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by slver 1870 days ago
The world isn't driven by "I should have all the nice things I can imagine". How are you gonna script the washing machine to take the underwear off your bottom and put it in the drum? You'll have to do that yourself. And when you do it, you might as well "script the washing machine" by pushing the buttons on it.

I'm a programmer and honestly I can't wait for this IoT fad to die down a little. Sure, maybe it's cool to have LAN connected lightbulbs as a novelty product. But this kind of shit will never ever be the norm, simply because it makes no damn sense in terms of value proposition.

2 comments

I couldn’t imagine not having smart lights, they are one of the few iot devices that make my life a lot more comfortable- def not a novelty
What do you use them for that is really helpful? I’m considering getting some Hue lightbulbs, but it seems like a bit of a waste.
I’ve got hués through the whole house. Primary use cases are:

- Being able to trigger dimming of the lights in the house as sunset approaches. - Being able close all the lights in the house in one go (such as when leaving). - dimming lights when I don’t have dimmers wired in. - being able to adjust colour temperature of the lights (and full colours, I tend to use a mix of oranges, pinks, and purples). - turning off lamps that are not otherwise on the same circuit as the ceiling when I flick a switch.

Things like dimming and controlling lights on the same circuit could be done with electrical work, but I’m renting. The bulbs come with me wherever I move. The electrical work doesn’t. I already was bringing my own lightbulbs wherever I moved anyways (to save electricity).

Lights turn on and off automatically, I rarely have to do anything and they are how I want them when I want them / and don’t turn on when I’m Not at home and turn on when I arrive home. Turning on in the morning during winter helps a ton and when I do need a light on/off on demand it’s a voice command or the tap of a wireless battery less switch
YMMV but having the light turn on when my alarm goes off genuinely wakes me up.
Color temp and dimming-without-buzz. And you can put the switch etc wherever you want, and change color temp and brightness automatically before bed.
What? I want to make the washing machine starting drying after a specific amount of time after the wash stage has finished.

And guess what mr programmer, they didn't bother letting me do that with the front panel...

Most (all?) washing machines have a delayed start.

Why would you want your clothes to sit wet, collecting mold, before the drying begins?

See, part of being a good programmer is figuring out a solution using the tools you have. Which includes figuring out how existing machines address your issues without requesting they come with a fully programmable API and wi-fi, just so you can delay the drying cycle.

I get the best drying if the machine washes, drains for a bit, then starts drying after that.

If I were to do this it would take 4 trips to the washing machine because they didn't think to make it tick over from even washing to drying.

What we've learned here is you need to buy a new washing machine, or maybe before that, read carefully the manual of the one you have.

Thinking you can dry your clothes better than the people who engineered the entire machine and wrote its programs is honestly cracking me up. Do you think the vendors were like "you know what, we don't need this washing machine to dry well".

Even more, what kind of a marketing campaign would such a scriptable machine even have?

"Our washing machine dries really poorly, but we hope every stay at home mom can script it to dry better, so we included a web server and a REST API with it".

They'll go bankrupt, man.

Well they decided not to have any modes that automatically dry after washing at all so I'm going with yes.

And thanks, I'll just spend this months rent on a new washing machine.

Well if you want it to be scriptable, you might need to spend three month's rent on a new washing machine.

And yeah, uhmm... most washing machines can run drying after washing. You just took your specific model's issue, and decided to generalize it to "must be scriptable". Which is really a giant leap to make. To recap:

1. Your specific model can't dry after washing.

2. Your specific model can't be scripted either.

3. Other models can dry after washing.

4. Other models have no scripting.

Ergo whatever you do, you're buying a new washing machine. And your problem doesn't require scripting.

Does it not have a spin cycle? After that runs on mine there's nothing left to drain.

Edit: oh no apparently it's a questionably maintained communal laundry room unit, I'm so sorry