Ehh... this is more like "people don't want software on their Dishwasher" rather than "people want free software on their dishwasher"
Unfortunately if his goals came to fruition the vast majority of people would be in the same place. I'm not sure what the answer is, but it seems like free software is only a small piece of it.
By all means, turn our home PCs into supercomputers and our televisions into 3D hologram projectors, but let "dumb" but reliable goods persist.
Next they'll start making smart cissors, smart drinking glasses, smart pens...
I don’t know what I’d do with any of that other stuff. Does your dishwasher actually try to measure water quality? Because that seems like a really poor fit. I wouldn’t trust water quality measurements coming out of my dishwasher anyway. It’s measuring hot water which isn’t what you should be drinking, and I’d give it a 99% chance that the person who crammed those sensors in didn’t do a good job of insulating them from the heat, vibration, etc.
And I thought at least some dishwashers heated the water themselves, like my washing machine. At least the water-hardness value is nice to know, and (since it's super-easy with HA) log/graph it over time. Plus detergent and salt levels are nice to know for shopping-list-planning.
But why? If I haven’t run it in three days, then I don’t need it to run. The only way this might be useful for me would be if HA could magically realize the dishwasher is full and I forgot to run it, but it’s not going to be able to do that. It can’t tell the difference been “I forgot” and “I don’t want it to run yet” and I absolutely do not want HA sending me a message every time I leave asking if I meant to run the dishwasher.
> And I thought at least some dishwashers heated the water themselves, like my washing machine.
Maybe some dishwashers do have internal heaters to reheat the water? Mine definitely is connected to the hot water supply, though. I am not aware of it containing an internal heater. Definitely some dishwashers have a heating element for drying (mine does not) but I don’t think they use those elements for heating the water.
Also, does your clothes washing machine actually heat water? That seems pointless when you already have a device intended to provide hot water to the whole house. Mine connects to the hot and cold lines. I’d be annoyed if I bought a washing machine and then realized it had a heater inside instead of using the hot water supply. The extra complexity and failure modes and wasted time to heat the water do not seem to provide any value.
> At least the water-hardness value is nice to know, and (since it's super-easy with HA) log/graph it over time. Plus detergent and salt levels are nice to know for shopping-list-planning.
Personally I don’t want “nice to haves” that requires my devices to be internet connected and have apps etc. The value is way too low for the complexity it adds. I especially don’t trust these device manufacturers to keep these systems running long term.
If you find value, though, I’m not saying you shouldn’t be able to buy one of those smart dishwashers.
A quick search indicates that most (all?) dishwashers have a heater to bring the water up to the necessary level. But also that you should give them the hottest water you can from your plumbing for efficiency.
So you use the hot water line so the water is in the ballpark of the proper temperature, then use the internal heating units to hit and maintain the target temperature.
Although there’s also a big push to start using cold water for clothes. Supposedly modern detergents don’t need hot water typically.