5 ms·

4. We want schematics, details, and parts availability to fix things ourselves (or for our local independent repair person to do it) rather than grovel for a te

by mikece 4y ago

4. We want schematics, details, and parts availability to fix things ourselves (or for our local independent repair person to do it) rather than grovel for a tech who paid the manufacturer for the label of "brand certified" to come overcharge me for a fix that won't really fix the issue completely.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Surprised this isn’t a YC startup to be honest, what with all the open source companies in recent batches. Give me Bosch, Speedqueen, etc appliance quality with right to repair and I will pay. I want dumb yet sturdy equipment that will last.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  That's not VC. That's just a regular business. Please start it.
- stagger87 4y ago
  This hypothetical product is not going to come from a YC startup...
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Agreed!
- fknorangesite 4y ago
  > Surprised this isn’t a YC startup to be honest You have a lot more faith in YC than I do.
- fourseventy 4y ago
  Need more than that to disrupt a 100 year old home appliance industry.
- okCompewtr 4y ago
  [flagged]
- throwway120385 4y ago
  There's an entire line of Whirlpool/Amana/Roper washers that all have 5-7 LED lights under the cycle selector knob and are top-loader washers. If you push the drum of these washers toward the cycle selector panel you can reach down on the left side and pull a service manual out that gives you instructions on how to access a troubleshooting menu in the control board, plus electronics schematics and strip circuits to simplify troubleshooting when parts go out. They're very simple and all use some combination of a main motor to agitate and spin, a drain motor, a "run capacitor" to smooth out power, and a shifter to change from agitate to spin, and a pressure transducer either in the water level selector or built in to the main PCB depending on whether it has auto-sense. They're ridiculously easy to work on and you can buy parts for them off PartSelect.com. The most common issues are that a relay on the control board goes out or the suspension wears out. Both are easy to diagnose.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Thank you!
  - rascul 4y ago
    I noticed when I was delivering and installing appliances that many have a service manual tucked away somewhere with similar information. Ranges were typically taped on the back somewhere, I can't remember where the other appliances stashed them.
    - throwway120385 4y ago
      The delivery people or service techs from the appliance store sometimes steal these documents. Probably to make sure the owner has to call the store for service. When I opened my wife's washing machine to repair it the manual was missing and I had to find it online. It was brand new so someone from the store or warehouse probably stole the document.
- mindslight 4y ago
  Far down my todo list is to rehab an old washing machine I have sitting around that was said to have a "bad control board". Rather than buying another proprietary control board that always seem to somehow go "bad", my plan is to find or create a generic control board that handles driving the hardware and runs the state machine, and talks via serial to an ESP32 for local-control MQTT integration. I feel like retrofitting older appliances might be the way forward, whether preemptively or as part of a repair. Although I do admit there are benefits to modern brushless drives (etc), that would be hard to design a generic control board for. Although recently having gotten a tiny bit of experience with off the shelf PLCs, going that way might be the right answer rather than reinventing the wheel.
  - sliken 4y ago
    I lost the control board on a very simple electric stove, 4 pots for the stove top, 1 control for the oven, and a display with 2-3 LEDS and a display that showed either the time or the temp. Looked very simple. Had a relay for the oven and 2 temp sensors. One for controlling the oven, and another to shut everything down if the temp outside the oven got too hot. I do wonder how many types of these boards would be required to fit the common appliance types.
    - mindslight 4y ago
      The oldest automated appliances were just complex mechanical timers sequencing various things on and off, and appliances haven't advanced that much. On/off motors, solenoids, sensors, and some series limit switches. Probably the biggest new difference I've seen is brushless motors with variable frequency drives, which requires its own power control electronics and probably some calibrations. So in my estimation not very many. Packaging it all up in a way that an appliance tech could be comfortable installing would be the hard part.
  - mickdeek86 4y ago
    Is this something we engineers could create an online space for - eg 'repairWiki' - where we jailbreak appliance controls in an open-source kinda way? Would this run afoul of the law, or just Big Appliance?
- bambax 4y ago
  I have Bosch and Siemens appliances and they are quite repairable? I fix some of the things myself and for some others I call a technician, and usually the fix is simple and involves replacing a moderate number of parts.
sokoloff 4y ago
I do about an appliance repair a year across my house and both of our parents' houses. I've literally never found parts or information availability to be a barrier to doing these repairs.

by mikece 4y ago

toomuchtodo 4y ago

Surprised this isn’t a YC startup to be honest, what with all the open source companies in recent batches. Give me Bosch, Speedqueen, etc appliance quality with right to repair and I will pay. I want dumb yet sturdy equipment that will last.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
That's not VC. That's just a regular business. Please start it.
stagger87 4y ago
This hypothetical product is not going to come from a YC startup...
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Agreed!
fknorangesite 4y ago
> Surprised this isn’t a YC startup to be honest You have a lot more faith in YC than I do.
fourseventy 4y ago
Need more than that to disrupt a 100 year old home appliance industry.
okCompewtr 4y ago
[flagged]
throwway120385 4y ago
There's an entire line of Whirlpool/Amana/Roper washers that all have 5-7 LED lights under the cycle selector knob and are top-loader washers. If you push the drum of these washers toward the cycle selector panel you can reach down on the left side and pull a service manual out that gives you instructions on how to access a troubleshooting menu in the control board, plus electronics schematics and strip circuits to simplify troubleshooting when parts go out. They're very simple and all use some combination of a main motor to agitate and spin, a drain motor, a "run capacitor" to smooth out power, and a shifter to change from agitate to spin, and a pressure transducer either in the water level selector or built in to the main PCB depending on whether it has auto-sense. They're ridiculously easy to work on and you can buy parts for them off PartSelect.com. The most common issues are that a relay on the control board goes out or the suspension wears out. Both are easy to diagnose.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Thank you!
- rascul 4y ago
  I noticed when I was delivering and installing appliances that many have a service manual tucked away somewhere with similar information. Ranges were typically taped on the back somewhere, I can't remember where the other appliances stashed them.
  - throwway120385 4y ago
    The delivery people or service techs from the appliance store sometimes steal these documents. Probably to make sure the owner has to call the store for service. When I opened my wife's washing machine to repair it the manual was missing and I had to find it online. It was brand new so someone from the store or warehouse probably stole the document.
mindslight 4y ago
Far down my todo list is to rehab an old washing machine I have sitting around that was said to have a "bad control board". Rather than buying another proprietary control board that always seem to somehow go "bad", my plan is to find or create a generic control board that handles driving the hardware and runs the state machine, and talks via serial to an ESP32 for local-control MQTT integration. I feel like retrofitting older appliances might be the way forward, whether preemptively or as part of a repair. Although I do admit there are benefits to modern brushless drives (etc), that would be hard to design a generic control board for. Although recently having gotten a tiny bit of experience with off the shelf PLCs, going that way might be the right answer rather than reinventing the wheel.
- sliken 4y ago
  I lost the control board on a very simple electric stove, 4 pots for the stove top, 1 control for the oven, and a display with 2-3 LEDS and a display that showed either the time or the temp. Looked very simple. Had a relay for the oven and 2 temp sensors. One for controlling the oven, and another to shut everything down if the temp outside the oven got too hot. I do wonder how many types of these boards would be required to fit the common appliance types.
  - mindslight 4y ago
    The oldest automated appliances were just complex mechanical timers sequencing various things on and off, and appliances haven't advanced that much. On/off motors, solenoids, sensors, and some series limit switches. Probably the biggest new difference I've seen is brushless motors with variable frequency drives, which requires its own power control electronics and probably some calibrations. So in my estimation not very many. Packaging it all up in a way that an appliance tech could be comfortable installing would be the hard part.
- mickdeek86 4y ago
  Is this something we engineers could create an online space for - eg 'repairWiki' - where we jailbreak appliance controls in an open-source kinda way? Would this run afoul of the law, or just Big Appliance?
bambax 4y ago
I have Bosch and Siemens appliances and they are quite repairable? I fix some of the things myself and for some others I call a technician, and usually the fix is simple and involves replacing a moderate number of parts.

sokoloff 4y ago

I do about an appliance repair a year across my house and both of our parents' houses. I've literally never found parts or information availability to be a barrier to doing these repairs.