this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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Privacy
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Why would you connect your washing machine to WiFi in the first place? Like legitimate question.
Because water is held in cloud storage
::slow clap::
Well played, friend. Well played.
To get notifications when your laundry is done.
As someone with adhd, I could see it being super helpful for me.
My dryer is as dumb as they come. It just beeps like a motherfucker until I open the door, which is pretty effective.
See, mine makes absolutely zero noise when done, which isn't a good thing for me. But, I'd be more likely to build my own smart system (probably a flow sensor on the drain).
Or light sensor, monitoring machine's lights.
I’ve found vibration sensing to be the easiest.
My 'smart' LG washer/dryer plays a jaunty little tune when done. Even on max volume it's difficult to hear. I miss my old dumb machines.
Fair point, I didn't think of that. Any IoT device gets put in the "naughty" vlan and 99% of their outgoing requests goes straight to /Dev/null
I do the same thing. All they're allowed to talk to is Home Assistant except for when I allow internet access to update firmware.
An alarm could likely help you accomplish the same thing without the wifi-connected washing machine.
Whatever works for you works for you, though.
Likely an alarm needs to be set every time, a notification of finished load is likely automatic.
Yup, I have alarms in my phone for this. Adhd means I'll forget to set that alarm most of the time.
This is only true if every load takes exactly the same amount of time. Modern machines have more sensors to adjust things like water level and spin times. Very often now I start my washer and the time will drop from 1 hour depending on how much is in the machine.
Plus, the alarm is easy to dismiss and forget about. An actual notification on my phone isn't.
Well, you don't necessarily need to deal with the laundry the second the machine is ready - if you merely set the alarm to be the approximate maximum time, you're probably going to be fine with the laundry spending half an hour or so sitting wet in the machine.
If the alarm is easy to dismiss, then perhaps a reminder app could be of use. I frequently use Google Tasks with a time for the tasks to cope with everyday life, which sends a notification at the specified time.
I have an lg machine with notifications… it’s very helpful.
We have two young kids, laundry is constant.
Reminders to run the tub wash cycle are helpful, or when airflow is bad, etc
FWIW I accomplish this with a zigbee outlet on the washer and dryer (dryer is gas, so it's not a 50a circuit). It has stats on power consumption and I have a home assistant sensor set up so that when it drops below a threshold for a period of time, it counts the washer/dryer as off and notifies me.
Only works if you can start a cycle on power on. My machine will just sit there waiting for someone to press the go button.
I don't actually use it to control anything, though I have in the past had an automation to turn off the dryer because GE is total crap and the sound on/off button busted, but the sound is super annoying. But anyway yeah, I'm actually only using these outlets for their sensors to decide if the machines are on or off.
Doesn't have to be connected to the cloud for that, except if you do your laundry when you're not home.
For the way modern stuff works, it does. If you want notifications that don't chew through battery life on Android or notifications at all on iOS, then it needs to go through the respective notification services.
We /could/ design ways that this wouldn't be an issue and entirely local push notifications could be a thing. But it's not how your devices work today.
Three letter agencies want to read your notifications so we have to have a centralised service
Ah ben tabarnak.
Its a good reason to allow wifi but there is no reason for you to receive such a notification unless your home to act on it, otherwise your better of receiving the notification once your phone reconnect with your homes wifi.
Wifi isnt the same as internet.
There is sometimes but rarely a good reason for those same decides to connect to the public web. They are much more secure if everything stays local.
The prime reason companies claim they need internet so you can set up things like stop heat when i am not home…. But guess what, if my phone isnt activity at home connecting to wifi, my home server can figure it out on its own, no cloud required.
So I actually have one that does.
I get notifications when laundry is done.
I get a notification when I need to do routine maintenance like change filters, or refill the detergent. (It has a built-in jug and dispenser) I can send it settings via the app, which is easier than via the built in controls. (It has things like extra rinse, wash times for different rinses, and steaming and stuff). It's not impossible to do via the interface, but it's a bit easier via the phone.
The one I had also sent me a notification if the clothes were too humid after the drying cycle, so I could add more minutes to it. That was a Samsung tho
Why didn't it just add the minutes itself?
It was an ECO mode, most of the time it was enough, but sometimes you need the real power. I guess it didn't do itself because it would consume more power
I liked the connected features but now that I use a "dumb" washer and a dryer I don't really miss them
Joke Answer: Just ask Pied Piper about their fridges.
Non-Joke Answer:
Not personally owned washers of course:
I live in a set of apartments and we have a laundry room and the quarter slots have been removed entirely and now you have to pay for your laundry with an app and Bluetooth.
In other words, it could be fucking worse and you might not have a choice because your landlords don't give a shit about poor people (who may not have a device capable of running the app).
EDIT: The bonus? The notifications on when your laundry is done don't even work properly and are consistently wrong. I still just set a timer.
Thats wild. We had laundry cards.
I'd be ripping that app apart and patching it to skip the payment step.
They make you make an account tied to your email, and it authenticates your account each time it connects. I've already done a teensy bit of network peeking at it, but I'm not savvy enough to try to be bypassing authentication.
You mentioned it was using Bluetooth to communicate with the actual machine so I'm assuming they are not directly connected to the internet in any way? If that's correct then it's just a case of understanding the Bluetooth comms which is probably some basic BLE stuff they put together by tweaking the sample code from the BLE chip manufacturer.
I have an LG washer/dryer. With the app you can add downloaded cycle programs. And you can just have one at the time, and there are two cycles I sometimes swap between. It also gives me a notice when it needs to be cleaned and it has smart diagnostics when something goes wrong. And of course delayed start via app and notification when the wash is done. So there are some benefits, but I still hate it
Those do sound useful. Hook it up to home assistant and send all its external requests to the DNS void.
I have mine in hass... the integration is cloud dependant.
Edit: The stuff I can do in with it in HASS is great though. I can only hope that someone figures out how to skip the cloud requirement all together like they did with some other stuff that I use.
Home assistant usually doesn't work as a backend for smart appliances like that, just as a frontend that connects to the same stuff that your smartphone app connects to. It communicates with the appliance through the original cloud service, so you can't take it entirely offline.
Not that this covers many cases, but a lot of appliances are running touch screens and a lack of non-visual indicators. Blind people could benefit from having an app with a screen reader to run the machine. Of course, this is just a patch for a problem which shouldn't have existed in the first place.
I don't have a wifi active washing machine, but I have a dryer on wifi, and to answer your question, I have ADHD and frequently forget there's even laundry. Like as a concept.
So I turned on my dryer's wifi and now when it's done, I get a notification. Which allows me to come downstairs and fold what's in there (and put the stuff from the washer into the dryer).
Before I would turn on the dryer (and washer) and then have go wash clothes again because they went sour on me. So wasteful! Made me ashamed! Hopefully I won't go blind to dryer notifications...
Legitimately, I want one exclusively so I can get told the wash is done and then I can put it on for an extra spin all from the pub round the corner from my house and then arrive home just as it's finishing
So you can get a notification when it's done, I imagine.
So I never would have bothered. We built a new house and the set we got came with Wi-Fi (not a feature I cared about) and it was actually really helpful to have notifications. I have a family and kids and they don't always watch when things are done. So now I can catch when cycles are done as sensor cycles can be highly variable.
Is it compatible with Home Assistant? Then maybe.