Bob_cassette_rewinder
github.com
github.com
1. The company say's being eco friendly is important to them.
2. They manufacture, sell, and ship expensive plastic containers for their detergent.
3. The machines don't necessarily need this specific detergent, and will work fine by leaving in one of the "cassettes" and just using normal dish detergent.
This means that the cassettes were never necessary, and are purely a separate stream of income for the company. Literally the printer ink method.
Which means they didn't have to produce this plastic waste at all, they could have just allowed it to use a smaller amount of liquid or powder detergent (pre-portioned pods are probably too much detergent).
Hell even if they wanted to continue with the printer ink approach, they could have used powder detergent in little wax-lined cardboard containers.
Regardless of how well they're recycling or re-using the cassettes returned to them, the cassettes never needed to exist. It's more plastic taking up more space in more polluting delivery trucks.
At the end of the day this company is selling a dishwasher and a detergent subscription service. It's not the worst thing out there and it's not creating nearly as much plastic waste as the fishing industry but it's still a company greenwashing itself to sell you more garbage.
My experiences are with Printers and ink. A studio I'm a member of inherited a big epson4880 printer. Its a big heavy machine, well built. It came with a "chip resetter" tool for refilling ink carts. The printer seems to know that its using non-epson inks (it warns me on the little display, and I have to click through) but it allows them (right now filled with cleaning solution, but thats another storry).
Newer printers don't allow this (unless you are in Europe). Apparently they are running out of DRM chips, and some of the new printers require a firmware update to use new ink cartridges using the older chips.
One can see a day when these printers/dishwashers no longer have ink/detergents manufactured for them, becoming big paperweights.
Companies never seem to want offer more expensive products with cheaper use costs. Maybe the problem is people don't think about it enough? Where I live the markets have 2 prices listed on the shelves. 1) the cost of the package, 2) the cost per unit of the package (eg cost per oz, cost per pill etc..). Its much easier to compare.
[1] https://shop.inkjetmall.com/Epson-SureColor-P900
"We are currently supplying the European Region versions of this printer model. They can work with a simple chip resetter and refillable cartridges (which we do not supply). Unfortunately, the USA Region versions of this printer have been designed by EPSON to prevent the use of non-EPSON chips and are designed to prevent the use of a chip resetter. As a result, we do not believe any 3rd party solutions may become available for the USA region printers for some considerable time until the anti-3rd party mechanism that prevents the use of 3rd party products is discovered and circumvented.."
Never?
A regular dishwasher has the cost of production built completely into the purchase price, and it doesn't care what brand of detergent is used.
It's the same with some printers, too -- including some Epson printers. Their EcoTank line is refillable: Need more magenta ink today? Just squirt some more magenta in. It doesn't have to be Epson-sourced ink.
As for the paperweights, I have a pixma pro9000 mkii gathering dust after bad aftermarket carts and official carts being at least $100+. It is cheaper and way less time consuming to let a professional printer handle the work at least for larger prints.
A recurring revenue stream, often via subscription, ideally with vendor lock-in, seems to be en vogue, judging purely anecdotally. You saw it in printers and razor blades, but "x as a service" is everywhere, seemingly increasingly so now. Rolls Royce does it for jet engines with their "power by the hour" program, for example (and has for decades).
From a seller business/investor standpoint, consistent net recurring revenue can often be better due to the predictability and planning it enables. Also it's easier to "hook" a consumer with a lower up-front price.
From a buyer standpoint, it's often easier to get approval for operational expenses than capital expenses, whether from higher management, or from investors. Also consumers often simply won't do the math to compare the two models, simply picking the cheaper one and then totally ignoring OpEx.
From their website: "At Daan Tech, we’ve always believed that a more sustainable and fairer world is possible.", you really have to be cynical to write something like this and then sell a worse washing machine that generate lot of plastic waste.
First of all, the cassettes are returnable. This is also mentioned on their website. * https://daan.tech/discover-bob-cassette/
> Each Bob cassette is returnable and reusable. We refill them and put them back on the market. Close the loop, lower your carbon footprint.
You're also NOT required to use the cassettes. You can just throw standard dishwasher tablets in. This is mentioned in Bob's manual, and probably on the website as well. I've been doing this for years and had no issue. There is no DRM-like aspect to Bob.
And finally, it's not a worse washing machine as you say, it's just smaller and more flexible (wrt plumbing), and as Techmoan mentions in his intro, this is a very strong advantage of Bob for people living in small European apartments.
(source: owner of Bob)
Yes, in theory, which requires from you the effort of packaging it up, paying postage, plan time to go to the post office, etc - or you could just throw it in the trash for exactly the same visible effect and be done with it. Even if people want to mail them back, this sounds like exactly the kind of task that will perpetually stay on the "I'll look into that when I have time" list, until they finally just want to get rid of it and throw it in the trash.
But it's good for shifting the blame, because then the pollution is not DaanTech's fault but those of individual consumers.
> You're also NOT required to use the cassettes. You can just throw standard dishwasher tablets in.
Doesn't this contradict what the article was saying? At least there was a quote from DaanTech somewhere that you have to have a cassette inserted to start a wash.
Of the fraction that gets returned, how many are actually reused? It's black plastic with a shine to it and it'll show scratches easily. Does the factory even have the facilities to clean them out and refurbish them for next use?
I think the abbreviation was (and probably still is) popular on Slashdot
What percentage of Bob's customers bother to do that?
Would these people use a cleaner solution anyway? I mean, you can say that of any refilling system, if people don't use it.
My dishwasher uses detergent powder which comes in simple plastic containers that can be dealt with via regular plastic waste collection.
Result: Now there's even more plastic in the waste stream.
I have another question for you while I have your attention; how do you handle trash? Do you just have a bin with no liner and you carry that to outside and pour it in to the big bin? Or do you buy plastic bags at the store to line your bin and then carry that plastic bag filled with crap to the bigger bin?
It’s definitely better to have the bag with me, and just typing this out made me realize I can keep one or two in my backpack at all times.
I have some sympathy if you find yourself on a weekend out and about and needing to spontaneously buy some victuals and don’t have any bag on you - but that’s the cost of us having less litter.
But what about the responsible people who actually care about reducing their carbon footprint by not unnecessarily carrying 3000 lbs of steel everywhere they go?
I lived in Birmingham for a while (admittedly not in the downtown), and this was not my experience at all, nor have I ever heard this from anyone else I knew, including people that did live downtown. Obviously, there are better and worse areas like everywhere else, but most of the city is basically fine IMO.
It is more eco friendly to have them be put out with the recycling and use a readily recycled plastic.
Beyond that it is far more friendly to just let the consumer use regular detergent from a bulk bottle that can be bought anywhere.
I tend to assume incompetence rather than malice. The marketing person that wrote that piece of copy never worried about the lifecycle waste analysis of the project they were working on, because they trusted the CEO/founder that hired them, who said it was gonna be good for the environment. They probably aren't the type of person that worries about nor has the skills to do a lifecycle waste analysis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVup5ya0WVQ / https://www.youtube.com/user/Techmoan
Mat/Techmoan has a perfectly eclectic mix of useful current generation hardware reviews (with his reviews skewed to things which Work Well, are well built and resilient vs fancy features) and nostalgic reviews of electronics (sometimes of things you never knew you should be nostalgic about!). I love his channels style as well, bit of funny, lots of facts, not too technically dense, lots of fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0y1pUtPGQk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN_XeVSKqSY
Great videos.
More than two decades ago, this is the first publicly documented attempt at hacking printer DRM - indeed, also accomplished with EEPROMs in the cartridges: https://eddiem.com/photo/CIS/inkchip/chip.html
I thought the GUID was put in the cartridge to prevent the machine from accepting the same one but refilled, since I know this is done with ink cartridges (printer remembers last N cartridge's IDs) so it's odd to see no other mention of that.
A DRM'd cassette for dish soap. This world needs an enema.
Scroll down to FAQ, and expand the first question: Is the use of a Bob cassette mandatory?
LE: It's also mentioned in the rewind project's README.
> Credit where credit's due, Daan Tech didn't completely lock down the machine with Bob cassettes. Once empty, you can leave it there and add detergents manually.
https://github.com/dekuNukem/bob_cassette_rewinder?tab=readm...
> With shipping and VAT added, it costs a whopping £43 ($60) for 90 washes! That is 48p (67c) per wash.
This about matches the cost of "premium" (think Dreft, Finish, etc.) dishwasher detergent tablets in my country.
There are tons of brands. I use an eco-friendly brand when washing a full machine of lightly used dishes (no eggs, for example).
https://www.aaaai.org/tools-for-the-public/latest-research-s....
You may have a point with regard to this article though, as the author uses professional dishwasher rinse aid and detergent without real knowledge of what is happening.
If you don't notice any difference when using rince aid, you may have very soft water. On many dishwashers (not sure about Bob), you are supposed to adjust the amount of rinse aid being used depending on your water hardness level, and for very soft water, it may very well be zero.
I always thought rinse aid was only needed if you have hard water. We have pretty soft water and like you, I found that rinse aid made no difference at all in drying performance or preventing water spots (we have no water spots even without rinse aid).
Doing stuff by yourself is always interesting, but rince aid is cheap, and according to the article, apparently harmless at the concentrations used in household dishwashers, so unless you want something specific, why bother?
I just checked, and my rinse aid has 0.2% of ethoxylated alcohols. So this would be around 500 times dilution already, and the rinse aid is further diluted by about 100x by the dishwasher. The article found some effects at 1:20000 dilution.
So I think that it might be concerning, but not too alarming.
https://www.ewg.org/guides/substances/16368-ALCOHOLETHOXYLAT...
But wait, could it be that the reason for the bizarre "xor 0x50" is so that they have a "technological protection measure" in place to trigger anti-circumvention rules? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_and_Information_Soci...)
If it requires a bypass by the consumer at all then it's drm.
It's bad enough when I get a bit on my hands refilling Bob
Compared to dishwasher tablets from the supermarket it looks like 180 would cost from about £15 for supermarket own brand, all the way up to about £32 for the most expensive. Then on top of that you have the rinse aid, deep cleaner and salt, which seems to account for the other £10.
Obviously this thing is significantly smaller but I think the assumption is you'd be running the big dishwasher half empty every day anyway so the cost would be the same. So it doesn't seem to be that far off price wise?
I find dishwashers in general to be an example of convenience addiction. The amount of dishes this thing can hold I could wash up by hand in about 5 minutes and, unlike the dishwasher, I can guarantee I'll do it properly. People forget that washing up is a skill like anything else that you can get good at. It only takes a bit of practice. But once you use a dishwasher and forget how to do it yourself you get addicted and think you can't live without it.
Dishwasher manufacturers will eagerly tell you they use less water than hand washing. But they're more quiet about the fact that they use more energy. I've honestly never heard anyone complain about their water bill.
The trickiest parts here are dealing with the MCU (look for example schematics to copy, they're probably already in the datasheet), sourcing parts (Mouser/Farnell/Arrow are expensive but have good search tools - LCSC is dirt cheap but has terrible search), and soldering the PCB (stick with through-hole parts, if at all possible). You can get a bare PCB of this size made at JLCPCB or a dozen other places for less than $5 - not including shipping.
> stick with through-hole parts, if at all possible
These days it's more work to avoid SMD than it is to embrace it. Many many parts are not available in through-hole, and dealing with 0805 passives and 0.65mm pitch ICs is not that difficult (unless you assume that it is).
As a bonus, you get much easier re-work, access to assembly services, and cheaper components.
who the fuck has to measure a dishwasher tablet?
One benefit of measured detergent is that the wash cycle can dispense the correct amount for different parts of the cycle, for example the pre-wash can dispense a small amount and the main cycle can dispense a larger amount. The rinse at the end can dispense rinse aid.
This system offers more control to the machine about when fluids are used, though it would be much better to include refillable tanks instead of the cassette system.
I own a Bob and use powder since mine has stopped pumping detergent...
Only reason I changed to full size one was because I got tired of pouring the water in each time
who the fuck has to measure out a dishwasher tablet? nobody is who