I want kachunk-a-chunk back first. Then we can decide if it needs smarts.
They're more expensive (and more failure-prone) than the rotary encoders, mush-buttons, and brain-boxes that replaced them.
But one cool part about things like motorized kerchunk-a-wheels is that, upon failure, a motivated person on Gilligan's Island can often mend them back into service with a screwdriver and a sharp rock.
It's hard to understand why companies can't build things to last, use real buttons, provide parts for servicing at cost, add local APIs for anything "smart", forgo any secondary income streams (eg screens showing ads), and still make a profit.
When the electronicals are bottled up behind a sheet of glass or Perspex or whatever, then: They tend to last longer because their operating environment becomes less hazardous to them.
Exact hourly rates vary too much to write about specifics, but whatever they are: Sending a tech out to look at a thing costs real money (in the ballpark of hundreds of dollars, not dozens) that really bites into profit margin of any individual unit sale.
It bites into the margin even if the root problem is that the owner's roommate's friend pissed into the control panel with a head full of acid. They'll still be paying someone to physically go out and make that determination.
So if mush-buttons generate fewer service calls than push-buttons do, then: It's a big advantage to a manufacturer.
So... I think it's quite easy to understand how we got to where we are: Fewer moving parts + better environmental isolation for those parts = less after-sale risk.
(I don't necessarily like it, but there's lots of other things in the world that make good financial sense at the manufacturing level that I'm also not fond of. I can accept this reality without also pretending that it can't make sense for someone, somewhere.
Good answers? Speed Queen, for one, still makes good washers with real knobs and real buttons, for the consumer who favors these features.
Just add a smart plug or current monitoring and an iteration of Home Assistant or whatever running on a sleepy little Raspberry Pi or a VM/container or something to detect and notify soon after the wash is done. End-of-cycle detection is really all that is ever needed for smarts anyway. And that may sound convoluted, but these are smarts that you control yourself and are about as open-source as anyone may wish them to be.
(I don't want an appliance that I hope to last for 20 years or more to be connected to any networks at all: "Wake up, babe; new rootkit just dropped and our clothes washer is fucked" isn't a meme that I want to live through, even if it does have a nice API running on a stack that was last updated in [checks calendar] 2005.))
Your user experience does not matter a bit to them. If you don't buy again, they don't care. That's invisible cost.
Everyone is doing data analytics and metric-driven product development. Opportunity cannot be measured, so it's as if it doesn't exist.
Yes, in the long run, this is self destructive.
"Capacitive buttons" are implemented and tested together with the software. Real buttons need a PCB and maybe some wires and connectors which must be assembled, tested, reliability tested (aging, vibrations). It _is_ more expensive.
It isn't that hard to understand. They can. They just choose not to, because success isn't defined by profits anymore. It's now defined by profit growth. The only ethical way to achieve that is to capture more market through relentless innovation and diversification. But that's impractical in a large corporation due to creeping inefficiency - it's a negative feedback loop. So they try the alternatives like:
a. seek rent on products they've already sold, even if there's no reason for it to be under a subscription (eg: heated car seats),
b. deliberately shortening the life of products (planned obsolescence), so that the consumer is forced to upgrade frequently
c. kill the concept of repair and reuse, forcing the consumer to spend even more frequently
d. sell your attention or data to interested third parties (ads)
e. gatekeep advanced or sometimes even basic access to your devices behind a paywall
f. and more.
Remember how HP's CEO said that those customers who don't take their subscription services are 'bad investments'? That's their attitude towards consumers now. We're no longer their esteemed customers. We're just cash cows for them to squeeze ever more tightly for our every last penny and drops of blood.
To summarize all the above in two words - 'insatiable greed'. But what worries me is how far they'll take it. What next? Washing machines that will hold your clothes hostage until you wire them a service fee? Lock you out of your home amenities like AC and power supply if they think yourey a racist? (This has happened already.) Robotic vacuum cleaners that follow you around and record you to recommend the number of contraceptives you should stock at home? Or mandatory heated toilet seats that will test your body wastes so that medical insurance companies can decide your premium?
No, they're not. And even if they were, they're repairable. I can even drill a new hole, mount an industrial 5cm push-button and wire it where the original button was connected. Can't do that with a touchscreen.
However, if you go to the store, you'll see washing machines with old knobs much cheaper than machines with new fancy screens.
Some poor schmuck in "basically Vietnam" climate part of Arkanas has to go to work and fix waste plumbing that's full of deposits from low flow urinals, get home, throw his clothes in a washer that won't clean them because it's trying to sense the bare minimum water it can use (which is too little for anyone who does work outside an office) and then shower under a POS low flow shower head, all so some jerks in the desert can feel like they're saving the planet.
State water situations are diverse. This is a textbook example of something that should not be regulated federally.
1. Assorted old appliances I have experience with. I have washer and dryer buttons (possibly the last LG model that had them, purchased quite deliberately) working flawlessly after quite a few years, and I have experience with some high-end old dishwashers that had absolutely perfect button performance for about 20 years.
I can compare this to new high end dishwashers where turning the thing on requires triggering a capacitive power button that is very very hard to trigger deliberately even with completely dry fingers. I’ve seen two different related models of this unit with the same problem - they are effectively “failed” almost immediately. Never mind that these dishwashers react to anyone leaning gently against them.
So my score is: near 0% failure rate for mechanical buttons and near 100% for capacitive sensors.
(Even the really nice capacitive sensors on nice phones and watches don’t work well under kitchen conditions, so I’m not sure this problem is fully solvable even with more expensive capacitive buttons.)
> The problem with kerchunk-a-wheels and real pushbuttons (and the not-smarts they imply) is that they're expensive.
> They're more expensive (and more failure-prone) than the rotary encoders, mush-buttons, and brain-boxes that replaced them.
Capacitance buttons also failure-prone because they literally don't work half the time. The GP was also describing other failures with the modern style controls.
I'm tired of this gaslighting: "kerchunk-a-wheels and real pushbuttons" work and are more reliable. I have literal first hand experience with them working reliably for decades. I also have literal first hand experience with capacitance buttons, etc. constantly not working from day one.
The only bit of truth to your argument is they may be more expensive. But I'll take [slightly] more expensive and working over not working any day.
And if you disagree with me, I'll sell you an empty box as a dishwasher. It won't work, but it'll be less expensive!
If your intent is to demonstrate that there is nothing here that can be discussed, then: Congratulations. You've accomplished that.
[1]: https://speedqueen.com/products/top-load-washers/tc5003wn/
I dread replacing anything that breaks in the next few years.
Genuinely asking because I plan to do this once I have to get new appliances, is there something missing that way?
If I want to monitor my fridge's temperature, I can buy a widget that does that for a dozen or so dollars and have that sensor talk to the home automation system of my choice. And when the fridge dies or otherwise gets replaced, I can move the sensor to the new fridge. (And when a new sensor comes out that I like better, I can spend another McDonald's Value Meal worth of money to use that instead.)
Besides: We here on HN should all have a certain amount of distrust for devices that self-report problems.
This distrust is part of the reason why ZFS doesn't trust hard drives to self-report issues and does its own checksums instead.
---
But that's a general rant. To answer your question more-directly, if somewhat-tangentially: One of the popular open-source-oriented YouTube dudes (Jeff Geerling?) recently bought a dishwasher that had functional modes that could not be accessed without a wifi connection to The Clown.
And that's... that's not good: In order to be able to use the functions that the thing natively includes, one must always allow it to call home to mother.
Also the device is generally designed with internet in mind, so certain local-only functions don’t work properly without internet.
I feel very sorry for the visually impaired that are looking for house appliances in this decade
Off topic, but a lifehack for those who have visually impaired loved ones: we use glass paint contour paste on the center of buttons. It's basically used in glass paintings to stop paint sliding from the glass, so it can make a good noticeable bump or line. But – it only works on hard surfaces and if the buttons themselves are not very sensitive.
If you can lightly brush the button while you are "looking" for bumps, then it works.
My former cook top was solely driven by capacitance buttons - which became entirely inaccessible the moment there was an overflow, leading to more overflows and a situation that rapidly got out of hand.
The first step in an emergency is switch off the cook top - luckily the breaker switch was nearby.
I want it to be less intrusive and irritating not more.
There are washing machines without any screens, just old buttons. Also they are cheaper, I can see now in the store for just €270.
But looks like many people wants screens, apps and happily pay extra for washing machine with extra features.
We keep pretending that everything that companies do is because consumers want it, but we ignore the part where companies do certain things because its better for them. Like a washing machine that uses 4 gig of data a day, or a washing machine that needs access to you photos????
Who the hell approved that design?! I have drawn a big black mark on the wheel with a sharpie.
My washer/dryer has a microphone so it can hear the tones from LG support over the phone that tell it to play back its diagnostic code.
Kidding aside, the trust we put in the myriad of internet-connected devices with microphones in our spaces is mind-boggling. Even lightstrips and lightbulbs have microphones to sync with music, and often show up as open Bluetooth devices for setup each time the wall switch is turned on.
Unless the thing will load and unload itself, all those "features" are stupid.
We really ought to have a special derisive name for buzzy features like those, that make absolutely no sense and are basically useless in the real world.
For the rest I agree, the real deal will be a load/unload functionality :)
Of course it was the first part to fail. Of course you have to enter from behind to override it.
I haven't found a good local-only or ZigBee based system that allows precise room control that controls the central heater efficiently based on demand. I could get a bunch of ZigBee radiator knobs, but then I'd have to do a lot of programming/automation to get a good system as a whole. I have to say that Tado does that brilliantly (that's why I chose them in the first place)
A vlan sounds like the way to go to quarantine devices.
Watching Sanctuary Moon? Fair enough, washing clothes is pretty boring.
We are left to using it in the most basic way, with its capacitive touch buttons, a downgrade from the previous oven…
Also, its interior lighting is on when door closed, but shuts off when we open the door. Who designs such things?
But it it appears to be outgoing traffic ...
And Amazon rather famously included cellular connectivity with their early Kindle e-ink book-reading devices -- back in '07.
It's been done before. It can be done again.
Nope. Connecting your washing machine to the internet isn't the act of a tech-savvy person.
On HN or similar circles, maybe not - but that isn't Newsweek's audience.
