Displaying My Washing Machine's Remaining Time with Curl, Jq, and Pizauth
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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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
I also would like phone notifications, it is sort of in a corner of the basement so I don't hear the alarms.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
A basic example: https://efficiencyiseverything.com/water-per-second/
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.
So it seems people are willing to pay extra for the feature.
I thought this article would be along those lines except more sophisticated (OCR to read remaining time? sure why not!) and was slightly disappointed
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?
Previous standards didn't require this either, and yet every single manufacturer made their devices only work through an internet-connected hub.
... 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.
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.
Perhaps he imagined American-made carried a 30% price premium over Chinese-made, but instead found it was more of a 300% price premium.
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."
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.
It solves everything except for the fact that, for people like me, it means we'll never actually give network access to the devices.
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.
[1] Not something we'd /normally/ do, but when that was going on... You just had to get people working.
If users can't set up routers and extenders properly, that may say more about the designers of the routers than the people using them.
I'm nominally an expert user, but a lot of these products make me WTAF regularly.
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.
How would the phone know the /right/ network? All it can really know is it can't find the appliance.
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.
...snip...
>The cloud approach solves this.
How? You just stipulated the machine can't connect to wifi
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.
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?)?
Hard to justify 2-4 the cost when a consumer has no idea if it will last 2-4 times as long (or the warranty will be honored).
How willing would you be to pay 1-2 factors less for the Shenzhen clone that hits market 1-2 weeks later based on the same open designs?
There's a reason these companies don't exist, you have no competitive edge except good will.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Rule #0:
> Be kind. Don't be snarky.
If you did start that kind of a company, I'd love to be made aware of it.
So yeah, some fundamental restructuring would be good here. (BTW, to be fair, the controller was made by Diehl Controls, not Bosch.)
Well maybe with ChatGPT 6...
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.
Washing machine software is now pretty complex!
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
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.
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.
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.
Not your point but just adding my two eurocents
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Keep the door open. The water evaporates. Never had a problem avoiding mold.
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.
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.
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)
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.
I connected the Wi-fi for the app and I get a push notification to tell me the actual time remaining once its done the measurements
This is a little Node-RED flow on top of Home Assistant.
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.
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 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.
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'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.
Alternately, try some polarizing filters instead.
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.
The Arduino sends the value of the LDR over serial port to a laptop which sends changes to the "door open" over Signal to my phone
I highly recommend it. Every other brand is crap compared to it.
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!
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.
lol, stuxnet reference? Although I believe the Iranian uranium centrifuges weren't actually connected
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.
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.
It would be nice to get one of these newer contraptions, but I really have no desire to join the planned obsolescence treadmill.
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)
If I had one I would of course add it to a secured VLAN, and not my regular network :D