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Cloud Wireless Networking

SmartDry's Useful Laundry Sensor To Be Cloud-Bricked Next Month (arstechnica.com) 146

Posted by BeauHD from the perils-of-cloud-dependence dept.
SmartDry, a small sensor that could be mounted inside a dryer to tell you when your clothes were dry, is losing access to the servers necessary for it to continue working. "In other words, SmartDry will become a tiny brick inside your dryer unless you're willing to procure a little ESP32 development board, load some code onto it, plug it in near your dryer, and set up your own alerts in your Home Assistant server," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The problem is that SmartDry alerted you to dry clothing by connecting to your home's Wi-Fi; the device sent a message to parent company Connected Life's servers and then relayed that message to your smartphone. But Connected Life Labs is closing, discontinuing SmartDry, and shutting down its servers on September 30. After that, "cloud services will cease operations and the product apps will no longer be supported."

Smart home devices bricked by cloud closures aren't new, but SmartDry was a particularly useful, low-key device made by a firm that didn't seem to be expanding too fast. Connected Life was originally a three-person team prototyping units in New Jersey, and the device remained made in the US. A co-founder told Reviewed in late 2021 that a version for the washing machine was being tested and was expected to see release in summer 2022.
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SmartDry's Useful Laundry Sensor To Be Cloud-Bricked Next Month More

SmartDry's Useful Laundry Sensor To Be Cloud-Bricked Next Month

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  • What the.. my 1996 Whirlpool has that.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2022 @05:46PM (#62837863)

    What the.. my 1996 Whirpool dryer has that builtin: "Sensor-Dry" and it works fairly well.

    Can't be remotely bricked. And if it breaks, I can replace it inside of 10 minutes after getting the part -- and there are tons of spares last I looked when I had to get a pulley and belt for it.

    IOT is IdiOTic

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Xenx ( 2211586 )
      I'm not the target for this device, but notifications sent to your email or something seems like a potentially useful service. Not necessary, but useful. Just because you don't care, doesn't make it stupid. That said.. IOT that is limited to the provider continuing operation, however, does have very real drawbacks. People need to balance ease of use with risk of longevity of service.

      • Only use case I can think for this is when someone doesn't own their own machine with sensor-dry.

        Like when I rented in a 70's vintage complex with a 70's vintage coin-op laundry room. But even then it'd have to somehow talk to my phone at home, and if it's wifi.. my signal would've not made it to the laundry.

        I sitll think this is a very narrow use case. How they even got $ to develop it is beyond me.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Xenx ( 2211586 )
          Some people have multi-story houses, large houses, laundry in an outbuilding, or whatever layout puts the dryer somewhere that isn't audible to the occupant. Like I said, it's not necessary but it can be useful.

          • And it should NOT need a middle man, ever. If it can talk to WiFi, it should be able to talk to whatever device and app that is on that network. Even WifI Direct if you don't own the router and the cuntbag doing the 'admin' locks down device-device communication.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              From a consumer perspective, local WiFi only isn't a good solution. They can't check if they left something on, or check their security cameras, while away from home.

              If you are thinking of using a VPN, you will need a cloud server to provide DDNS for your ever-changing home IP address.

              The other issue is firmware updates, as in you probably won't get any.

              There is no good solution for consumers, and I'm not sure there can ever be one given the constraints. For nerds Home Assistant is great, but it's not trivi

              • Ok, I like tech as much as the next geek...

                But with a simple clothes dryer?

                Why is the loud buzzer going off when it is done not enough?

                Or on top of that, just go check on it after awhile...I've never known an emergency when I just HAD to have those close out the second the last cycle was finished.

                Hell, with me, clothes often tend to stay in the dryer for a week when I do my last load.....

              • In two years, Spectrum has changed my IP address twice-- after power outages. DDNS isn't a necessity, it just adds convenience. I have a way to check my IP remotely if needed and that does the job.

                The IoT stuff should always be cloud-optional.

      • I'm not the target for this device, but notifications sent to your email or something seems like a potentially useful service.

        My dryer's built-in sensor uses a loud buzzer which is a lot more useful. Even if I check my email hourly, I am not going to be notified in time to remove the laundry and prevent wrinkles.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Xenx ( 2211586 )
          Just imagine if someone's dryer wasn't within earshot. As for normal email notifications, I get them on my phone within minutes. Most people with email set up on their phones do as well. The kind of people that would want notifications, would be the kind set up to receive them.

        • And that's yet another point of failure in the long and winding chain.

          "Your clothes are now dry." Sent 5:03pm, received 8:47pm.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        If only there were a way to send messages without the use of some company's server....

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Features like this need to work locally. There are some efforts to standardize local operation, but they don't seem to be gaining much traction.

        Then again, from a consumer's point of view local operation isn't ideal either. They need a server, and it's pretty much impossible to do remote access without any cloud infrastructure.

    • Re:What the.. my 1996 Whirlpool has that.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2022 @06:07PM (#62837941)

      IoT isn't the problem here, it's the idiocy of requiring the data to go to all the way to the back office (or "the cloud" as the kids call it). There's no reason such devices can't remain entirely local, except either for purposes of marketing to you, or because of dumb developers who think everything is a web.

      • Yup. This could easily be a zwave device (in theory) and be completely local

        • Yup. This could easily be a zwave device (in theory) and be completely local

          Right.

          Then all you need is a ZWave hub.

          No, WiFi is the way to go. No reason to involve an external Server, though.

          My backyard Camera (WiFi) uses a third-party App (CamHiPro) which raises Notifications on my iPhone directly, without involving an outside server or service AFAICT.

      • There's no reason such devices can't remain entirely local, except either for purposes of marketing to you, or because of dumb developers who think everything is a web.

        1. If it's local, there's no possibility for long term revenue. I'm not saying that's bad mind you.
        2. Developers Develop as Developers Do. Making it web based is a simple, fast, economic way of platform independence.
        3. There are over looked possibilities everywhere. For instance, there really isn't a reason an 802.11 device can not act as a N

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

        There's no reason such devices can't remain entirely local

        There absolutely is, and it's out fault. When we NATed the internet to death and broke the end-to-end connectivity concept all while praising IPv4 and poopooing the idea of IPv6 we put ourselves in a position where devices on one network is unable to push a notification to another without a publicly accessible mediator - cloud.

        There's no reason *you or I* couldn't setup something local, but we are not normal. The average normal user would not be able to do anything more complicated than type an email, passw

      • You can't sent push notifications locally; they don't really work that way.

        Handling push on the device is much, much, much more work than just sending the data upstream and handling it in AWS (or whereever).

        Making it z-wave? Yeah, let's make our market even smaller because now we need a hub. And can Z-Wave transmit through the dyer walls?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rgmoore ( 133276 )

      The problem isn't with smart devices, it's with smart devices that depend on someone else's server to work. Any device that needs to talk to a server should talk to a server controlled by the person who owns the device. That way the device isn't bricked the moment the company that makes it loses interest and/or goes out of business. This also has the advantage that the devices don't have to talk directly to the internet, so they aren't exposed to any hacker who figures out how to attack them.

    • What the.. my 1996 Whirpool dryer has that builtin: "Sensor-Dry" and it works fairly well.

      Does it message your smartphone? If not then it's not the same device and doesn't form the same function.

    • Intelligently Designed Internet Of Things Systems

      The target audience is the acronym.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by GNious ( 953874 )

      IOT is IdiOTic

      Yeah, fsck deaf people and others who use it to get a tactile or otherwise notification via their mobile phone :)
      I have something set up to trigger my phone when the dryer or washer ends, and it also alerts my kid so they can go deal with it if I'm being lazy or out.

      (also, apparently people were saving money because it alerted them when clothes were dry before the dryer program stopped on its own)

  • It's that puff of smoke that signals the disappearance of the thing you bought.

  • Rather a gimmick made by people that cannot think or are unwilling to think a few years into the future...

  • Call Me Old... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Arzaboa ( 2804779 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2022 @05:55PM (#62837889)

    Call me what you will, but I've gone my whole life without an app connected to a sensor and never felt I needed one. The buzzer always seemed to work fine for me when the GE decided things were dry enough.

    If someone can explain to me why one would need a sensor connected to wifi, plugged into the grid, attached to a high speed line with a connection directly to a gaggle of servers sitting in 'the cloud' to run code that turns around and texts/calls someone via a mobile network so that one can receive alerts on a cell phone when their clothes are dry; I would appreciate that.

    --
    I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. - Mark Twain

    • We use a bunch of these, ranging from sensors that tell us the dryer is done, the fryer is at the right temperature, the doors are locked, the soil in the garden is dry or it's raining, the aircon is still on, the car is charged, and so on. Do we need any of these? Nope. But each of them adds a little convenience, and those little bits add up to a whole lot. Note that none of these sensors report into the cloud. It is not necessary, you can keep everything local, if you are willing to put in a little e

    • If someone can explain to me why one would need a sensor connected to wifi, plugged into the grid, attached to a high speed line with a connection directly to a gaggle of servers sitting in 'the cloud' to run code that turns around and texts/calls someone via a mobile network so that one can receive alerts on a cell phone when their clothes are dry; I would appreciate that.

      A lot of people live in condos and apartment buildings, where the washer/dryer is in the basement. With the remote sensor, you don't need to wait around in the dryer area, you can go back to the apartment and do things while your clothes are drying, then come back when you get the alert.

    • Old. Btw, old people in the late 1800s probably thought cars were useless too. No reason to travel such long distances where you may encounter strangers, and trains work fine.

    • Apparently I'm even older, I have a place where I put the damp stuff to dry in the air. It stays there 'til I pick it back up after a couple hours, and there is no problem if I choose to pick it up a few hours, or days, later. No buzzer needed.

      • I had a foldable drying rack in my tiny apartment where I air dried a lot of stuff on purpose because the apartment's dryer options were basically "still pretty damp" or "kiln dried". A good amount of clothing if neatly hung was pretty much ready to wear if it air dried. I mostly just used the dryers with stuff that could tolerate the "kiln dry" setting -- socks, shrink-resistant t-shirts, underwear, sheets and towels. Button down shirts and pants got rack dried, as did knit shirts and other shrink-sensi

        • With climbing energy prices, those clotheslines may have a resurgence. We did not get a dryer until around 1970, (we were also the last to get a color tv) and one of the chores the kids had was putting out the clothes and bringing them in. We also had a basement with lines and dried clothes in the basement in winter. I still hang stuff up in the bathroom if I don't have much in the winter. Free humidity for a dry house.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Same reason why TV remote controls were invented. Sure you can get up and change the channel or the volume, but it's more convenient to have a remote control.

      You probably want your drier somewhere that the noise doesn't bother you. If you are British you might have a shed where you do stuff while it's running. Hearing that buzzer might not be possible.

      It's not just the buzzer that this thing replaces either. Many driers have a simple timer. This senses when the clothes are actually dry, so you can come and

    • A buzzer only works as an interrupt if you are in close proximity the whole time. Otherwise you have to keep polling to see if the cycle is completed.

      The whole point of an automatic clothes dryer is that it does not need to be attended while operating. Requiring polling for end of cycle defeats that.

    • Firstly; I must point out my system is all local. I use a voltage sensing smart plug tied to a Home Assistant automation. Been using it for years. My old washer/dryer had the same buzzers as yours and while they were loud, they're in a basement laundry room which has a door that's usually closed and a door to the basement which is always closed. No matter how loud I set the buzzer it was still hard to hear even if there were no other sounds going on (which in my house was a rarity). I recently replaced

  • Smart home devices bricked by cloud closures aren't new, but SmartDry was a particularly useful

    How is this particularly useful? Who lives in a house so big that their dryer is inauadible? Who needs to pull hot laundry out the instant it's done?

    I live in a ridiculously large 2,500 sq ft house and my dryer playes a cheery tune when it's done. I can hear it upstairs from the office. What is the use-case for a cloud connected device to ping you something that you probably already know? I mean, I doubt many apartment dwellers are sticking one in the communal laundry room. If you are, you just gave it to your landlord.

    If you need to remember your laundry, set an alarm on the exact same cell phone that the app is going to remind you on! For free!

    I can't fathom in what scenario being off by 5-10 minutes on the end of your dryer cycle would warrant the investment in a whole physical device, wifi connection, app, and cloud server. It's fucking laundry!

    If you're going to need a cell phone for the notification, in 10 seconds you can unlock it, find your built-in free clock, set a 1 hr timer, and you're done.

    And I say this as someone who has pulled dress clothes out of the dryer hot for the better part of 2 decades to hang so I don't have to iron them. That's about as pressing a need as I can think of for getting your laundry out of the dryer on time, and not once did I think, "Wow, my life would be far better if I invested in a monitoring device for my dryer, hooked it to the wifi, installed an app, and paid a monthly fee to be notified when my clothes were dry."

    • Re:Um, I do not think so..... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2022 @06:41PM (#62838053)

      It's for people who are infatuated with techy gizmos meant to solve unbelievably minor first-world problems. You know, the same people who want to press a physical button to order something from Amazon instead of just remembering and ordering the next time they're online.

    • How is this particularly useful? Who lives in a house so big that their dryer is inauadible? Who needs to pull hot laundry out the instant it's done?

      Our LG washer/dryer have this feature built in. Our house isn't huge (1800 sq ft rambler); but it's older and built more solidly than newer homes - in any case we can't hear the washer or dryer buzzers when we're in the living room.

      The one big annoyance with this feature, though, is (as others here have mentioned) the dependence on an external server to provide these notifications. This should be something where everything involved is local.

    • I live in a condo where the washing room is in another house.
      But I just look at the time and come back an hour later. So a buzzer is useless.

    • How is this particularly useful? Who lives in a house so big that their dryer is inauadible?

      Huh? We live in a tiny house, our drier is completely inaudible. It's 4 stories up in the attic, but you don't need a big house to keep things quiet, just one not made out of cardboard like a typical American house.

      I don't care about this for other reasons (namely that I don't give a shit when my cloths are dry), but I've never once heard my dryer end its cycle, even though it gives a little audible alarm.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by bws111 ( 1216812 )

      This is the typical slashdot 'everybody else in the world is either exactly like me or wrong' attitude. News flash: it is not true.

      There are people who intentionally put the laundry room where they can't hear it. There are people who have hearing problems. There are people who don't want to overdry their clothes so they don't use timed drying. There are people who are actually busy doing other things and not thinking about the laundry. There are people who don't wan their clothes to be a wrinkly mess.

  • It could be your million-dollar NFT that disappeared in a puff of smoke. Those stories are coming, stay tuned, Slashdotters...
  • So I know when to start waiting an hour or more to let my clothes get good and wrinkled.

  • If only there were... (Score:3)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2022 @07:18PM (#62838123)
    ...some kind of device that you could set for a certain number of minutes & then it would make a sound after that time. Mmm... something that "times"... I know, I'll call it a "timer." Right, I'm off to the patent office to see if I can make my fortune with this amazing idea!
    • For bonus points make sure it can only be set in increments of 7 minutes, requires a cloud connection to function, and plays advertisements for the notification tone. Oh wait ignore that last one, that actually sounds like it can be patented. I'm gonna be rich!
      • I'll match your patent but include the feature that it plays advertisements, really intrusive, annoying ones, until the time is up. I'm sure customers will be delighted to be so well informed about products & services while they wait for their laundry. Who wouldn't be?

    • Dude! You can't just post a billion-dollar idea like that without patenting it first!

  • A safer design may be to mount MEMS airflow and moisture sensors at the dryer exhaust

    • I thought of that, but then I thought of the free dryer that I restored to proper function by opening up the back and removing over a cubic foot of lint from the plenum. How do you keep the lint from clogging the grille on your sensor? Even putting it on the back side will probably not help.

  • You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
  • Easy replacement:

    *Sets Dryer for 40 minute cycle*

    "Hey Google, set a time for 40 minutes".

    An alarm will go off on your mobile device, when 40 minutes has passed... which will also correspond with the dryer cycle finishing! Why didn't anybody think this genius solution before?! /s

  • At least push an update to ping IFTTT instead of letting all the customers feel like suckers.

  • This could've been done with 80s/90s technology with a radio that goes "BEEEEEEEEEEP" when the clothes are dry. But forced obsolescence and endless data mining (for dry clothes, are you shitting me?) is the name of the game. "You are the product!" Fuck me.

  • There should be some smart IoT rules (Score:3)

    by thesjaakspoiler ( 4782965 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2022 @10:51PM (#62838463)

    like if a company goes out of business, it must release its product source code.
    Maybe one of the 1,584,274 EU bureaucrats could have a look at this and turn it into some legislation.

    • Doesn't help. End users are not capable of doing anything with it. Any technically minded guy will already be able to make this device continue working via Home Assistant, but the source code won't help 99% of customers.

    • Yeah, good luck with that. When a company goes bankrupt, the only thing the creditors may get is the IPs they hold. If you think the EU would put the interests of the people ahead of that of corporations, you're delusional.

    • Put down the gun and we'll talk.

  • Reminder, this is our fault (Score:3)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @02:21AM (#62838691)

    Your fault, and mine. The people who setup NAT without question. The people who thought the end-to-end concept of the network wasn't important. The people who didn't foresee a world where a device within a network behind NAT would ever need to push a notification to a device several networks removed behind a cgNAT attached to a SIM card.

    We decided we didn't want IPv6 and were happy with IPv4, then along came smart devices. Now we're left scratching our heads why every device mediates a connection with some online cloud service without ever considering that 99.9% of people are unable to setup these devices without one.

    Because we broke the end-to-end nature of the internet.

  • If you still run a dryer without a sensor to stop it when the clothes are dry: replace it. It's ancient. It's using WAY more energy than modern heatpump dryers.

    On the side: the traditional (resistance heated) dryer I bought 11 years ago, was full of sensors and stopped as soon as the clothes were dry. Replaced it with a heatpump dryer this year, which has the additional benefit of delayed start, which is useful to have it start when the solar panels are at maximum output.

  • So I can understand that this might not be legal no matter how safely someone builds this (maybe? this is electrical stuff so I've no idea what the exact laws are), and I can understand that power socket accessibility might be hard once the appliance is in place due to the layout of your room. But having a gizmo that you put in the dryer that talks to a smart socket inline adaptor (a bit like a timer socket) to kill the power to the dryer once the clothes are dry would be an 'upgrade' that might have merit

  • Let me guess: you NEED more than that?
    Seriously WTF is wrong with just letting the gods-be-damned dryer do it's job, why do you NEED some 'internet of things' crap added to it?

  • different opinions (Score:3)

    by cstacy ( 534252 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @09:52AM (#62839547)

    It's interesting to see the comments here showing how differently people do their home laundry (depending on their wealth) and don't even understand what the others are doing.

    In the old days, dryers just had a timer. No humidity sensor to turn them off when the clothes are actually done drying. And they don't have holding circuits to keep the clothes from getting messed up when they're done.

    Those old fashioned machines will destroy your clothes faster. To avoid that, you have to keep checking them (stopping the machine, sticking your hand in there and feeling around).

    Comments suggest there are people who:

    (a) Only are familiar with the old-fashioned machines and don't know what this "sensor" is for.

    (b) Have never seen an old-fashioned machine and don't quite understand why you might want "another" (after-market) sensor, and think it's just a fancy remote buzzer.

    Many people live in apartments where they cannot upgrade their laundry from 1976. (Even if they had the money for a major appliance.) And huge numbers of people don't have machines at home at all, and have to use coin-op machines at the common facility (or drive to such facility).

    Finally, there's the remote buzzer issue: very nice to be in another room and get the announcement.

    However, hooking up to some company's random "cloud" server for your in-home needs is obviously a bad idea. Most consumers don't understand this, and the trend is for everything to be connected. The electric company never disappeared, why would anyone expect the dryer-sensor company to go away?

  • Will be missed! (Score:3)

    by sweet 'n sour ( 595166 ) on Wednesday August 31, 2022 @12:22PM (#62840205)

    This $50 product solved a number of problems for me outside of the dryness alert that everyone is picking on here:

        - I get a notice with the dryer has stopped. The dryer is inside of a detached garage so it's not possible to hear the audible alerts.
        - I can pull my wrinkle prone clothes from the dryer while they're still hot so they can be handled before the wrinkles set in.
        - My power company likes to change how much they charge for electricity depending on the time of day -- this helps process multiple loads faster during the low cost time periods
        - I live with multiple people who also need to process their loads of laundry but don't pay the electric bill and might need to be prodded
        - It's an electric dryer that uses 220 volts so the easier-to-use electricity monitoring solutions won't work (or cost more than $50)

    Coincidentally, I discovered the loss of this service last night and was looking for some kind of alternative solution -- Slashdot to the rescue lol. Thanks ./!

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