3 ms·

The problem with kerchunk-a-wheels and real pushbuttons (and the not-smarts they imply) is that they're expensive. They're more expensive (and more failure-pro

by ssl-3 1y ago

The problem with kerchunk-a-wheels and real pushbuttons (and the not-smarts they imply) is that they're expensive. They're more expensive (and more failure-prone) than the rotary encoders, mush-buttons, and brain-boxes that replaced them. But one cool part about things like motorized kerchunk-a-wheels is that, upon failure, a motivated person on Gilligan's Island can often mend them back into service with a screwdriver and a sharp rock.

oliwarner 1y ago
But these are [often] thousand dollar appliances. "Capacitive buttons are cheaper" shouldn't be a factor. It's hard to understand why companies can't build things to last, use real buttons, provide parts for servicing at cost, add local APIs for anything "smart", forgo any secondary income streams (eg screens showing ads), and still make a profit.
- ssl-3 1y ago
  It's not just the buttons themselves (in a capacitive-vs-mechanical sense) -- it's also warranty services. When the electronicals are bottled up behind a sheet of glass or Perspex or whatever, then: They tend to last longer because their operating environment becomes less hazardous to them. Exact hourly rates vary too much to write about specifics, but whatever they are: Sending a tech out to look at a thing costs real money (in the ballpark of hundreds of dollars, not dozens) that really bites into profit margin of any individual unit sale. It bites into the margin even if the root problem is that the owner's roommate's friend pissed into the control panel with a head full of acid. They'll still be paying someone to physically go out and make that determination. So if mush-buttons generate fewer service calls than push-buttons do, then: It's a big advantage to a manufacturer. So... I think it's quite easy to understand how we got to where we are: Fewer moving parts + better environmental isolation for those parts = less after-sale risk. (I don't necessarily like it, but there's lots of other things in the world that make good financial sense at the manufacturing level that I'm also not fond of. I can accept this reality without also pretending that it can't make sense for someone, somewhere. Good answers? Speed Queen, for one, still makes good washers with real knobs and real buttons, for the consumer who favors these features. Just add a smart plug or current monitoring and an iteration of Home Assistant or whatever running on a sleepy little Raspberry Pi or a VM/container or something to detect and notify soon after the wash is done. End-of-cycle detection is really all that is ever needed for smarts anyway. And that may sound convoluted, but these are smarts that you control yourself and are about as open-source as anyone may wish them to be. (I don't want an appliance that I hope to last for 20 years or more to be connected to any networks at all: "Wake up, babe; new rootkit just dropped and our clothes washer is fucked" isn't a meme that I want to live through, even if it does have a nice API running on a stack that was last updated in [checks calendar] 2005.))
  - s1mplicissimus 1y ago
    > End-of-cycle detection is really all that is ever needed for smarts anyway To me that would be the least interesting part about a smart washing machine. Like when I start it, I can already see when it's going to be done. The part I'm really interested in is preloading and autostart it at a given time. Guess it's usecase related what one considers "needed for smarts"
    - ssl-3 1y ago
      So put a smart plug on a dumb Speed Queen, preset the knob and the buttons, and have it turn on at the time you wish. Are there any other automation scenarios that you wish to address?
      - s1mplicissimus 1y ago
        That would be quiet enough for me. Unfortunately my current model requires turning the temp wheel to "wake up" after power was off. Others require pressing a "Start" button twice within a very specific interval or that kind of shenanigans. Guess I'll look into the speed queen brand.
- goku12 1y ago
  > It's hard to understand why companies can't build things to last, use real buttons, provide parts for servicing at cost, add local APIs for anything "smart", forgo any secondary income streams (eg screens showing ads), and still make a profit. It isn't that hard to understand. They can. They just choose not to, because success isn't defined by profits anymore. It's now defined by profit growth. The only ethical way to achieve that is to capture more market through relentless innovation and diversification. But that's impractical in a large corporation due to creeping inefficiency - it's a negative feedback loop. So they try the alternatives like: a. seek rent on products they've already sold, even if there's no reason for it to be under a subscription (eg: heated car seats), b. deliberately shortening the life of products (planned obsolescence), so that the consumer is forced to upgrade frequently c. kill the concept of repair and reuse, forcing the consumer to spend even more frequently d. sell your attention or data to interested third parties (ads) e. gatekeep advanced or sometimes even basic access to your devices behind a paywall f. and more. Remember how HP's CEO said that those customers who don't take their subscription services are 'bad investments'? That's their attitude towards consumers now. We're no longer their esteemed customers. We're just cash cows for them to squeeze ever more tightly for our every last penny and drops of blood. To summarize all the above in two words - 'insatiable greed'. But what worries me is how far they'll take it. What next? Washing machines that will hold your clothes hostage until you wire them a service fee? Lock you out of your home amenities like AC and power supply if they think yourey a racist? (This has happened already.) Robotic vacuum cleaners that follow you around and record you to recommend the number of contraceptives you should stock at home? Or mandatory heated toilet seats that will test your body wastes so that medical insurance companies can decide your premium?
  - oliwarner 1y ago
    > It isn't that hard to understand. They can. What's hard to to understand is how we allow them. How the market hasn't seen an opening; why someone else hasn't started making machines to fill these niches. There are so many pro-consumer ideas (I've only listed a few) that a company could seize upon to market themselves. And unlike pocket consumer-electronics, there's little barrier to entry. You don't need to reinvent anything (quite the opposite).
- hulitu 1y ago
  > "Capacitive buttons are cheaper" shouldn't be a factor. "Capacitive buttons" are implemented and tested together with the software. Real buttons need a PCB and maybe some wires and connectors which must be assembled, tested, reliability tested (aging, vibrations). It _is_ more expensive.
  - oliwarner 1y ago
    I'm not questioning whether or not capacitive buttons are cheaper, I just don't believe they make the difference between profit and loss. How many more sacrifices must consumers make to increase margins?
    - ssl-3 1y ago
      But tt's not just the buttons -- it's also the motorized knob, sensors, and control logic. A board with model-specific software and some garden-variety relays is cheaper to copy than model-specific motorized knobs are. And it's not the singular key to profit, and I don't think that anyone ever said that it is. It's just a part that we can see, and touch. There's other things that modernization helps with, too. For instance: Variable-speed motor drives, with a computer brain to drive them (which we already have in the BOM once we abandon the motorized knob). These can improve electrical efficiency (reducing motor size and cost), and deliver power more smoothly (reducing transmission size and cost). That's real copper and real iron that is saved by using electronic controls. (I can do washing machines all week.)
- array_key_first 1y ago
  Because the goal isn't to turn a profit, it's to turn the most profit. Your user experience does not matter a bit to them. If you don't buy again, they don't care. That's invisible cost. Everyone is doing data analytics and metric-driven product development. Opportunity cannot be measured, so it's as if it doesn't exist. Yes, in the long run, this is self destructive.
M95D 1y ago
> [...] more failure-prone than the rotary encoders, mush-buttons, and brain-boxes that replaced them. No, they're not. And even if they were, they're repairable. I can even drill a new hole, mount an industrial 5cm push-button and wire it where the original button was connected. Can't do that with a touchscreen.
amluto 1y ago
I don’t buy the “more failure-prone” thing if “failure” is defined correctly. Here’s my comparison: 1. Assorted old appliances I have experience with. I have washer and dryer buttons (possibly the last LG model that had them, purchased quite deliberately) working flawlessly after quite a few years, and I have experience with some high-end old dishwashers that had absolutely perfect button performance for about 20 years. I can compare this to new high end dishwashers where turning the thing on requires triggering a capacitive power button that is very very hard to trigger deliberately even with completely dry fingers. I’ve seen two different related models of this unit with the same problem - they are effectively “failed” almost immediately. Never mind that these dishwashers react to anyone leaning gently against them. So my score is: near 0% failure rate for mechanical buttons and near 100% for capacitive sensors. (Even the really nice capacitive sensors on nice phones and watches don’t work well under kitchen conditions, so I’m not sure this problem is fully solvable even with more expensive capacitive buttons.)
ponector 1y ago
>> The problem with kerchunk-a-wheels and real pushbuttons (and the not-smarts they imply) is that they're expensive However, if you go to the store, you'll see washing machines with old knobs much cheaper than machines with new fancy screens.
potato3732842 1y ago
They're not expensive, they're inefficient in terms of water use. Which means they are a non-starter for national retail in the US because there are a few desert states that have captured federal regulation which mandate ever decreasing water use because that's what those desert states want. Some poor schmuck in "basically Vietnam" climate part of Arkanas has to go to work and fix waste plumbing that's full of deposits from low flow urinals, get home, throw his clothes in a washer that won't clean them because it's trying to sense the bare minimum water it can use (which is too little for anyone who does work outside an office) and then shower under a POS low flow shower head, all so some jerks in the desert can feel like they're saving the planet. State water situations are diverse. This is a textbook example of something that should not be regulated federally.
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
palmotea 1y ago
>> I just want normal buttons and dials back. Not time-based capacitance buttons that take 5.02 seconds to activate, not 5.0 seconds; nor free-spinning encoder wheels that mandate you give it a jiggle before the washer does anything, even if it's already on the setting you want. > The problem with kerchunk-a-wheels and real pushbuttons (and the not-smarts they imply) is that they're expensive. > They're more expensive (and more failure-prone) than the rotary encoders, mush-buttons, and brain-boxes that replaced them. Capacitance buttons also failure-prone because they literally don't work half the time. The GP was also describing other failures with the modern style controls. I'm tired of this gaslighting: "kerchunk-a-wheels and real pushbuttons" work and are more reliable. I have literal first hand experience with them working reliably for decades. I also have literal first hand experience with capacitance buttons, etc. constantly not working from day one. The only bit of truth to your argument is they may be more expensive. But I'll take [slightly] more expensive and working over not working any day. And if you disagree with me, I'll sell you an empty box as a dishwasher. It won't work, but it'll be less expensive!
- ssl-3 1y ago
  It is with immense displeasure that I find that my playful descriptions have been interpreted as "gaslighting" by someone on the internet who suffers from selection bias. If your intent is to demonstrate that there is nothing here that can be discussed, then: Congratulations. You've accomplished that.
scrubs 1y ago
Gilligan's Island reference and analogy for competence ... well done! hilarious & original. I'm borrowing that.

by ssl-3 1y ago

oliwarner 1y ago

But these are [often] thousand dollar appliances. "Capacitive buttons are cheaper" shouldn't be a factor. It's hard to understand why companies can't build things to last, use real buttons, provide parts for servicing at cost, add local APIs for anything "smart", forgo any secondary income streams (eg screens showing ads), and still make a profit.

ssl-3 1y ago
It's not just the buttons themselves (in a capacitive-vs-mechanical sense) -- it's also warranty services. When the electronicals are bottled up behind a sheet of glass or Perspex or whatever, then: They tend to last longer because their operating environment becomes less hazardous to them. Exact hourly rates vary too much to write about specifics, but whatever they are: Sending a tech out to look at a thing costs real money (in the ballpark of hundreds of dollars, not dozens) that really bites into profit margin of any individual unit sale. It bites into the margin even if the root problem is that the owner's roommate's friend pissed into the control panel with a head full of acid. They'll still be paying someone to physically go out and make that determination. So if mush-buttons generate fewer service calls than push-buttons do, then: It's a big advantage to a manufacturer. So... I think it's quite easy to understand how we got to where we are: Fewer moving parts + better environmental isolation for those parts = less after-sale risk. (I don't necessarily like it, but there's lots of other things in the world that make good financial sense at the manufacturing level that I'm also not fond of. I can accept this reality without also pretending that it can't make sense for someone, somewhere. Good answers? Speed Queen, for one, still makes good washers with real knobs and real buttons, for the consumer who favors these features. Just add a smart plug or current monitoring and an iteration of Home Assistant or whatever running on a sleepy little Raspberry Pi or a VM/container or something to detect and notify soon after the wash is done. End-of-cycle detection is really all that is ever needed for smarts anyway. And that may sound convoluted, but these are smarts that you control yourself and are about as open-source as anyone may wish them to be. (I don't want an appliance that I hope to last for 20 years or more to be connected to any networks at all: "Wake up, babe; new rootkit just dropped and our clothes washer is fucked" isn't a meme that I want to live through, even if it does have a nice API running on a stack that was last updated in [checks calendar] 2005.))
- s1mplicissimus 1y ago
  > End-of-cycle detection is really all that is ever needed for smarts anyway To me that would be the least interesting part about a smart washing machine. Like when I start it, I can already see when it's going to be done. The part I'm really interested in is preloading and autostart it at a given time. Guess it's usecase related what one considers "needed for smarts"
  - ssl-3 1y ago
    So put a smart plug on a dumb Speed Queen, preset the knob and the buttons, and have it turn on at the time you wish. Are there any other automation scenarios that you wish to address?
    - s1mplicissimus 1y ago
      That would be quiet enough for me. Unfortunately my current model requires turning the temp wheel to "wake up" after power was off. Others require pressing a "Start" button twice within a very specific interval or that kind of shenanigans. Guess I'll look into the speed queen brand.
goku12 1y ago
> It's hard to understand why companies can't build things to last, use real buttons, provide parts for servicing at cost, add local APIs for anything "smart", forgo any secondary income streams (eg screens showing ads), and still make a profit. It isn't that hard to understand. They can. They just choose not to, because success isn't defined by profits anymore. It's now defined by profit growth. The only ethical way to achieve that is to capture more market through relentless innovation and diversification. But that's impractical in a large corporation due to creeping inefficiency - it's a negative feedback loop. So they try the alternatives like: a. seek rent on products they've already sold, even if there's no reason for it to be under a subscription (eg: heated car seats), b. deliberately shortening the life of products (planned obsolescence), so that the consumer is forced to upgrade frequently c. kill the concept of repair and reuse, forcing the consumer to spend even more frequently d. sell your attention or data to interested third parties (ads) e. gatekeep advanced or sometimes even basic access to your devices behind a paywall f. and more. Remember how HP's CEO said that those customers who don't take their subscription services are 'bad investments'? That's their attitude towards consumers now. We're no longer their esteemed customers. We're just cash cows for them to squeeze ever more tightly for our every last penny and drops of blood. To summarize all the above in two words - 'insatiable greed'. But what worries me is how far they'll take it. What next? Washing machines that will hold your clothes hostage until you wire them a service fee? Lock you out of your home amenities like AC and power supply if they think yourey a racist? (This has happened already.) Robotic vacuum cleaners that follow you around and record you to recommend the number of contraceptives you should stock at home? Or mandatory heated toilet seats that will test your body wastes so that medical insurance companies can decide your premium?
- oliwarner 1y ago
  > It isn't that hard to understand. They can. What's hard to to understand is how we allow them. How the market hasn't seen an opening; why someone else hasn't started making machines to fill these niches. There are so many pro-consumer ideas (I've only listed a few) that a company could seize upon to market themselves. And unlike pocket consumer-electronics, there's little barrier to entry. You don't need to reinvent anything (quite the opposite).
hulitu 1y ago
> "Capacitive buttons are cheaper" shouldn't be a factor. "Capacitive buttons" are implemented and tested together with the software. Real buttons need a PCB and maybe some wires and connectors which must be assembled, tested, reliability tested (aging, vibrations). It _is_ more expensive.
- oliwarner 1y ago
  I'm not questioning whether or not capacitive buttons are cheaper, I just don't believe they make the difference between profit and loss. How many more sacrifices must consumers make to increase margins?
  - ssl-3 1y ago
    But tt's not just the buttons -- it's also the motorized knob, sensors, and control logic. A board with model-specific software and some garden-variety relays is cheaper to copy than model-specific motorized knobs are. And it's not the singular key to profit, and I don't think that anyone ever said that it is. It's just a part that we can see, and touch. There's other things that modernization helps with, too. For instance: Variable-speed motor drives, with a computer brain to drive them (which we already have in the BOM once we abandon the motorized knob). These can improve electrical efficiency (reducing motor size and cost), and deliver power more smoothly (reducing transmission size and cost). That's real copper and real iron that is saved by using electronic controls. (I can do washing machines all week.)
array_key_first 1y ago
Because the goal isn't to turn a profit, it's to turn the most profit. Your user experience does not matter a bit to them. If you don't buy again, they don't care. That's invisible cost. Everyone is doing data analytics and metric-driven product development. Opportunity cannot be measured, so it's as if it doesn't exist. Yes, in the long run, this is self destructive.

M95D 1y ago

> [...] more failure-prone than the rotary encoders, mush-buttons, and brain-boxes that replaced them. No, they're not. And even if they were, they're repairable. I can even drill a new hole, mount an industrial 5cm push-button and wire it where the original button was connected. Can't do that with a touchscreen.

amluto 1y ago

I don’t buy the “more failure-prone” thing if “failure” is defined correctly. Here’s my comparison: 1. Assorted old appliances I have experience with. I have washer and dryer buttons (possibly the last LG model that had them, purchased quite deliberately) working flawlessly after quite a few years, and I have experience with some high-end old dishwashers that had absolutely perfect button performance for about 20 years. I can compare this to new high end dishwashers where turning the thing on requires triggering a capacitive power button that is very very hard to trigger deliberately even with completely dry fingers. I’ve seen two different related models of this unit with the same problem - they are effectively “failed” almost immediately. Never mind that these dishwashers react to anyone leaning gently against them. So my score is: near 0% failure rate for mechanical buttons and near 100% for capacitive sensors. (Even the really nice capacitive sensors on nice phones and watches don’t work well under kitchen conditions, so I’m not sure this problem is fully solvable even with more expensive capacitive buttons.)

ponector 1y ago

>> The problem with kerchunk-a-wheels and real pushbuttons (and the not-smarts they imply) is that they're expensive However, if you go to the store, you'll see washing machines with old knobs much cheaper than machines with new fancy screens.

potato3732842 1y ago

They're not expensive, they're inefficient in terms of water use. Which means they are a non-starter for national retail in the US because there are a few desert states that have captured federal regulation which mandate ever decreasing water use because that's what those desert states want. Some poor schmuck in "basically Vietnam" climate part of Arkanas has to go to work and fix waste plumbing that's full of deposits from low flow urinals, get home, throw his clothes in a washer that won't clean them because it's trying to sense the bare minimum water it can use (which is too little for anyone who does work outside an office) and then shower under a POS low flow shower head, all so some jerks in the desert can feel like they're saving the planet. State water situations are diverse. This is a textbook example of something that should not be regulated federally.

cindyllm 1y ago
[dead]

palmotea 1y ago

>> I just want normal buttons and dials back. Not time-based capacitance buttons that take 5.02 seconds to activate, not 5.0 seconds; nor free-spinning encoder wheels that mandate you give it a jiggle before the washer does anything, even if it's already on the setting you want. > The problem with kerchunk-a-wheels and real pushbuttons (and the not-smarts they imply) is that they're expensive. > They're more expensive (and more failure-prone) than the rotary encoders, mush-buttons, and brain-boxes that replaced them. Capacitance buttons also failure-prone because they literally don't work half the time. The GP was also describing other failures with the modern style controls. I'm tired of this gaslighting: "kerchunk-a-wheels and real pushbuttons" work and are more reliable. I have literal first hand experience with them working reliably for decades. I also have literal first hand experience with capacitance buttons, etc. constantly not working from day one. The only bit of truth to your argument is they may be more expensive. But I'll take [slightly] more expensive and working over not working any day. And if you disagree with me, I'll sell you an empty box as a dishwasher. It won't work, but it'll be less expensive!

ssl-3 1y ago
It is with immense displeasure that I find that my playful descriptions have been interpreted as "gaslighting" by someone on the internet who suffers from selection bias. If your intent is to demonstrate that there is nothing here that can be discussed, then: Congratulations. You've accomplished that.

scrubs 1y ago

Gilligan's Island reference and analogy for competence ... well done! hilarious & original. I'm borrowing that.