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Comment by jpk | Hacker News Reader

> Ovens and stoves should have knobs I can turn with wet or oven-mitted hands

Ooh, yeah this is a big one for me now. A few years ago I got a new range and the controls are all capacitive touch. Mitts are a minor inconvenience, but also sometimes cooking is messy and liquid gets spilled here or there. Now imagine how your phone works when you get some rain on the screen... yeah, it's not great. I've learned enough tricks to live with it since it's honestly the only thing I don't like about that range, but next time I'll probably shell out a little more for knobs if I have to.

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I have a clothes dryer with capacitive touch buttons. When the ambient conditions are just right, static will build up when it is drying clothes, and it will change its own settings randomly.

Aren't dryers grounded?

Yes. Although I'm not sure if mine was designed to ground the plastic front panel that the buttons are on.

If a dryer circuit was installed before 1996 there is a good chance it won't be grounded. Before 1996 the US national electrical code allowed 3 wire dryer circuits. Two hot wires and one neutral.

In 1996 that was changed to require new dryer circuits to be 4 wire. Two hots wires, one neutral, and one ground. Existing 3 wire dryer circuits were allowed to remain in use.

Regardless of being grandfathered in (allowed), you should update your drier to a 4-prong cord/outlet (which is ACTUALLY grounded). This does not always require stringing an entire new circuit — NEC (US) allows driers to be grounded with just a single 10awg wire.

Particularly if you operate rentals, the legal liability is perhaps almost as much as NOT retrofitting GFCIs into baths/kitchens.

SRC: not your electrician

my washer/dryer also has capacitive touch and will usually pause itself this way during a dry cycle if I forget to put the keypad lock on.

it's an absolute failure of product design in my eyes

One of the reasons we chose our current oven was the simple, easy controls and clear display:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WHXlXwYWETA/UbHwdsgx5dI/AAAAAAAAA_...

There's a reason the most important controls on phones (which are all about interactive interfaces) are physical buttons!

I've used a stovetop like that in the past. I don't understand how this crap gets through even rudimentary testing. First time I used it I damn near started a fire because the controls became unusuable at the worst possible time. And false inputs are a real problem too.

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