Bought “smart” LG fridge, range and dishwasher a couple of years ago and never connected any of them, they function like they are supposed to, refrigerate, heat food and clean dirty dishes. No need to connect.
Fridge manual explained something like “in case of peak energy consumption your smart energy company can send a signal to your fridge to not use power”. What the heck do I need that for? To find spoiled food and mold growing in the fridge later on?
Why does one need to connect a range to WiFi?
Some people have hourly electric pricing, in their case it’s worth scheduling stuff based on predicted pricing. How that should is that you’d have a home server which controls your IoT stuff (so the gadgets themselves can be firewalled from the internet and controlled only by you) and then your server would fetch pricing data and pause stuff that doesn’t need to run when prices are high and run stuff like washing when it’s cheap
TIL - cool, makes sense.
It would make sense if we had a server that could fetch prices instead of opening up potential weak systems to the internet.
Turning your fridge off for an hour will not cause your food to spoil. You probably won’t even notice a difference since they are well insulated. Turning off the compressor during the hour where most of everyone gets home and turns on their AC can have a noticeable effect on grid stability if done widely enough. I do this with a smart switch connected to my HA server instead of using cloud based connections, but the effect is the same and I’ve never had my food spoil because of it.
Because now manufacturers are tying the last year of their warranty to having the devices connected to their stupid information harvesting apps.
Ugh! Now that you say that we are probably not far away from WiFi enabled ranges being a feature… that WHEN enabled will allow you to:
- Cook uninterrupted or at any time of that day
- Get discounted prices on gas
- Get discounts on home/renters insurance
- Receive discounts on range/oven cleaners
- Enable the back burners
- Enable broiling capability
- Allow in oven light to be turned on and off
- Claim warranties (as you suggested)
The only reason I used my range’s WiFi is to preheat it from downstairs or the store lol
what the heck is a range? search results are expectedly useless as it’s an extremely common word for something else
It’s an oven with a stove on top. Google “cooking range”.
I’ve never called it that, but that’s the name for it.
As a guy with some tendencies to worry if I turned my stove off Everytime I leave the house, this feature seems right up my list of needs
Thanks for that pov! I had not considered it and to my surprise I just thought of someone in my family that has the same type of worry you do, and that person would probably benefit from that kind of peace of mind like you suggested.
If you buy a “smart” washing machine and actually connect it to the internet, you deserve what you get.
The smart people don’t connect these “smart” devices to the network
I don’t even let my smart TV connect to the internet. Why would I help it fetch ads for me lol
That means you don’t get any of the benefits of it being a smart TV. Which is fine, but unlike a washing machine there are actually obvious benefits for a smart TV.
Not like there’s a choice to not buy a smart TV.
Everything comes internet enabled, runs software that won’t receive updates, comes with a shitty phone app, and some sort of subscription service either to enable features or auto buy product.
Yeah except you can’t really find a TV without the “smart” features anymore and I already have an echo cube thingy that does the smart stuff lol. So in my case it’s not really a waste to leave it off. My other TV is connected to the internet and I can’t even go to the gd settings page without being bombarded with ads it’s super dumb
Just put the device on a separate wifi without internet access, or look at the “child protection” features of your router. Ours can put devices based on their MAC into “access groups” which range from “full access” over “internet from <time> to <time>” to “no internet at all”.
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Luckily, most embedded devices lack the smart to attach to two networks at the same time. So you keep it locked into a network where it can only do your bidding, and it won’t listen to anyone else. Unless they built in some very crazy and nefarious code and drive around with network enabled cars in the owners neighborhood.
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Not everybody has the money for an extra router.
No need for an extra router. I just put those device into the “has no internet access” group. It is one of those “Parental Control” things. Every device inside the net can see and talk to it, but itself cannot talk to anything outside.
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Until the router needs to be reset, or something else happens to it.
That’s what “configuration backups” are for. You’ve got some, don’t you?
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Until a robot can hang up my washing, my machine is staying off any networks
When it can you should still setup a private network just for them to communicate
Anybody in his right minds wouldn’t connect a washing machine to WiFi in the first place.
Why not?
My washing machine has wi-fi. I didn’t buy it for that reason, but it just happens to. Using the app, I have some programme options that aren’t possible to select using the hardware dials. I can do things like change the detergent dosage and the number of additional rinse cycles. It has some “special” programmes for various specific fabrics. And it has things like maintenance diagnostics and the ability to run a specific self-cleaning cycle.
That’s all pretty useful.
And what’s the actual danger of connecting it to wi-fi? Will Big Data know how often I wash my towels? Do I need to worry about the government spying on my fabric softener usage? Will hackers seize control of my machine and ransom my ability to get clean underwear?
I just can’t see the big downside here (other than the fact that the machine is more complicated than it needs to be, but that ship has already sailed seeing as I already own it).
Will hackers seize control of my machine and ransom my ability to get clean underwear?
It’s more likely that they’d seize control of it and add it to their botnet. Which is exactly what it looks like happened here. There was a small package downloaded, then a large amount of outgoing data. That looks like a compromised IoT device being used for a botnet. Small incoming package to hack the device, then the device starts spamming some poor dude across the country as part of a DDOS, because he beat a script kiddie in a COD match and the script kiddie is salty about it.
My washing machine has wi-fi. I didn’t buy it for that reason, but it just happens to. Using the app
So you did not just connect it to your home wifi, but you also allowed the vendor to connect it to their servers. Now the vendor knows the name of your WiFi and the password. Just to begin with. Next year maybe this vendor’s website will get hacked and 20000 such wifi passwords go public in some darknet :-)
Using the app, I have some programme options that aren’t possible to select using the hardware dials.
Who benefits? You may find it cool to have it in the app, but FIRST the vendor has saved some of their money by not building the needed dials and buttons for these functions. (Or did they give you that discount? ;-))
And maybe in 3 years from now, they don’t feel like maintaining your app anymore. Are you going to shout “WARRANTY” at them?
I just can’t see the big downside here (other than the fact that the machine is more complicated than it needs to be
Yes, that is a downside, too. Part of this ‘smartness’ could break and maybe even the whole thing stops working when these ‘diagnostics’ give false data.
Another huge point is: My washing machines so far have lasted between 8 - 15 years. But NEVER has any wifi-active device lived that long. Think about this difference, and who’s the one who benefits from it?
How do I know this kind of thing ? What app can I use to measure this for my devices at home ?
If you have anything where internet is an add-on to what it does normally, especially BS like a washing machine, then it’s phoning home. That’s the reason they add such nonsense, and sell it as a feature to the buyer.
They have to run a backend for this stuff which eats into the profit of selling it…
That said, Wireshark is a common tool to monitor packets. I haven’t done it for a while. There’s also probably a package you can run on RPi just for this kind of thing. Using PiHole I can see how often and where devices are connecting. I’ve blocked a lot of domains - I’m currently blocking about 30% of all domain requests (most of that is from the TV and windows 10) and everything works fine.
I have this really complicated home setup where I have these little switches on the walls and they control the lights it’s very clever.
With home automation sure I could turn the lights on and off in a room I’m not in but since I’m not in that room I don’t see the point. Anyway I can just pretend I’ve done that and then I’m not in the room so I won’t know it hasn’t happened. I really don’t see the point.
You can get home automated door locks, why. In what scenario would you ever want to unlock the door except when you’re in front of the door?
I’d like to have a door lock that did not allow wireless unlock, but does allow locking and checking status to see if you forgot to do so (plus automations tied to the door state).
With automations, you can also do stuff like locking the door under certain conditions (say it’s late at night and it’s been left unlocked for X hours), sending alerts or updating other devices depending on the lock state. You could have it strobe your bedroom light if stuff is left unlocked late too etc etc
