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Comment by driscoll42 | Hacker News Reader

It would be mildly useful to get alerts when a load is done. I know I've forgotten about laundry in the washer for a while that I wouldn't have minded a notification on my phone that it was done. Or if some maintenance needed to be done, a reminder. Or one could schedule usage during certain hours to minimize energy usage.

But these are not super important use cases.

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My washing machine beeps when the load is complete; I think it continues to beep every few minutes for half an hour or more.

There's a simple delay-start button too.

Since it's necessary to be at the machine to load or unload clothes, I think the only possibly gain from a network would be rescheduling a delayed start earlier/later/not-at-all.

What would you do with such an alert if you received it while not at home?

You don’t have to be away from home for that to be useful. Even just in another room where you can’t hear it and are otherwise preoccupied. Or you can call your children and ask them to switch it over.

If you don't need the notifications when you aren't home, then there's no reason why it needs to talk to the internet. You could still get the notifications just using a local LAN connection.

It could, but for wider use and more capability, Internet would be the default choice.

Also, I live on a small property compared to those in my area (a few acres), and my WiFi doesn’t cover most of it. So a LAN notification wouldn’t work when I am out gardening.

But a timer would. That's what I use for this sort of thing, personally. The amount of time it takes for a wash cycle is predictable.

> The amount of time it takes for a wash cycle is predictable.

Not on my machine. It’s generally +/- 15 minutes for a given cycle, but it does more or less based on load size, which it somehow determines on its own.

Sounds like this isn’t a feature you would like, but I hope how you can see it is certainly helpful to others.

Oh, I certainly see its utility. It's the cost/benefit ratio that I question -- it seems very unfavorable. But everyone has their own cost/benefit computation. Mine is no more or less legitimate than anyone else's.

Depending on where I am I might go back home and put out the washing

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