[prforated]

You can set an alarm on your phone when it starts like millions of people do instead of spending $2000 overengineering a solution to this "problem".

The fact that people are complaining about the cognitive load and beeping sound when running a washing machine is utterly baffling to me. This goes beyond sheltered "first-world problems". There is something insidious about this about micro-optimising for non-issues, something dystopian.

[embedding-shape]

> You can set an alarm on your phone

Not all washing machines have static wash times, some (like ours) adjust the time based on what you actually put into it. Not to mention there are like 5-6 different programs we use, who has time to remember kind of how long time each program takes? And it doesn't display how long it'll take until it measured the load, which takes 2-3 minutes.

So instead; chuck in the clothes and cleaning product, put the program, go do other stuff and await for Home Assistant to tell us when it's done. Over-engineered? Nah, just comfortable modern living.

[danparsonson]

I would like to suggest a third alternative which is to set an alarm for the maximum time it will take. The HA option is more fun though for sure.

[IanCal]

But why? Why add a manual, less accurate step instead of just using HA and solving it once? Steaming takes 20 minutes, a quick wash is ~1h, a boil wash more like 4h.

Why do I want only my phone to have a notification? Why do I want it to override other settings and go off at a set time rather than when I choose to interact (as a notification would)?

You can absolutely solve this in other ways, but adding an automation into HA for notifying me about forgetting to setup the dishwasher took a few minutes max and I only had to do it once.

[danparsonson]

I'm not saying don't use HA - you do you. I get the alure of home automation and I'm glad you're finding it useful. All I'm saying is that the argument that 'the phone timer might be wrong therefore use HA' is a false dichotomy. You know what kind of wash you've selected and you know how long it takes roughly - you wrote it in your comment :-) It takes a few seconds to set a timer for that plus 10% for variability.

> ... adding an automation into HA ... took a few minutes max

... plus the hours it takes to setup and maintain HA and the machine its running on and the wireless hub and the dishwasher... etc. I bet you won't save back the total time spent across the whole lifetime of the system. That's not the only measure of success and that's fine.

[IanCal]

I'm not arguing to spend lots of money, I'm saying that this is not an unhealthy tech setup. It's quite clear from this writeup that they either enjoy it or were thinking about selling it, or both, and money does not seem to be a particular concern for them. They even explicitly say it's too much for typical consumers, so they're not trying to sell you on the idea of spending this.

> You can set an alarm on your phone

I don't see "manually setup another bit of technology make an annoying noise" as a nicer or more healthy integration of technology in my life compared to a note written on the wall.

> The fact that people are complaining about the cognitive load and beeping sound when running a washing machine is utterly baffling to me

Perhaps you're reading it in some tone that suggests these are huge issues for people to deal with. I am reading them as just niceties in life. I have tried for some time to practice responding to being baffled with assuming I've not understood something, I think you might be baffled here because you have misinterpreted what people have been saying or not understood their personal issues or how easy it can be to setup some of these things.

Same as the timer on my oven is useful, but I don't need one - I could do it entirely manually right?

I have things setup to notify me if we haven't setup the dishwasher and/or the door has been left open when we head to bed. I'm not in dire need of this and my life was not falling apart at the load of remembering to do it, but it took me less time to add an automation for that than it did to either go and check the dishwasher a few times or clean up bowls in the morning for breakfast by hand. It's caught things a few times, and it's another thing I don't need to keep in my head. I'm not sure why deliberately choosing to increase cognitive load is somehow a good thing, and these things all do build up. I could remember all my appointments and schedules and tasks I need to complete, but calendars and reminders and todo-lists are useful.