this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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Yup. There are two situations here:
If I'm at home and won't hear the sound for some reason, I'll just set an alarm on my phone. My washing machine tells me how long it'll take, so there's no guesswork here.
i have an old one without any of it and i dont even care, ill be there eventually and see its done.
im okay with my clothes waiting for a bit
Not trying to defend stupid internet connectivity but my washing machine is in the basement in a shared laundry room while I live on the second floor of the apartment building. No way I'll hear it beep so a notification would be very useful actually. This is a very common situation in Europe where a lot of people live in rental apartments.
The problem is rather that there needs to be WiFi access in the laundry room.
Is this washing machine yours? Or is it owned by the landlord? If it's the landlord's, that's a different problem entirely, since now you need multiple people to have separate configurations on the same device to get notifications, but only when their particular load is finished.
I can absolutely see a reason to have "smart" laundromats for things like error codes, abandoned loads, usage statistics, maintenance history, full coin reservoir, etc. That's the type of problem a shared laundry room would have as well, and it would be fairly easy to add a "tap to notify" feature where you scan a QR code or tap with NFC to get remote access to it.
But for a typical home situation where the laundry machine is the apartment or house, I really don't see a point, and it's just a liability.
It is mine. There is a room with each tenant' washing machine in the basement and that is a typical situation in Germany.
Huh, I've never heard of that before. Interesting.
Washing machines exist that are smarter than just running a fixed program. They adjust the program, and thus duration, based om how dirty the clothes are. The same goes for dryers that look at the actual humidity of the clothes to determine if they’re finished.
Hahaha, but why?
I've used the shortest cycle, on cold, for 30+ years, with less than half the detergent "recommended". Clothes are always clean.
And my clothes get dirty. Mechanic dirty (oils are tough). Welding. Tree sap from cutting down/splitting.
Front loader?
Sure, and if I'm off by a few minutes, that's totally fine. I honestly don't need to know the moment my clothes are done, it can wait 20-30 minutes usually. In general, a laundry run takes an hour, plus whatever soak time I choose.
So I really don't need any network access. I guess it's fine if others want it, but I see it as a liability. If it connects to a network, that's a security vulnerability (don't want a laundry DOS) and another thing to break. Ideally, every model could optionally ship without it.