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Comment by lights0123 | Hacker News Reader

Notifications is the big reason: because cycle times are usually just estimates, you can't just set a timer for when it'll be done.

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I don't understand the usefulness of notifications on my phone for a dishwasher. Either I am near my dishwasher and hear its acoustic signal that it has finished. Then I can decide to open it or empty it now or later. Or I am not near the dishwasher than I can't do anything about it. Then it is a completely unactionable information, i.e. noise.

Actually, I have a Bosch/Siemens dishwasher with Wifi because it is very good dishwasher, but I've never connected it to my Wifi, because I don't want to think about advanced persistent threads infilitrating my dishwasher.

You never connected it to WiFi. I don't trust any device with radio so introducing unessecary ones seems like a bad idea.

Good point, but I was under pressure to buy a new one, and the options were limited due to Covid-related delays. As I live in Germany were it is very hard to find an unauthenticated Wifi-network, and there is certainly not a single one in range of my home, I could accept that risk.

Is the completion of a dishwashing cycle a time-critical event in your home? Here, it can easily be a few hours between washing the dishes and unloading the washer (e.g. run the washer overnight, unload it the next morning).

It’s not time critical until someone told you it needs to be time critical i.e the manufacturer tries to bundle shitty IoT features on every damn thing because the manufacturer next door is doing it and then piles on the marketing.

No one needs an internet connected dish washer.

Just give me something I don’t need to sleep with one eye open all the time.

I don't need to be notified when the job is complete; I press "Start" before I go to bed, and unload in the morning. I don't mind if my clothes are a bit crumpled. But machines have had a "rinse hold" function since forever; if you can't tolerate slightly-crumpled clothes, do the rinse-and-spin in the morning.

Mine dumb model beeps when its done its cycle. It's a good notification for me. If I run it overnight, I don't really care at which hour it finished. Am I missing something else?

>because cycle times are usually just estimates

Why is that? what diagnostics are it running to tell if it needs to run longer?

I thought they ran by timers, in which case cycle times are...cycle times.

Modern-ish ones usually have a dirty-water-sensor; I believe it works by shining light through the water on the way out of the machine to see (roughly) how dirty it is. Clean water = cycle over, dirty water = keep going!

So if the water never gets dirty it doesn't turn off? How does it judge how dirty the dishes are to tell how dirty the water should be?

Seems fancy but nonsense.

I guess if the water is clean then it does a very quick cycle and just stops

Some dish washers have water sensors that vary the cycle times depending on how dirty they observe the return water. This why they warn you not to pre-rinse your dishes because you'll fool the system into a lighter washing which won't properly clean your dishes.

Newer models can check if the water is coming out clear and waste less resources/time.

It needs to open the inlet valve until there's enough water. This will take less time if your water pressure is higher.

It needs to heat until the desired temperature is achieved. This will take more time in colder weather.

"just estimates" no, I don't buy this.

Unless you're actually looking for sub-minute precision on its timing, the cycle time is pretty fixed. Dishwashers don't care about load or dirtyness, they care about the program you select.

Too much user lazyness and machine automatism make things go sideways.

Also, machines that let you open the door while it's running might result in more confusion than anything else (is the cycle just started or it is actually ending?).

The timer in my dumb Siemens washing machine works quite well. I can just set it to be done in <N> hours. That way I can load it in the morning and have it just about done when I come home in the evening. Works quite well. Doesn't really matter if it takes 10 minutes longer or not.

People were automating timing of things before we had electricity. It's certainly not a requirement to be internet-connected to make that happen.

For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting a Piezoelectric Sensor, RPi, couple of resistors, and a clamping diode.

This assumes a lot of extra skills and knowledge.

As a Linux user I know RPi pretty well but piezoelectric is something I used to light gas, resistors are something I studied at school (and things that heat), a diode... maybe, but clamping? I won't be able to put those pieces together.

I'd buy a smart plug with a http url to call to turn it on and off and make a web app running on a RPi at home to manage that plug.

I'm pretty sure that was a sarcastic reference to that well-known dropbox comment.

a smart plug can do it for you as well. $10

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