Early restrictions on printer cartridges in the 1990s were simple: they could be bypassed with a bit of tape, or pressing a combination of buttons on the printer. Later, the chips could be reset, probably in a way similar to this. Now, there are encryption keys etc.
> suspect the reason they didn't do this was for a more "consumer friendly" design
That is naïve.
> That is naïve.
We are supposed to avoid this kind of retort on HN, but I'll try to read underneath the surface.
I am more likely than most to infer exploitative and manipulative intent behind the choices of large corporations. However I am also very much a realist.
Consider that this company (whom I never herd of before this post) is not some multinational behemoth like Samsung. This product is coming from a very new, small manufacturer of luxury, miniature home appliances in France (so far a manufacturer of 1 appliance it seems). Given their niche target market, it seems far more likely to me that their choice to use cartridges is an attempt to fit that market, than an attempt to milk people for huge margins at scale on a consumable. Yes it's far from economical, but nether is their product.
I may be wrong, but I am not naive.
- Give up on additional revenue;
- Costly to make machine more robust/tolerant to variations in composition/pH/viscosity/etc. of 3rd-party detergent;
- No good way to enforce rinse/calcite removal inside machine - without DRM, user can just pour water as "rinse" liquid, and then lie when RMAing the washer that eventually clogged up and broke.
Obviously anything that means you rake in less money is against the short-term interests of the sales department, but not necessarily the long-term interests of the company.
FWIW this also protects against ignorant drivers who through no fault of their own have never filled up gas. Many countries are full service, as I believe are some US states?
Beats me why filling up gas is made out to be such a difficult task...
>Credit where credit's due, Daan Tech didn't completely lock down the machine with Bob cassettes. Once empty, you can leave it there and add detergents manually.
If that was the true concern they'd have locked that up as well. They want you to pay for convenience, not for the warranty's sake.
I have air filters that notify you when the filters should be checked or changed, I have coffee machines that tell you when you should descale them but they all let you override or ignore the issue if you so desire. And they're a lot less sophisticated than this device.
I'm not a fan of ad-hominem but I do agree with Symbiote that your take in a bit naive. You don't need to be a behemoth to embrace a crappy business model. Remember Juicero?
It's also the almost cliche case study in undergraduate business school. Known as the "Kodak" model or the "Gillette" model: "Give away the camera, sell the film" or "Give away the shaver, sell the blades" and while it's not an exact fit (I doubt they're selling the washer at cost) it's in the same vein.
Their deceit is made more egregious by their supposed care for the environment.
Look at the lengths Juicero went to create a subscription model for juice. Clearly there is a desire for that business model to be applied more broadly than just inkjet printers.
Absent any indications to the contrary, my default assumption is that we're seeing the same business model applied here.
Bollocks. DRM would have been to digitally sign the EEPROM.
This DRM will prevent the average consumer from refilling the cartridges even if it's easily defeated by those with a working knowledge of embedded electronics.
Pretty irrelevant "argumentum ad verecundiam", but for the sake of argument, you are not "average" anymore. Being able to pick Schlage and Kwikset already puts you in the probably 0.1%.
Anyhow, back on track, the average customer does not refill their cartridges. I doubt the idea of doing so has even sparked in their head. (and yes, the average consumer is dumb).
What percentage of the general population knows how to dump an I2C EEPROM, do some reverse engineering to find the counter, and update the counter value? It seems easy to us because we're on HN, and many of us are EEs or other embedded systems people, but it's pretty specialized knowledge in the population at large.
This is absolutely DRM. Not effective DRM when squared off against an embedded systems engineer, but DRM nonetheless. Yes, they could have used a hardened encrypted EEPROM specifically built for these kinds of applications (for example, the ATSHA204A from Atmel/Microchip), but that would have cost more and in applications like this COGS for the disposable element is king. They probably assumed that a simple unencrypted I2C EEPROM would be good enough, and quite honestly they're probably right: unless somebody goes and starts selling a little dongle to reset these cartridges to consumers, it's only going to be a handful of technically-inclined power users resetting them.
Yes, and this is why this rudimentary hardware DRM is sufficient for the current market. If the marketplace changes and the hack becomes easily attainable and widely used, SW DRM may emerge.
A right-click blocker script or those domain locks on old Flash games is a form of DRM as long as it keeps you from copying something. Doesn't have to be elaborate, doesn't have to involve crypto. It just has to have the effect of stopping you from copying something that copyright law protects. Once you have that, then it's unlawful to remove the DRM unless it's for a lawful purpose; and it's unlawful to tell anyone how to remove it for any purpose.