales now need to be set up since the WiFi name has changed.
Am I missing a trick, I guess it is possible to set up, but it is a bit gruelling.
I used to have my laundry machines in my attached garage, outside of the living space and separated by sufficient insulation that I couldn’t hear the buzzer go off. Those machines had WiFi, and I’d get a push notification when the cycle was done. I never used any other “connected” feature, but that one was nice.
I had the same issue, unfortunately my washing machine does not have an API. I used a raspberry Pi with a camera, using OCR i was able to detect the remaining time from the display. Having an API like this would have been so much easier.
I did create an opensource web app so you are able to see your remaining time, laundry history, and get (push/mail) notifications. Since you only need to push the remaining seconds to an http endpoint it probably is easy to use with the solution described in the article.
For "I'm done" notification, I use relay with power metering - looking at the power pattern, home assistant can be set up for notification after x time when that graph drops to floor.
Same here. I’m sitting here reading stuff about reporting time remaining and wondering why that matters? Isn’t the concern just when its done?
I got one of these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08LN3C7WK . Connected it to my HomeBridge server (all local), set up a push notification using when the energy drops below 5 watts (which happens about 1-2 minutes after the cycle ends).
I setup a power monitor that resets a 5 min timer every time the power usage goes over X. It would still be nice to have an idea of how much time is left - I've considered setting up a pi-camera to OCR the display.
Shelly has a few relays with power metering and they offer lots of local-first and open ways of communicating. I use one to control power to my 3d printer.
> unfortunately my washing machine does not have an API
I'd love to see the breakdown of who would prefer a network-connected washing machine with an API vs who would prefer a device that you have to operate with buttons and switches like a cave man.
Would be interesting to intercept the network traffic going from the washer to the manufacturer’s web service. It’s possible the API is simple enough that you could sub in your own little server that accepts and tracks the status events.
I guess a time is near when we want our washing machines and dryers to operate at peak solar power. So some kind of (very, very preferably local) api would be nice.
Tangent, but how did you handle lighting for the camera? I'm intermittently working on something similar to read a gas meter, but am struggling to find a way of lighting the digits sufficiently, while not leaving reflections on plastic over the digits. I've tried Pi-controlled LEDs and a smart bulb, with little success, so far.
Try diffuse lighting - the classic option is a light pointing at a white shower curtain. That should cut down on the specular reflections.
Alternately, get yourself a movable light, a live view through the camera, and move the light around until you find a position that gives you a good image.
Try switching your spectrum. I bet that plastic is transparent in UV or Infrared and with some minor camera surgery, you could get some visible light filter in there.
To be clear, this is using manufacturer's developer API to interact with their online services and not with the washing machine. Also something often managed by Home Assistant and alike.
I own a Speed Queen washing machine. The best part is it has no digital components and it will last 25 years while also doing a superior job in cleaning clothing.
I highly recommend it. Every other brand is crap compared to it.
When I first moved to Canada, I had no money. I lived in an apartment block with a coin-operated washer and drier. But I always had to go down the hall to check if my laundry was done.
So I had the idea to wind some wires around the power cable to detect the electromagnetic field changes when the machine turns on and off. Then this could send a message to a Raspberry Pi which could ping me somehow.
I didn't want to leave my Raspberry Pi hanging around in that semi-public area though. Also, I couldn't afford one at the time anyway!
But I want a bit to be flipped somewhere, so I can check at my leisure. If I miss the FM transmission I have to go down the hall to check again (Over the past ten years I've missed the last 100% of all FM transmissions passing through my local area)
If washing is not ready (currency is high) do nothing except of maybe accumulating energy.
Else send an endless beep on any frequency you like before you manage to take your laundry and disactivate your FM beeper.
It still can be implemented using a few transistors. Bonus points if implementation of this will be done in such a way that other folks can have a good use of the device.
That's smart. You could probably cram that into a official-looking nondescript plastic box with a backup battery that slots over the wire. Now you'd just need to keep the transmission power low
Correct, that's why it used a Windows USB auto prompt flaw, it spread via usb flash drives, but only activated if the conditions found in the uranium facility were present
I have LG ThinQ washer and dryer. A version of ThinQ API uses AWS MQTT for communication. I find it helpful to send TTS notifications and followup reminders to Sonos when the washer is complete, until the door has been opened. The appliance knows when the door is opened/closed yet the API does not include this detail. Had to add separate contact sensors for that purpose.
My old early/mid 90's washer Maytag dryer set was starting to fall apart few years ago so they were replaced with an LG washer and dryer set with WiFi. The only use I can ever envision a washer needing WiFi for is telling me the remaining time and when the cycle is done.
Before I even connected the WiFi I did some research to see if the washer/dryer could be monitored from a 3rd party app. Nope. The washer has to talk to an LG server. So I poke around some more and find that there is an API for LG appliances, cool right? Nope. You need to be a "valued partner." Apparently paying $2000 for the two machines is not valued by LG.
In the end the washer and dryer remain dumb appliances because I control MY appliances. Go die in a fire LG. And that goes for every other IoT e-waste manufacturer.
>Putting aside any worries about connecting a high-speed rotating device to the internet
We should beware of these dangers, not brush them off. A nation-state could easily destroy millions of homes if/when these Internet-facing APIs are plentiful.
I can wait to buy an open source machine where i can customise. I find the interface with all my last couple of AEG machines ridicolous. The only way to get the machine to work the way you want is turn it off and start again. I really find myself wishing to have a chat with the engineer that programmed this. Very frustrating to have to change machines because they do not have service manuals available. (Wife could not wait me figuring it out). CLI TO MY WASCHINE NOW!!
A simpler solution might be to use a smart plug to monitor the current being drawn by the appliance and then just notify and turn off when it is done. I do variations of this kind of thing (using sonoff S31's flashed with tasmota) and it works quite well.
With an old (10+) washing machine accessing the seven segment output does the same, yet not a worthy HN topic (and quite trivial - some soldering and repotting the silicone dip).
Notifications when a cycle is done, time-based starting of cycles (put the clothes in the machine when you leave, but only start the cycle so that it's done when you're back, or just manually start a cycle from your phone while you're away), control your washing machine with voice assistants, maybe a few more things.
That sounds like something a simple timer would be able to achieve. To each their own, but the only thing that is connected to the internet in my home is the phone, and the PCs.
now connect the timer to the network so it can be activated with certain conditions, eg: I'm leaving work, the live traffic estimates 87 mins until I arrive, start the machine so it finishes when I get home.
Or: Energy will be cheapest to buy at 2:30am, start then.
Or: There is currently enough excess solar power to run the machine only using solar (bonus points for checking weather forcasts)
I was thinking the other day as I was remodeling my kitchen that I would happily pay several times the price of regular appliances (fridge, clothes washer, dish washer) if they were built with a tasteful, minimalist design (eg 1960s Braun style), quality materials, and fully open source PCB/firmware/schematics/etc. I’m probably not the only one. It’d be a weird niche market but perhaps there’s something there.
If you tie it with the building consumer awareness of right to repair, anti consumerism, planned obsolescence, etc, the marketing just writes itself.
Maybe that’s a kind of company I want to start myself, having worked in consumer hardware for a long time and thinking about my next step, but if anyone wants to take the idea go ahead.