@tweedge I had a similar experience a couple months ago looking for a new laundry washer & dryer - all the latest models had wifi. Why the hell would my washing machine need wifi? I bought the model from a couple years previous, with no smart features.
@hyc@tweedge A wifi washing machine can be turned on automatically when your home automation system spots a period of cheap electricity.
I use free electricity for doing the laundry when available, as that's always (so far) been during the daytime, but on non-free days I don't stay up to put the machine on at 2am when the price drops.
@mrFred489@hyc@tweedge If I had a washing machine that could be told to start a cycle unattended I'd get it to start at 2am - we're on the Flux tariff so fixed prices at fixed times of day.
Today the weather forecast was crap - it was supposed to be cloud and rain, so I charged the battery up quite a lot last night. And then the sun came out and completely filled up the battery ... so I put the washing machine on to use the generated power rather than export it.
@TimWardCam@mrFred489@tweedge I'm usually awake at 2am anyway, so this bit of automation wouldn't mean much to me. Right now I'm on a flat rate tariff, haven't looked into whether a time-of-day tariff would make much difference yet.
@tweedge I'm pretty sure my contractor grade "smart oven" is secretly mining crypto or something. I didn't think it was possible for a simple appliance to have a UI that sucks so badly. It's slow and feels warm, even when the oven is cold.
This is why I'm not looking forward to replacing our dumb-as-a-rock television. How much extra will I have to pay to get a plain, dumb 48" monitor? :eyeroll:
@tweedge for refrigerators this is actually possible IF you go to smaller higher end appliance stores that stock premium brands like Fisher-Paykel which make very streamlined, high end but not “smart” refrigerators.
But you will pay premium prices.
(Saying this as a very happy owner of one having rejected all the multitude of mainstream mass branded options - most of which also didn’t physically fit into the space previous owners chose for a fridge)
@tweedge I actually would enjoy a fridge with an ESP32 and a few sensors provided all is documented and I can flash it with #ESPHOME so chose what I automate what I want myself.
What I don’t want is an app that stops getting updates after 3 years and just serves to send me spam.
@tweedge Specifically I wish all smart appliances came with an ESP32 and a breakout board like that receiving all sensors. It’s so pleasant to just be able to crimp a clean terminator on a wire and screw/unscrew there.
Much less annoying than soldering when you just want to add / replace a sensor on the board in place. Now using these in all #ESPHOME stuff (unless space is an issue).
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