7 ms·
Wouldn't it be great if a universal standard existed for devices sending their diagnosis via audio? If there is a microcontroller and a beeper in there anyway,
by schobi 2y ago
Wouldn't it be great if a universal standard existed for devices sending their diagnosis via audio?
If there is a microcontroller and a beeper in there anyway, at only the extra cost of internal memory?
Instead of a modem-type modulation and a speaker, make use of the bare minimum piezo beepers and send something that is universally understood? All of that without FCC, no extra hardware cost, no backchannel und thus little security considerations?
Yea - I know. Works much better to upsell "wifi enabled" and I'm happy that the appliances only beep rarely.
- TuringTest 2y ago> Yea - I know. Works much better to upsell "wifi enabled" A good marketer could give a catchy name to sell the advantages of that system too. Top of my head I can think of "near-fi", but certainly could be done better.
- rightbyte 2y ago"Spyware and asbestos free"
- account42 2y ago* still full of adware and lead though
- RandomBacon 2y agoSpyware, and asbestos free! ("Sugar, Free Donuts" - The Simpsons)
- RandomBacon 2y agoD'oh! I realize now, I should have wrote it as: Spyware and asbestos, free!
- rightbyte 2y agoHeh ye was trying and failed to get the original joke.
- tigerlily 2y ago> Wouldn't it be great if a universal standard existed for devices sending their diagnosis via audio? LG must have some internal standard for this feature. If they would just publish it and then that could be the standard. Edit: to the downvotetards, if you worked in actual engineering like I do, then you would understand that this is how most standards naturally materialize. Someone does one thing particularly well, it becomes the standard.
- dgacmu 2y agoNo, that might be the beginning of the standard, because once it's published you realize they don't have a version number or vendor ID or any way to add fields other than the ones they hard coded or whatnot. But it's a start and it would be great if they did it!
- DanielHB 2y agoAn appliance could just have blutooth so it can connect to an app on your phone. With the machine not having a direct internet connection, the app can collect diagnostics, metrics and do software updates. Require you to press a button in the machine to pair it to your phone. 99% of the functionality with 0 annoyance and ~0 security/privacy risks.
- ldng 2y agoWhy ?! Audio diagnostic is passive and (I suppose/hope) associated with a button (?). Can we stop putting obligatory (hackable) active network devices everywhere ?
- DanielHB 2y agoFor basic diagnostics that is enough, but if you want to do more data-intensive stuff (including software updates) you need something more.
- phkahler 2y agoYes! I've been thinking about bluetooth and a standard protocol and generic app. You'd get basic gui functionality for any compliant device, showing whatever device specific stuff the manufacturer wants. Kinda of like a bluetooth X-terminal, but way way simpler. Think tkinter over bluetooth, probably sans canvas. A bunch of people will say to just use wifi, make the device a Hotspot, and use your web browser. That's not a bad idea, but tiny devices aren't going to run web servers dishing out multi megabits frameworks.
- DanielHB 2y agoIf you afford a bluetooth chip you can definitely definitely afford a CPU that can push 2-5mb HTML files through it in reasonable time (you can pre-gzip it) and some flash storage (which you probably already need if you are any kind of metrics over time). It could be hard to encode JSON messages dynamically for the actual data to show in the web application, but you _can_ use other protocols from a browser too (CBOR is quite popular for this).
- smolder 2y agoHow about a wifi feature that is useful on a LAN and doesn't need 'the cloud'? The annoying part of wifi appliances is that network connectivity almost always means phoning home to some server on WAN. Home routers or a separate box on LAN ought to have functionality to be the bridge between appliances and client devices instead. That's a standard I'd rather see.
- sofixa 2y agoBecause most people don't have anything on the LAN that can integrate with the appliance, and with just a phone app and the appliance, you're limited in computing power, background activity and storage (you can't store all usage data on the machine itself, and you can't rely on the phone always being on the same wifi to collect the data and store it).
- GrumpyNl 2y agoBluetooth comes to mind.
- a_paddy 2y agoZigbee would be even better.
- jpalomaki 2y agoOr flashing led and use mobile phone camera to scan it. Back in the days infrared connection was a thing. I remember connecting my Compaq iPAQ PDA to Nokia phone. Wonder if the modern cellphone cameras are fast enough to act as receiver and if this supported one way communication.
- liotier 2y ago> Or flashing led and use mobile phone camera to scan it Miele uses flashing LED as some sort of serial communication.
- franktankbank 2y agoOr just codes that you can look up. Most washers have a small LCD screen capable of displaying two digits.
- tzs 2y agoThat reminds me of another thing I wish was a universal standard for major appliances. I’d like to see them all have a USB port. If you plug in a thumb drive the appliance should create a directory named with the appliance manufacturer and model and serial number. In that directory it should place a copy of its manual and other documents that normally come with it.
- xnzakg 2y ago...or just have device side usb port that shows up as a mass storage device?
- freedomben 2y agoThat would be pretty inconvenient for appliances in places that are hard to reach with a computer, but definitely an improvement over the status quo.
- quacked 2y agoThat's a very good idea. I'd love it if cars had this.
- andylynch 2y agoThis reminds me that Fischer & washing machines have an Easter egg where they can use that beeper to play God Defend New Zealand.
- sockaddr 2y agoCould even be made to sound something like R2D2