Yep. I purchased some new tablets yesterday (I'd say the most popular ones available) and they were abou 0.12c (€) per tablet. So assuming usage every day of the year (not uncommon in our household) that's €43.80 a year.
Did you know you can just put detergent in the main compartiment? Why do you need such cassettes? Normally diswashers have something that dispenses it at a particular point in the cycle though. It's a simple mechanism, no complex electronics involved in that either.
You don't really want that though, because the water from the first cycle is washed away relatively quickly.
For good results, there's two releases of detergent, one for the pre wash and one for the main cycle. Detergent pods have kind of ruined the general dual compartment dishwashing ecosystem, though.
Pretty much lost me on the presentation; finally lost me on 'these things completely fly in the face of the way most dishwashers are designed to work'.
Uh, what? Must be a US thing, whatever the alternative is, because that's (those detergent, salt, perfume, whatever else tablets in a water-soluble wrapper are) all I've ever known. (UK.)
Worth checking your dishwasher though. Ditto, that's all I knew in UK (although I mostly hand-washed).
But even here in Aus now, there's a little compartment for pre-wash/rinse detergent... but nobody is aware of it that I've come across. That youtube video was revelationary!
Rinse aid? Yeah that goes next to the tablet under a little flap. Supermarkets sell it, usually blue.
Is that what the video was about? That tablets 'fly in the face of how dishwashers are supposed to work' because you also need rinse aid?
That's nonsense, how every dishwasher I've used has been supposed to work is you keep the salt topped up, the rinse aid topped up, and (supposedly optionally) use a tablet with each wash.
No, not rinse aid. The video discusses the way dishwashers work; most of them have two distinct cycles, one spraying off most of the loose food, draining the tub, and then another, which has its water recycled.
Most dishwashers are designed to have a little detergent in the first cycle and then most in the second cycle. The detergent from the first cycle becomes available to the water immediately, the detergent for the second cycle is the part that you put in the compartment.
If you want to know the details, watch the rest of the video. Or, if you don't want to do that, read your dish washer's manual. Maybe yours was designed without to forego detergent in the first cycle, because people have switched to pods anyway. Maybe it wasn't, and you can get a hygiene boost by using powder instead of pods.
If you use detergent pods, one of your cycles won't run with anything but water. If you put the detergent in the tub, the longer, second cycle runs without detergent. If you put the pod in the little compartment, the first cycle is much less effective than it can be.
Many machines are still designed for powder or gel detergents that you put into both compartments. You can get the same dishwasher performance by using two dishwasher tablets per run (one in the tub and one in the compartment) but that'll use up way more detergent than you actually need.
Rinse aid is for maintaining your dishwasher, that's something different entirely.
> Most dishwashers are designed to have a little detergent in the first cycle and then most in the second cycle. The detergent from the first cycle becomes available to the water immediately, the detergent for the second cycle is the part that you put in the compartment.
None that I've ever seen here.
> If you want to know the details, watch the rest of the video. Or, if you don't want to do that, read your dish washer's manual.
The video is.. I'm not its target audience. But I do actually have the manual: its 'programme phases' are 'pre-wash', 'wash' (different temperatures depending on setting), rinse, and dry. The detergent tablet is dispensed in the 'wash' phase. There's nowhere to put any to be dispensed in the 'pre-wash' phase. So, instead of 'some then most', it's 'none then all'. I've never known one work differently.
> Many machines are still designed for powder or gel detergents that you put into both compartments.
Right, again, not here: I don't have and have never seen one with two detergent compartments.
I still don't think tablets 'fly in the face of how the machine's supposed to work', there should just be big & little detergent tablets for markets with big & little detergent compartments.
Everywhere else with single compartments, a single tablet works fine, is exactly how the machine's designed to work, and they often even have a 'recommended brand' (for whatever commission).
> There's nowhere to put any to be dispensed in the 'pre-wash' phase.
Some comments here have mentioned that one can put it into the main compartment of the machine. Just squirt it in on the floor, if I understood correctly.
I mean.. sure. But it's definitely not 'designed to work' that way, and to be clear what I was objecting to was the tablets being described as 'flying in the face of the way [the dishwashers are] designed to work'.
I don't think UK dishwashers typically have such a compartment, but no need for it anyway - same result achieved by putting the equivalent detergent directly in the tub, though you lose the convenient dosing
Yeah I thought that was probably the case (just predates at least my memory) - but surely putting powder/liquid directly in vs contained in a water-soluble capsule is.. the same, not 'flying in the face' of how it works?
(For what it's worth, I still put liquid in the top of my washing machine! Tablets only seemed to appear for washing machines ~10y ago, at least that I was aware of, and still seem way more expensive /wash.)
> putting powder/liquid directly in vs contained in a water-soluble capsule is.. the same
Assuming you mean putting it directly in the "tub" versus in the compartment, no that's not true.
The initial fill - which will dissolve anything put directly into the tub - drains fairly quickly. The detergent in the compartment is only released after this point.
If there's nothing in the compartment, there won't be any detergent being used for the bulk of the washing - so regardless of form factor, it's important to use that.
But in addition - rather than instead, putting a small amount of powder in the tub will make the initial rinsing much more effective.
I think you're talking about washing machines (as in clothes)? The part of my comment you quoted (all except the parenthetical, matching the one I replied to) was about dishwashers.
Good point though. A lot of people who use liquid (as opposed to a pod thing) put it in the drum anyway, in a reusable container that comes with some brands. I used to, until I bought a brand that didn't come with one of those on the lid; put it in 'that old-fashioned drawer', and wondered why I hadn't always.
That was the aside about Clothes Washing Machines.
I believe US (clothes) washing machines are usually top-loaders? And stored somewhere else, like a basement or garage?
In the UK most washing machines are front loaders, usually in the kitchen (large houses have a separate utility). There's a draw on the top to put various powders, but I don't remember ever using it and I've been washing clothes since the 90s.
I started seeing them in supermarkets (in the UK) ~5 years ago; actually I think I only noticed them after a colleague mentioned using them, so maybe that's not accurate at all.
I've never used them though, they seem to solve a problem that barely exists, and at quite a premium.
I don't even have a pre-wash compartment on my (not cheap) EU dishwasher. There is just a place for the tablet and then rinse aid (which I never used). And always get good results with quality tablets.
I started using rinse aid this past year and I was pleasantly surprised how it removed nearly all streaks from my glassware. Thankfully the wash cycle only uses a minuscule amount of rinse aid, so a large container lasts me almost a year.
Yeah I'm in the UK and the tablets are all I've seen too. But it seems that e.g. a tablet plus a small amount of pre-wash power or similar may perform much better.
I suspect we're just much further along in this cycle compared to the US - where manufacturers have accepted that people like the tablets and that's that. There's still the opportunity to get better cleaning with this knowledge though.
It's worth noting there's no need for a pre-wash compartment. They do the exact same thing as if you just put the detergent into the "tub"
Proprietary cassettes for dishwashing machines? That's next level. Also I don't get the advantage that you don't need to measure the detergent level, I have always used standard "all-in-one" tabs (1 tab = 1 wash) for my dishwasher, they cost around 0.15 Euro per wash and they only thing I need to add ever few weeks is salt (due to hard water). You can buy the tabs in large packs like 100 in one plastic bag and they are not individually packed (the packaging dissolves during the wash). No need for shipping back the cassette to refill or complicated recycling. We are reinventing the wheel again.
The tabs are ridiculously ineffective! I had issues for a year with my dishwasher until one of the handymen looking at it suggested to use the powder detergent for the compartments instead. Tried it once and it made a night-and-day difference. Never going back to those shitty tabs if I end up with a full-sized dishwasher in the future.
We have a Bosch dishwasher and switched over to tablets (Finish brand) when I installed it after using the sample packs.
It’s hands-down the most effective dishwasher I’ve ever used; I never imagined I’d have feelings about or brand allegiance to a dishwasher, but Bosch earned it (and Finish is part of it, I guess).
Beware of their bottom end models. My house came with a Bosch and it does a decent job cleaning but it's very cheaply made. There's a weld that failed that used to hold the upper spray hose in place, the bottom rack falls out of the track most of the time... My Whirlpool at my previous home was far better built.
Interesting - we have a Bosch Dishwasher, always used Finish (the brand) tablets and everything comes out perfectly clean, every time. I joke that the multiple modes on the machine are just for show because it literally makes no difference if I pick the 50C eco wash or 70C intensive wash - everything comes out super clean anyway.
We have a Miele dishwasher, and there's a difference for some things. The most recent example is some burnt on porridge after a bain-marie double pot had gotten forgotten about on the hob. The 55° wash didn't get that clean but a separate 70° wash did.
New Bosch here too. We stopped using the 30-minute quick cycle which blasts the dishes with a lot of water but doesn’t seem to get them clean, plus leaves a bitter soapy residue, bleh, and all the plastic is wet.
I couldn’t believe the eco cycle would take 3 hours, but it does a fantastic job. Also never thought I’d care about rinse aid, but now I’m obsessive about never running a cycle without it or having a spare bottle on hand.
This was an excellent post, and zero surprise the secret sauce can be replaced for pence/pennies on the pound/dollar.
Remember the ridiculous “fresh squeezed” juice bags? What’s next? DRM petrol/gasoline for hyper-performance (eco + power + range) auto fuel... but it’s regular gas with a couple drops of stuff added? Music player + headphone combo but you can only listen to Neil Young?
To all the European Bosch dishwasher users: does yours clean starch properly?
All my stainless steel pots and pans have a starch layer after cooking potatoes or rice. I've tried all kinds of detergents and am using Alec's "use some detergent for pre-wash" method.
If UK still counts as "European" - yeah. I put all my pans and pots in the dishwasher after cooking and they come out clean. The specific dishwasher is SMS67MW00G(Series 6 basically) + I use the Finish 0% tabs(I'm very sensitive to strong chemical smells, and those tabs don't leave any fregrance when you open the dishwasher).
BTW being from India and new to using dishwasher I got into the habit of rising the dishes before placing them in dishwasher. I recommend it. It’s a little extra work but the dishes come out sparkling clean every single time.
The whole point of a dishwasher though, is that you /don't/ need to do that. Strongly recommend watching Technology Connection's video on the subject; the takeaway is to put powder/tab in free for the first cycle, and powder/tab in the compartment for the main wash - first cycle takes away way more dirt that way.
The last time I took an interest, "Quantum Finish with Powerball" seemed to be the sweet spot for performance vs. cost. That's decade old information, though.
The cleanest wash I have even gotten in a dishwashing machine is using a small dab of liquid dish soap (like you would use to wash by hand) instead of "real" dishwasher soap. I don't use it regularly because others either think it is nuts or would use too much on the few nights I don't load the machine. I have up trying to justify it and just use tabs for political reasons but the fact is I got a great wash for way less product. Something to note: commercial dishwasher machines (food service) use liquid soap (automatically dispensed, of course).
Dishwashing fluids contain bleach and other harsh chemicals that can e.g. remove caked on tea residue from cups, something soap will not do without a lot of direct mechanical action.
As a tea drinker, unless you are very fastidious, handwashing generally doesn't remove everything and a layer can build up in cups which needs standing in bleach every so often to clear out.
Sure, but for 0.15-0.20 Euro per tab you can get quality tabs. I buy "Jar Platinum" tabs in bulk and I have never had any issues with the quality of the wash and I have been using them for like 10 years daily.
If you're in the US, the Ultra Shine brand available at Dollar Tree works great for me and is the best price I could find. $.10 a pod. I don't have hard water and I run my dishwasher on the normal wash cycle. Normally don't load dishes with heavily caked on food particles.
I watched the same Technology Connections video and started adding a squirt (I use inexpensive liquid detergent) just directly on the inside of the door.
It has remarkably increased the “crud busting” power of my Bosch. I used to be fastidious about pre-rinsing before going in the dishwasher. Not I’m more confident to just go from table to washer (with a super quick rinse)
Even if you use tablets, buy a bit of liquid or powder and put about a teaspoon into the initial rinse.
On a tangent, the dishwasher is such a wonderful improvement on hand washing. My parents generation still sees the dishwasher as some kind of cheat or lazy way out.
They are so much more efficient and environmentally friendly than hand washing.
If you have more than one or two pots, you’ll easily use more than the couple of liters of water your dishwasher uses (and the heat for that water has to come from somewhere).
Same! Using normal dish soap that's sitting next to the sink anyways; if you only add a squirt, it doesn't start making foam like crazy as it pretty much gets "used up" by all the grease, and the result is so much better.
I'm not so sure about the environmental friendlyness. Our dishwasher runs for one and a half hour in eco mode. I'd need to measure how much energy it uses in the process. It feels so inefficient and slow. I'd spend about 20 minutes washing and drying the dishes on my own using cold water...
We still use it because with kids, every minute saved is a small win.
It does seem odd, but it is _far_ better than doing it manually. The reason it's so much more efficient is because it takes so long - it can do a great job despite using very little energy and water because it just keeps going at it gradually
The eco modes (or just generally, modes on newer dishwashers) take longer because to balance out the small amount of water, they need to spray the dishes more times. The energy use is low.
How much water and energy does it take to manufacture the machine? Mining the raw materials, transporting everything from different countries, etc, Sure it's convenient, but I'm not sold on the environment friendliness compared to hand washing. Of course, if you already have one it doesn't make sense to not use it, but much of our collective energy use comes from consumption and making new things we don't need.
Yeah just don't use too much. It was long ago but my then-roommate once used liquid dish detergent in the dishwasher because we had run out of dishwasher detergent. The seemingly endless gallons of foam flowing out onto the floor was quite memorable.
My brand new Kitchenaid dishwasher has the prewash compartment on top of the normal compartment - effectively making it a measuring cup throwing its contents into the tub once you close the door.
I'm a fan of the channel, and watched the video, but also haven't had issues with my Bosch not having a pre-rinse compartment. It washes far better than any dishwasher I've had before, including ones that had a pre-rinse compartment.
Your dishwasher was designed to be used without a pre-rinse and is good dishwasher. I’ve had not-so-great dishwashers with pre-rinse slots that were essentially required.
Since we are talking dishwasher life hacks: I always add washing soda (sodium carbonate) along with the detergent, for hard water. It's one of the main ingredients in dry detergent, but it's super cheap. It boosts pH and increases the ratio of sodium to detergent, reducing soap scum.
Yeah, this video was interesting but didn’t at all support the conclusion he made. He stopped the cycle half way through and basically compared washing with soap and without. Shocker,with soap was better. More surprising is how close without soap was.
I assume he skipped comparing full cycle because showing that there isn’t a difference doesn’t result in a catchy title and an interesting video.
One thing I have been doing since watching this video was to add a small scoop of Oxyclean to the dishwasher (in addition to the tab). The difference in cleanliness has been noticeable.
> Proprietary cassettes for dishwashing machines? That's next level.
Although it is proprietary, to be fair on two points: there wasn't really any "DRM", it was literally just a one byte counter on an EEPROM so that a cartridge could digitally record the number of washes remaining, and the machine made no attempt to prevent this being changed. The manufacturer also did not prohibit the cartridges from being refilled by owners, this is in stark contrast to printer manufacturers.
I agree they could have done way more to make it easy for users to refill, although it's not prohibited it's completely impractical without some EE knowledge, and as the author says sending cartridges around the world is not a very efficient way of getting detergent back into these things. To be honest a better design would be no cartridges and a couple of reservoirs with level sensors (As you essentially suggested regarding measuring detergent level), since the machine already seems to be capable of pumping an accurate amount of liquid out of the cartridges they wouldn't even need to measure, just fill... I suspect the reason they didn't do this was for a more "consumer friendly" design where users have to do the least possible work, as it is more of a luxury product than a utility.
I'm not entirely convinced they are trying to make a serious margin on the cartridges, they work out about 3x the cost of the most expensive dishwasher tablet, but they have to send the thing back to france to be reprocessed and programmed... probably not at a scale to be very cost effective.
I do love the article though, it's great to be able to hack on stuff like this when the manufacturer made poor decisions.
You might be right, time will tell. Or they might never develove into that position due to slightly better consumer protection laws since the HP thing.
I have both laser and inkjet printers.
Inkjet is for color, photos, and its scanning capabilities. Got a laser for printing papers during master and Ph.D.
Mine has split drum and toner. Its life is very long, but I need to find a new drum for it soonish, and it's a bit hard to find. Also Samsung's transfer to HP isn't helping.
Don't want to throw it away because it's a small business printer and a flawless machine from my point of view.
I have a laser for b/w. It’s a entry level brother printer. The toner cartridges they come with are only partially filled and replacements are expensive. My starting toner cartridge died after a couple reams of paper. Nice thing of about laser is the toner doesn’t dry up like inkjets but they also moved toward razor handle and blade model.
Some home lasers have this problem unfortunately. I think I learnt my lesson and started to buy home office equipment.
They're more serviceable, longer lasting and they're generally faster and higher quality overall. When used in light duty, they run as long as you can find refills for it.
I always buy original refills BTW. Yes, they're expensive but, they last for a long time and I sleep better at night.
I've got one of those entry level Brother laser printers. If you don't mind voiding your warranty, you can buy third party refilled cartridges for less than $20 on Amazon. They work just as well as the OEM ones.
On the other hand, one could argue that if the dishwasher manufacturer's intention was indeed to prevent user refills, they would have known to already implement their own strict "DRM-style" technological limitations, drawing from the history of printer cartridges. The fact that they haven't may well be a sign of good faith.
In the days of HP Deskjet 500C/510/550C trio, HP sold official black cartridge refill kits. It was a bit clunky, but you inserted your cartridge to a contraption, pulled some levers in order presented on the device and you'd have an officially refilled cartridge.
The black cartridges on these printers were transparent, held really liquid ink to the brim and the refill device had aluminum, HP branded ink bottles. Oh, the cartridges had air-pillows inside to maintain a positive pressure at all times.
Is is exactly DRM: it's a digital method intended to restrict the user from undesirable usage (from the manufacturer's point of view).
Early restrictions on printer cartridges in the 1990s were simple: they could be bypassed with a bit of tape, or pressing a combination of buttons on the printer. Later, the chips could be reset, probably in a way similar to this. Now, there are encryption keys etc.
> suspect the reason they didn't do this was for a more "consumer friendly" design
>> suspect the reason they didn't do this was for a more "consumer friendly" design
> That is naïve.
We are supposed to avoid this kind of retort on HN, but I'll try to read underneath the surface.
I am more likely than most to infer exploitative and manipulative intent behind the choices of large corporations. However I am also very much a realist.
Consider that this company (whom I never herd of before this post) is not some multinational behemoth like Samsung. This product is coming from a very new, small manufacturer of luxury, miniature home appliances in France (so far a manufacturer of 1 appliance it seems). Given their niche target market, it seems far more likely to me that their choice to use cartridges is an attempt to fit that market, than an attempt to milk people for huge margins at scale on a consumable. Yes it's far from economical, but nether is their product.
The cartridge system certainly doesn't seem inconvenient, but given that they designed the system to hold at least 2-3L of water in a user refillable compartment, it slightly baffles the mind that holding 130mL of detergent and 35mL of rinse aid in a similar fashion was deemed impossible (or impractical).
From manufacturer's perspective, to make a user-refillable detergent/rinse container is against own interests all round:
- Give up on additional revenue;
- Costly to make machine more robust/tolerant to variations in composition/pH/viscosity/etc. of 3rd-party detergent;
- No good way to enforce rinse/calcite removal inside machine - without DRM, user can just pour water as "rinse" liquid, and then lie when RMAing the washer that eventually clogged up and broke.
Have you ever noticed at the pump that the nozzle for diesel doesn't fit in your car if it uses a gasoline engine? Try it some time. This is to prevent people who aren't paying enough attention from ruining their day by putting diesel in their car. It would be trivial to sell large commerical-grade detergent containers with similar protections to provide an affordable, fool-proof mechanism to refill their own cannisters. The best thing about this approach is that you could still provide the subscription based model to anyone who truly values the model (instead of being simply forced to use that model due to lack of a suitable alternative), giving your customers the best of all worlds. Obviously, that doesn't quite rake in the money the way that the "razor and blades" approach to gouging your customers in the name of convenience does.
Obviously anything that means you rake in less money is against the short-term interests of the sales department, but not necessarily the long-term interests of the company.
> This is to prevent people who aren't paying enough attention from ruining their day by putting diesel in their car.
FWIW this also protects against ignorant drivers who through no fault of their own have never filled up gas. Many countries are full service, as I believe are some US states?
Beats me why filling up gas is made out to be such a difficult task...
>Credit where credit's due, Daan Tech didn't completely lock down the machine with Bob cassettes. Once empty, you can leave it there and add detergents manually.
If that was the true concern they'd have locked that up as well. They want you to pay for convenience, not for the warranty's sake.
I think noucermane is correct. Your point that there wasn't any software DRM does not mean that they did not intend it as DRM. I expect that they did a cost benefit analysis of additional electronics for SW DRM vs revenue lost due to hackers like this one for this version of their product, and found the tradeoff acceptable. This does not mean that if this hack became easily available and widely used, that they would not implement SW DRM on a later revision. Who knows, maybe the current version is already ready for SW DRM, it's just that they haven't felt the need to release the DRM version of the cartridge yet.
Given that they went out of their way to build an auto-renewal system in the device (a pretty sophisticated endeavor for a kitchen appliance manufacturer) it seems blatantly obvious that this lock-in was meant to prevent refills. Otherwise why not offer a manual override?
I have air filters that notify you when the filters should be checked or changed, I have coffee machines that tell you when you should descale them but they all let you override or ignore the issue if you so desire. And they're a lot less sophisticated than this device.
I'm not a fan of ad-hominem but I do agree with Symbiote that your take in a bit naive. You don't need to be a behemoth to embrace a crappy business model. Remember Juicero?
> You don't need to be a behemoth to embrace a crappy business model.
It's also the almost cliche case study in undergraduate business school. Known as the "Kodak" model or the "Gillette" model: "Give away the camera, sell the film" or "Give away the shaver, sell the blades" and while it's not an exact fit (I doubt they're selling the washer at cost) it's in the same vein.
I think investors are looking for the next Keurig. Sustainability be damned.
Look at the lengths Juicero went to create a subscription model for juice. Clearly there is a desire for that business model to be applied more broadly than just inkjet printers.
Absent any indications to the contrary, my default assumption is that we're seeing the same business model applied here.
I personally do think it their actions are deliberately exploitative. I don't inherently have a problem with offering users a 'more convenient' experience for a higher price, but there's absolutely no reason they couldn't sell their prefilled cartridges and also offer a refillable cartridge with a reset button, which can still tell you how many washes it has left. They also could absolutely sell the detergent directly to consumers, rather than implying it's some kind of secret sauce. Ultimately, this would cost almost nothing to engineer, and you wouldn't have to change the machine at all.
Their deceit is made more egregious by their supposed care for the environment.
I'd be interested in seeing the company's pitch deck. I wouldn't be surprised if they used the word "subscription" somewhere in their list of what makes them different from the competition.
I have beginner-level lockpicking skills. I can rake open the door locks from companies like Schlage and Kwikset used on most houses in the US in a few seconds. That they're easily defeated by someone with basic knowledge of tools for manipulating them does not mean they aren't locks.
This DRM will prevent the average consumer from refilling the cartridges even if it's easily defeated by those with a working knowledge of embedded electronics.
Pretty irrelevant "argumentum ad verecundiam", but for the sake of argument, you are not "average" anymore. Being able to pick Schlage and Kwikset already puts you in the probably 0.1%.
Anyhow, back on track, the average customer does not refill their cartridges. I doubt the idea of doing so has even sparked in their head. (and yes, the average consumer is dumb).
> the average customer does not refill their cartridges
Yes, and this is why this rudimentary hardware DRM is sufficient for the current market. If the marketplace changes and the hack becomes easily attainable and widely used, SW DRM may emerge.
> Being able to pick Schlage and Kwikset already puts you in the probably 0.1%.
What percentage of the general population knows how to dump an I2C EEPROM, do some reverse engineering to find the counter, and update the counter value? It seems easy to us because we're on HN, and many of us are EEs or other embedded systems people, but it's pretty specialized knowledge in the population at large.
This is absolutely DRM. Not effective DRM when squared off against an embedded systems engineer, but DRM nonetheless. Yes, they could have used a hardened encrypted EEPROM specifically built for these kinds of applications (for example, the ATSHA204A from Atmel/Microchip), but that would have cost more and in applications like this COGS for the disposable element is king. They probably assumed that a simple unencrypted I2C EEPROM would be good enough, and quite honestly they're probably right: unless somebody goes and starts selling a little dongle to reset these cartridges to consumers, it's only going to be a handful of technically-inclined power users resetting them.
You're right for the wrong reasons. DRM doesn't have to involve encryption; but it does have to involve copyright.
A right-click blocker script or those domain locks on old Flash games is a form of DRM as long as it keeps you from copying something. Doesn't have to be elaborate, doesn't have to involve crypto. It just has to have the effect of stopping you from copying something that copyright law protects. Once you have that, then it's unlawful to remove the DRM unless it's for a lawful purpose; and it's unlawful to tell anyone how to remove it for any purpose.
I'm confused. Yes, normal consumers can probably figure out how to put detergent and rinse liquid in. But what percentage of customers is going to be able to overwrite an i2c EEPROM? It is DRM for almost everyone.
> Proprietary cassettes for dishwashing machines? That's next level.
I was in the market for a new washing machine and noticed the Miele W1 machines now have something similar called "TwinDos". You can still add detergent the old-fashioned way but it had me wondering if this is a lead-up to the same business practices we see with Nespresso and inkjet cartridges.
I haven't done any actual research, but I got a feeling that Miele might have been bought up or some external entity got a say in how to optimize their business?
A 70yo family friend loves Miele. Never bought anything else for a dish washer, washing machine or drier. When his dish washer broke down two years ago - he proudly mentioned that it lasted him 22 years - he obviously bought Miele again.
Just half a year later it broke, he called a Miele technician, who said that this wouldn't be covered by warranty: You see, the manual explicitly states that you must run the machine with a higher-temperature program every so-and-so-ishth time, since the ECO program, which is selected by default every time you turn that goddamn thing on, doesn't heat the up the water enough, and all the gunk will add up in the machine's pipes over time, damaging it.
Now that's all fine and logical and I would have shrugged it off if this was an Ikea or no name brand from the local store, but a goddamn Miele that costs premium and is supposed to be a quality product? It's designed by German engineers which probably qualify as rocket scientists in every other country on this planet. And they cannot figure out how to add a counter to that thing so it would warn you if you used ECO mode too many times, or even better yet, make it just raise the temperature automatically even though you selected ECO?
Traditional German companies complain about not being able to compete with competition from eastern Europe and China, but then go ahead and pretty much offer the same quality by going to alibaba.com and ordering from there, with a Miele logo slapped on, while keeping the price the same as before. I can only see this being a short term solution, thanks to those old folks who have your brand image burned into their heads from thirty years ago, and will keep buying your stuff. The family friend from above? He got a discount of 50€ for buying a new Miele, which he happily accepted. qed.
My non-Miele clothes washing machine has the same stipulation, and you obviously wouldn't want it suddenly ruining your clothes or dishes with a higher temperature. But it does come with a counter and indicator light for the hot wash.
I don't think you can blame acquisition- it is the eternal cycle of brands that at some point they start frittering away their value instead of building it up.
With clothes I see the issue, but even the "auto/normal" program would've been fine according to the manual. I've never seen anything that said it's for the dishwasher but cannot do more than 40C, or whatever ECO does.
> it is the eternal cycle of brands that at some point they start frittering away their value instead of building it up.
Yeah, maybe I'm reading a bit too much in there, sometimes you just need the wrong guy in charge.
Funny, when our Miele dish washer broke the Miele repair person said it was because our water was too hot. It wasn't, our heating company confirmed the temp.
I would never have noticed if not for the bad rap of some products in the US, but yeah. I can well imagine how it goes: Oh, so the product is designed for service every X interval. So we can assume Y and optimize further for (price, comfort, weight, looks, power, mileage)...
Their washing machines and vacuum cleaners tend to last 30+ years in the experience of my parents, and my vacuum cleaner is over 15 years old at this point as well. Still more silent than most new ones, with great suction, and ergonomic.
That said... the thing about Eco mode is quite horrible indeed. There should be a self-cleaning program that runs as often as necessary and a corresponding reminder on the display.
This is not for you since you mention prices in Euros... I am always surprised when I read about bad experience with their products in the US. Especially the service seems to be some overpriced BS. Miele service is what regular electricians do in Germany.
> I don't get the advantage that you don't need to measure the detergent level, I have always used standard "all-in-one" tabs
Yeah this kind of "convenience" makes my BS meter beep. It's a non-problem, and I'm always suspicious of things like this because it's usually a sign they're trying to sneak something past you. (Or marketing to "the new generation" of domestic chores deficient people)
I mean, sure, I get that a dishwasher that needs no plumbing is a good idea, but at the same time, it's too few dishes (in my case) to be a big chore.
> Proprietary cassettes for dishwashing machines? That's next level.
Sony had proprietary cassettes for all kinds of products over the years, even when there were standards available (Betamax is the most famous but only one example)
I have 4 handheld voice recorders from the 1970s from my father. Philips, Norelco, Sony, and one other brand. All use the same size microcassette except the Sony. Fuck you, Sony.
Betamax wasn’t any more proprietary than VHS which was developed by JVC. It has a fairly large number of manufacturers that produced VCRs including NEC, Toshiba, Aiwa and Pioneer the issue was mainly cost and the fact that Betamax cam recorders could not be miniaturized as efficiently and as cheaply as VHS so you ended up with a two stage solution still for home movies and amateur movie production (porn played a big role here).
Furthermore, that's not how home video worked. VHS and Beta were sold on their TV recording capabilities, not their home video libraries. Home video was supposed to be handled by disc formats (Laserdisc, CED, VHD, etc); selling movies on $100-ish tapes was prohibitively expensive compared to ~$15 discs.
Eventually this was worked around with video rental shops and falling prices of VHS tape, but a consequence of this is that neither Sony nor JVC were licensing content for distribution on their tapes. Remember, you could record whatever you wanted on the tape; that was the point.
By home movies I mean replacing the super 8 format.
The design behind VHS made camcorders cheaper to make as well as enabled them to be used to play video. Betamax at the time had a more complicated solution where a separate player was needed and also initially a two stage solution where different tapes had to be used.
I don't think Beta really counts here. Probably the best example of Sony doing this is their Memory Stick, despite compact flash, sd and usb storage being readily available.
Yep. Also mini disc and DAT and a dozen others. I don’t know why people focused on my Betamax comment when the portable dictation device is more to the point.
Loved the obsessiveness! FWIW the entire beer-brewing industry runs on NaOH for cleaning and sanitising. Disposing of it is not quite as environmentally-friendly as the dishwasher manufacturer seems to want you to believe -- in most places you'd be in serious trouble if you poured any significant quantity down the drain.
eta: I've just looked up the constituents of the dishwasher tablets we've been using, and yes, indeed, they're mostly NaOH, an inert carrier (Na2SO4) and a variety of water-softeners, packaging films to keep everything in tablet form (but soluble) and a small number of helper enzymes, perfumes and whiteners. Looks like a teaspoon of NaOH might work justabout as well. :D
Sodium hydroxide is only dangerous if concentrated. Diluted, and especially if it is mixed with wastewater, it'll just react with the various organics to form soap-like chemicals.
If anything, it'll help clean your sewage pipes!
PS: Most draincleaners are just a concentrated NaOH mixture. Consumers pour them down their drain all the time and nobody worries about this either...
Nope, pretzels are made with lye (NaOH). That's how you get the tasty brown Maillard reaction coating - boil the dough in lye water, then bake, then salt it.
In German, I think their full name is Laugenbrezel. The full name may not be much used[1] colloquially, because it's implied -- but bread rolls made the same way are definitely called Laugenbrötchen.
"Lauge" is German for "lye". They're called that because they're made with it.
[1]: Though when I switched my phone keyboard to German just now to test it out, the predictive spelling corrector suggested "Laugenbrezel", not "-brötchen", when I'd got as far as "Laugenb".
People most certainly don't eat sodium hydroxide on their pretzels anymore than they eat raw egg in their cakes. Coating pretzels with lye before baking causes a chemical reaction that consumes the lye. You really, really shouldn't ingest any amount of lye, lest it react with the inside of your squishy organic matter like the surface of pretzel dough...
Devil's advocate: the back of those drain cleaner solutions make a point that the solution should never sit or pool in any surface or pipe. You have to run water and chase it down so it doesn't corrode the pipes. I know where I live some of the pipes have "flow issues" because of bad design, and if there was already a partial blockage I can see drain cleaner corroding the pipes...
We just mechanically clean them out ourselves, anyway.
If you ask them why they say its because it'll often dissolve the pipes before the blockage. Most of the trades people I talk to aren't looking to maximize their work. I've had them turn down jobs for being too gross and I don't blame them.
They'll generally use a snake/auger. Home Depot sells a basic one for $15. The beefier, further reaching ones cost more. Or, for smaller jobs, there are single-use plastic snakes.
For my own dishwasher I’m using a mix of Potassium hydroxide (Potash), Sodium hypochlorite (Bleach) and Sodium tripolyphosphate (Phosphates).
This is strong stuff, so make sure hoses/tubes, seals and connections are compatible if anyone wants to try this.
Instead of rinse aid I’m using a 50% citric acid/water solution. The final rinse is at 85c or 185f. The stuff dries instantly. A built in fan/condensation system prevents moisture inside and outside the machine.
I’m using two commercial grade peristaltic pumps for the chemicals.
I have also considered an enzyme pre-wash; Protease and Amylase.
The diswasher is commercial grade, but the racks and operation is just like a normal household dishwasher.
Drinking glasses come out spotless. Rinse Aid is not necessary.
I hold them up to the sunlight for inspection and I see nothing.
I will try to make a video or write about this sometime :)
The feedback would be helpful and I care about people having an ideal dishwashing machine that operates with the least cognitive load.
Yes please share what country you’re in and what equipment you use? This is very interesting.
I’ve come to the conclusion that buying “consumer” or even “prosumer” appliances is a lost cause, all the brands use the same 3 white label Chinese manufacturers and you get the same quality no matter what you buy, you can expect to be shopping for a new appliance in <5 years time.
I’m hopeful that commercial appliances aren’t yet at that stage, you end up paying a significant premium but you save in time and lost effort when you don’t have to deal with buying a new one so soon.
> I’ve come to the conclusion that buying “consumer” or even “prosumer” appliances is a lost cause, all the brands use the same 3 white label Chinese manufacturers and you get the same quality no matter what you buy, you can expect to be shopping for a new appliance in <5 years time.
In general that's very true across industry now. For more information on this white labeling phenomenon this documentary is great:
Norway.
Asko DWC5926 (DWC5926W).
Seko PR-4 and PR-1.
This is the short version. There are some issues and fixes you should be aware of. Like how to fix a design fault at a circulation pump wire. There is also an easier way to rewire the machine from 3 phase to single phase if you’re doing that.
Generally the Asko machine is a unicorn.
You can also look at the Miele professional dishwashers that come with automatic dosing systems and sanitizing rinse.
I'd drop the bleach if your dishwasher has stainless steel interior walls. Chlorine is hostile to stainless steel, causing pits in the oxidised surface of the metal, resulting in corrosion.
>bleach and stainless steel
Thank you for pointing that out. I was worried about Bleach corroding stainless steel inside and outside the dishwasher. Bleach has serious issues related to being used in a dishwasher and in general. I can’t find good information about Bleach in my digitized dishwasher notes. I know that I paused until I had resolved these issues. Corrosion of stainless steel worried me the most. If I can’t find better notes or remember why I was convinced; then I will have to stop using Bleach.
The Bob Dishwasher is an interesting concept. Looking at their website it looks like it would fit 6 plates, 6 cups and a set of utensils. What’s the point of this? If you’re cooking for 6, you would have pots and pans which would have to be hand washed. Is 6 more plates and cups worth going through the effort of loading and turning on a dishwasher? Alternatively, I suppose it is more water efficient..
I would have loved something like that when I was a student and/or when I was single.
I used to have breakfast on the way, lunch at the Uni/work, and a small dinner. 6 plates is therefore close to what I'd use in a week. It's also close to what I'd use nowadays if I weren't still in home office. And while I do have enough room now for a full-sized dishwasher, that wasn't always the case.
I've been in my current place for about 5 years and have never used the dishwasher. Sink works fine and is almost instant if you wash everything immediately.
Personally I think the biggest argument for a dishwasher is that stuff is not in-sight anymore.
They also are more efficient, water wise. Our dishwasher uses 8 liters per wash. If I fill our sink with 8 liters, it barely covers anything. Dish washers use more detergent though, this is why I switched to powder which can be dosed better.
His page links to a YouTube review of the Bob where the reviewer claims that it gets things cleaner than it's possible to do by hand, especially irregularly shaped items like electric grill parts. And yes, the dishwasher uses at most 3L, while he estimated sink washing used 10L, not including the 1 min. of running water wasted waiting for the hot water to arrive.
Yes, that was my first impression with dishwasher many years ago. It is plain impossible to achieve this quality with hand washing. Especially for glassware.
All cool and good, but I'd have stopped at step 1: Considering buying a dish washer with DRMed detergent. Sorry, but rewarding people with such outrageous proposals with a purchase is morally questionable in itself.
You would think that, but I've been in the market for one of these things and this one looks to be about US$100 above the median price. Pay more and become a recurring revenue stream, sounds great!
Original hacker did say that he's never allowed the thing an actual internet connection, though, and it's still working just fine. So clearly the internet connectivity is not a hard requirement. I wonder what it does send back to the manufacturer, though...
Anybody who owns one up for dumping the contents of their dishwasher's conversation with Mom?
OP still rewarded the company. Through work I'm somewhat connected to a big appliance maker and whenever they do the big presentations on their Vision For The Future it's all IoT. That every little shit in your home from your blender to your dishwasher to your drill will be internet connected and have software updates and upgrades and tracked servicing and tamper proofing and usage statistics and paid feature unlocking and upselling and better market segmentation etc.
They'll extort our very last penny we can shed and we will be happy about it and march into this future willingly.
I have mine connected to a wifi power meter and the data is logged in InfluxDB and monitored by Grafana, so I get an email and XMPP notification when the dishes are done.
Then the same for the washing machine, and there it is super useful since the machine isn't inside the apartment, but in the washroom, and it is a real problem if I forget the clothes.
Honestly it's a blessing if your washing machine let's you know that the clothes are ready to be taken out. Since I started with this around 4 years ago, I've never forgotten the clothes in it. Also, it's 1-3 notifications a week.
Then again, I also get notifications multiple times a day when the backups of the servers finished successfully or failed, so it appears that I'm ok with receiving notifications (from machines). Or when devices have connected to the wifi.
Each apartment has his own washing machine in the communal washroom, so I have the cable plugged into the power meter and every time I need to wash I plug the power meter into the wall socket.
I'm considering replacing it with an ESP32 and wrap a wire around the cable which should then detect if current is flowing, but I lack a bit of motivation since the current setup is working.
I think, for this particular machine, the internet connection is for sending alerts for when new pods are required.
However, I still remember how scarily fast did TV manufacturers go from "the internet is for a richer experience" to "all your data are belong to us". And the worst part is no one, not even regulators flinched a muscle while this data grabbed happened before everyone's eyes.
>Credit where credit's due, Daan Tech didn't completely lock down the machine with Bob cassettes. Once empty, you can leave it there and add detergents manually.
To be fair, a large section of population does not see it that way, nor is the advertisement fully truthful. Usually they are advertised as pods that cost such and such for such and such cycles. And then you have offers and combos, etc to market the pods.
Somewhere in some tiny text somewhere, it says you are prohibited from using other similar pods.
Actual news about hacking! It is interesting that this is in the UK ... i'm fairly sure most rents come with a full-sized dishwaster when furnished and all properties have the plumbing for one. I'm not sure what the market is. Especially that one of the main value adds was "no mess" when our dishwashers all accept pre-form tablets for detergent.
Anyway, I adore these kinds of blog posts. Tinkering, naughtiness and a big dollop of technical knowhow.
In Western/South West Europe (Portugal, Spain, France), full-sized dishwashers are a bit more uncommon I think, especially in single/double room flats in bigger metropolitan areas where flat sizes tend to be in the smaller range. As an anecdote, I've lived in maybe ~20 places and only two of them had come with a dishwasher, only one of them was an apartment.
This is the first time I hear about "Bob" and my current place couldn't fit a full-size dishwater but in order to save time and water, I might actually get this. The price is a bit high for what it is though.
Presumably from £ being the primary currency in the readme. I think GP means the hacking is from UK, (and contributors) rather than the manufacturer of this mental device, which is surprising because who in the UK would have one of these when 'normal' dishwashers are basically ubiquitous.
Yes I agree. Never heard of these, seems totally bizarre, but I suppose I get the appeal (if you didn't know/think about the proprietary connection/protocol) if your kitchen/scullery wasn't designed with space for a dishwasher. But how many properties in the UK can be like that? Not very many, I'm sure an estate agent would tell you you'd have a hard time selling without 'updating'.
I don’t know about the UK, but Paris provide a large number of incredibly tiny apartment without dishwasher and the landlord is not open to make the plumbing accommodation to setup one. If even possible.
I had to pay it myself once in 2013. It was a sunken cost I was ok with given how cutthroat the real estate market is and how much I hate to do dishes.
I live in a UK flat without a 'full-size' dishwasher. Did you see OP though? This isn't about that, my half-width one still goes under the counter and takes normal tablets.
If your flat is so small that you can't have a dishwasher, do you really want to occupy some (probably significant) fraction of your countertop with this thing? It looks like it could wash maybe a few plates and cups at a time. That would take maybe 2 min to wash by hand in the sink. The entire premise of this device seems ridiculous to me.
I've rented in the UK for decades and I've never had a dishwasher or space for one. Friends haven't bothered with dishwashers until they had kids, and then they needed to create a space and add some plumbing.
Dishwashers in the UK seem like the opposite of ubiquitous. Maybe I live in a strange bubble.
These counter-top ones? Not that I'm aware of. I have a normal (though half-width, but that just makes sense for a 1 bed place really) one in London.
Maybe older builds that haven't been updated wouldn't have any space for one as you say, without re-jigging cupboards, so maybe people do. But then you're losing work surface for it..
I lived in Paris for a while. Large appartement have dishwasher, but in single units, it’s uncommon.
I remember looking for solution like that for a renter in a small place without proper plumbing to accommodate a dishwasher.
I also see a market for the so called tiny house folks or full time RVer.
I don’t find that particular product appealing too much, but I would like to see more like that. And I know folks around me that would buy one if it’s was more open and fixable.
I've rented.....8 houses so far, all in North East(Newcastle) and every single one of them had a dishwasher. I suppose maybe part of it is that I simply wouldn't rent a place without a dishwasher ;-)
I've rented flats outside london for years, always come with a dishwasher. I'm on a high salary though, so it may skew my world view of what is "standard"
Well in a lot of places, the fact it is a self standing property means the owner can do whatever they want with it without having to consult a "building committee".
Like rearranging plumbing/electrical however you want.
Whether landlords use this advantage for tenants quality of life is a whole other story.
Anecdata: I've rented 2 flats in London over the last 30 years (and been a frequent visitor to 4 more); none had a dishwasher. Rented one house in Newcastle; also no dishwasher.
"Bob" is not the only countertop dishwasher that exists; this is a solid market segment. It's also worth noting that the median price of these things is less than Bob, even before you add in the cost of buying a dishwasher with an extra corporate revenue stream embedded in it.
Do you have some suggestions for other brands? I have had my fingers on the order button for some weeks but and haven't found good reviews of other products yet.
Even in the United States where dishwashers are common, older buildings sometimes don't have them. I lived in a reasonably large apartment from the 1930s that was never upgraded to support a dishwasher. I would have loved a model like this.
Really great post indeed ! As a small data point, I'm renting a 40-50 m² flat in the UK and only have a washer/dryer. No dishwasher and no additional plumbing for one.
Here's the 2019 data on dishwasher ownership in the UK [0]. More than 50% of two-adult households have them, rising to 64% for two-adult-two-children households. Retired single adult households have the lowest percentage (28%)
The ROI for the effort probably wasn’t that great. But I can respect the obsession for the hack all the same. Sometimes it’s not about the dollars and cents, and if you let it be a hobby versus work that helps make it worth it.
It’s just an I2C EEPROM. You could read and write it with ~50 lines of code on an Arduino (or ESP32 or STM Bluepill or any other microcontroller dev board).
From the picture, it looks like I2C to SPI (or similar) and then SPI to USB virtual serial port. Not sure why they didn't just go straight to USB with an I2C-USB adapter. Perhaps they didn't have one. Anyway, from there it's just write a quick program to read/write the 24C02 through the virtual serial port and Bob's your uncle, as it were.
I think many product designers try to replicate the success of printer cartridges. I try to avoid buying any device that limits the input or supply especially those that require a cartridge.
It's a clear method to milk consumers and they can hardly justify the benefit in most cases.
I even don't buy the idea of capsule coffee machines. I like those that give you the option to use pads, but not those that only accept capsule. The environment impact is one reason, but I also want the freedom of choosing the supply and the having control on the running cost.
> It's a clear method to milk consumers and they can hardly justify the benefit in most cases.
For a second there, before I'd fully parsed your sentence, I read "milk consumers" as "consumers of milk", and all kind of wild ideas started running through my head: "What, they're going to implement the cartridge scam with MILK?!? How's that going to work -- the carton is connected to the Internet, sends a notification somewhere every time I open it, and I get billed according to the number of times, or...?" Then I realized "milk" was a verb here. Whew!
OK, so call me paranoid... But still: I think the fact that the idea even occurred to me says something not only about me, but about the current state of the world.
It would have never come into my mind that this is something that even exists.
What's with the tabs you put into the little chamber, or which I'm just dropping into the cutlery holder since the chamber lid broke of. Aren't they compatible or what?
----
For their website:
Is the use of a Bob cassette mandatory?
No.
However, to ensure optimal washing quality and higher Bob life durability we recommend using the Bob cassette.
Can I refill my Bob cassette myself?
No.
We use a highly concentrated detergent formula which is not publicly available for sale.
So we have set up a way to collect used cassettes, clean them and refill them in our factory.
This allows us to offer you an optimal washing quality with a zero waste solution!
Are you aware that if your dishwasher has a pre wash cycle before the main wash cycle; then your detergent will be wasted. ?
A pre wash cycle is common in european dishwashers.
Pre-Wash cycle ("Vorspühlen") is an additional button which would need to be in a depressed state for this short cycle to be additionally executed and fully exchange the water, but I never use it. I think the main cycle also does refresh a certain percentage of its water, I'm not sure about it. But just using one tab is not enough.
I buy the cheap ones from Aldi which are € 0.04 a piece. I use the machine 1.5 times a week, so that extra tab is ~ €1.40 a year.
Not really. The surfactants/detergents get removed during the rinse cycle. The concentrations are also relatively low. Dishwashers often have a "rinse only" cycle so if this is a concern for you, run one of those after the main cycle.
Running a second rinse cycle will still put you ahead so far as water consumption, because dishwashers use much less water than hand-washing.
No? Water is a "chemical". The contents of your digestive tract would probably sound scary to most people as well (hydrochloric acid in the stomach, chenodeoxycholic acid in the intestine, among others).
I wonder what sort of new user features they'd deliver with a firmware update. It's a dishwasher!
Well I suppose they could add useless gimmicks like "Version 1.2 can now talk directly to Philips Hue bulbs so the dishwasher can blink a lightbulb to notify you"...
No matter what product you make, it seems that it's impossible to earn money without using unethical proprietary practices. I guess the brand will argue that the products are "hard to find" and that it requires "precise refilling".
And apparently it's even true for such crazy good home products that really don't get enough visibility.
I mean it's the first time I discover this washing machine, and I want one. It's almost like this hacking article was just designed as a disguised advertisement for this washing machine.
I don't think the existence of this product means it's impossible to earn money without using unethical proprietary practices. It just means that this company is yet another one where honestly selling a product one time for the customer's money is not enough. The goal, more and more often, is to lock the customer into a scheme where they will be milked monthly for even more money. It's just too bad these schemes are spreading into every product category. And since they are often disguised as normal products, it is getting easier and easier to accidentally get roped into one of these without realizing it.
The thing is that it is impossible to compete with a chinese made appliance just by selling a product that will last. You have to sell it for the price significantly lower in hope to return investment by selling locked cartriges. That is where such perverted business schemes come from. The more we allow chinesium to penetrate to our homes, the less room we left for other better products to get developed and find their way to the market.
It's absolutely possible to earn money by solving a real problem. It only becomes impossible when there is no real problem to solve and you're intentionally creating a problem.
Dishwashers are a solved problem and have been for decades. If you search hard enough you can find lower-profile models that solve the "size" problem this current product is trying to address.
I'm not sure whether this company is profitable. Most likely they aren't and the proprietary cartridge system is a way to lock people in for future profits and potentially fishing for VC funding or an acquisition by a bigger unethical company happy to milk this thing out until it collapses.
Their whole eco-friendly concept (pseudo - because shipping the cartridges is anything but) is to appeal to environment freaks with more money than common sense and/or fish for eco-related awards or government grants (just like Solar Roadways).
Selling the base product at a loss to make it up in accessory/operational purchases is as old as razors and razor blades. My favorite example was I think it was one of the early xboxes was being sold for less than the cost of the hardware, expecting to make up the difference in licensing on game sales. Well, a bunch of college CS labs realized the cost advantage, starting buying them in bulk, loaded linux onto them, and used them as cheap GPU clusters.
I see this model as a financing hack... the reason you can buy an HP printer for like $40 isn't because the hardware costs $40, it's because you're effectively paying interest on an invisible loan every time you buy inkjet cartridges. The longer the manufacturer has you buying cartridges, the bigger return on their initial (invisible) loan.
What makes this model shitty to the consumer is there's no cap on the "interest". The "loan" ends once the plastic gear somewhere deep inside the machine breaks and your customer needs to get a new one. Then you're back to competing against everyone else offering the same invisible loans on the Best Buy shelf. If you're lucky, the consumer doesn't see the stockholm syndrome they got themselves into last time and they choose your product again because it's familiar.
It's not helpful to call this an "unethical proprietary practice". It's more helpful to see this as the useful "low teaser rate" financial hack it is, then try to think up new financial models that might be a bit more honest (while still being sufficiently profitable that it makes business-sense to switch).
> My favorite example was I think it was one of the early xboxes was being sold for less than the cost of the hardware, expecting to make up the difference in licensing on game sales.
This is still common practice: Sony and Microsoft generally either sell their consoles to break even or at a loss. The only difference between then and now is that they've made it much harder to run alternate operating systems. As far as I'm aware, Nintendo is the only console manufacturer that actually tries to profit off of hardware sales.
Investors don't want to invest in only HW. They want their MRR. This is all just going to get worse. We'll start seeing everything coming with built in cellular soon.
The cell modems I've worked with are able to maintain a connection to the network even with a terminating resistor in place of an antenna, and that is from the middle of a cattle ranch 8 miles from the tower. You basically need to go full faraday cage...
Luckily thats never gonna happen in Germany. At least not with a mandatory connection. The cellular coverage is way to bad for that. My parents live in a smaller village. The Dishwasher would have to stand on the upper balcony to get a network connection.
Bob looks really cool. I'd 100% buy one and use the "DRM" detergent capsules until they went out of business, just to support them. $2K over 12 years is not enough to bother.
> What's more, the 5L detergent can last well over 3 years of daily wash, while the rinse aid can last almost 12 years! Over those time you would have spent £2088 on Bob cassettes, and who knows if they will even be around then.
They certainly will be if even a small percent of their customers buy into their ridiculous subscription model. Look at those sweet, sweet margins!
That Bob is actually a nice piece of tech, well thought off.
A bit pricey, though. I like that ultraviolet disinfects option.
I am currently living alone, so my 2/3 size (60cm wide) dishwasher stays for days in rinse/wait mode, until it gets close to full to do an actual washing. It is not very good for tableware.
A friend of mine got a cheap chinese countertop dishwasher with form-factor of Bob, it is not that fancy, but still got color LEDs inside) She is totally happy with it, except small bits like draining used water into bucket with a hose. I can see Bob's designers didn't solve that too.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 320 ms ] threadWe pay at least half of that depending on store prices and whether or not we use name brand Cascade and Jet Dry.
For good results, there's two releases of detergent, one for the pre wash and one for the main cycle. Detergent pods have kind of ruined the general dual compartment dishwashing ecosystem, though.
Uh, what? Must be a US thing, whatever the alternative is, because that's (those detergent, salt, perfume, whatever else tablets in a water-soluble wrapper are) all I've ever known. (UK.)
But even here in Aus now, there's a little compartment for pre-wash/rinse detergent... but nobody is aware of it that I've come across. That youtube video was revelationary!
Is that what the video was about? That tablets 'fly in the face of how dishwashers are supposed to work' because you also need rinse aid?
That's nonsense, how every dishwasher I've used has been supposed to work is you keep the salt topped up, the rinse aid topped up, and (supposedly optionally) use a tablet with each wash.
Most dishwashers are designed to have a little detergent in the first cycle and then most in the second cycle. The detergent from the first cycle becomes available to the water immediately, the detergent for the second cycle is the part that you put in the compartment.
If you want to know the details, watch the rest of the video. Or, if you don't want to do that, read your dish washer's manual. Maybe yours was designed without to forego detergent in the first cycle, because people have switched to pods anyway. Maybe it wasn't, and you can get a hygiene boost by using powder instead of pods.
If you use detergent pods, one of your cycles won't run with anything but water. If you put the detergent in the tub, the longer, second cycle runs without detergent. If you put the pod in the little compartment, the first cycle is much less effective than it can be.
Many machines are still designed for powder or gel detergents that you put into both compartments. You can get the same dishwasher performance by using two dishwasher tablets per run (one in the tub and one in the compartment) but that'll use up way more detergent than you actually need.
Rinse aid is for maintaining your dishwasher, that's something different entirely.
This is uncommon, possibly non-existent, in dishwashers sold in Europe in the last decade or longer.
I remember them having a pre-wash detergent compartment in the 1990s, but nowadays there's only a single compartment, for the main wash.
None that I've ever seen here.
> If you want to know the details, watch the rest of the video. Or, if you don't want to do that, read your dish washer's manual.
The video is.. I'm not its target audience. But I do actually have the manual: its 'programme phases' are 'pre-wash', 'wash' (different temperatures depending on setting), rinse, and dry. The detergent tablet is dispensed in the 'wash' phase. There's nowhere to put any to be dispensed in the 'pre-wash' phase. So, instead of 'some then most', it's 'none then all'. I've never known one work differently.
> Many machines are still designed for powder or gel detergents that you put into both compartments.
Right, again, not here: I don't have and have never seen one with two detergent compartments.
I still don't think tablets 'fly in the face of how the machine's supposed to work', there should just be big & little detergent tablets for markets with big & little detergent compartments.
Everywhere else with single compartments, a single tablet works fine, is exactly how the machine's designed to work, and they often even have a 'recommended brand' (for whatever commission).
Some comments here have mentioned that one can put it into the main compartment of the machine. Just squirt it in on the floor, if I understood correctly.
(Washing machines were of course the same - you put in liquid and powder in the draw at the top, rather than throwing in a tablet in with the clothes)
(For what it's worth, I still put liquid in the top of my washing machine! Tablets only seemed to appear for washing machines ~10y ago, at least that I was aware of, and still seem way more expensive /wash.)
Assuming you mean putting it directly in the "tub" versus in the compartment, no that's not true.
The initial fill - which will dissolve anything put directly into the tub - drains fairly quickly. The detergent in the compartment is only released after this point.
If there's nothing in the compartment, there won't be any detergent being used for the bulk of the washing - so regardless of form factor, it's important to use that.
But in addition - rather than instead, putting a small amount of powder in the tub will make the initial rinsing much more effective.
Good point though. A lot of people who use liquid (as opposed to a pod thing) put it in the drum anyway, in a reusable container that comes with some brands. I used to, until I bought a brand that didn't come with one of those on the lid; put it in 'that old-fashioned drawer', and wondered why I hadn't always.
I believe US (clothes) washing machines are usually top-loaders? And stored somewhere else, like a basement or garage?
In the UK most washing machines are front loaders, usually in the kitchen (large houses have a separate utility). There's a draw on the top to put various powders, but I don't remember ever using it and I've been washing clothes since the 90s.
I've never used them though, they seem to solve a problem that barely exists, and at quite a premium.
I suspect we're just much further along in this cycle compared to the US - where manufacturers have accepted that people like the tablets and that's that. There's still the opportunity to get better cleaning with this knowledge though.
It's worth noting there's no need for a pre-wash compartment. They do the exact same thing as if you just put the detergent into the "tub"
Also IME, cheap dishwasher tablets (e.g. the generic blue/white combo) don't work very well.
It’s hands-down the most effective dishwasher I’ve ever used; I never imagined I’d have feelings about or brand allegiance to a dishwasher, but Bosch earned it (and Finish is part of it, I guess).
I couldn’t believe the eco cycle would take 3 hours, but it does a fantastic job. Also never thought I’d care about rinse aid, but now I’m obsessive about never running a cycle without it or having a spare bottle on hand.
This was an excellent post, and zero surprise the secret sauce can be replaced for pence/pennies on the pound/dollar.
Remember the ridiculous “fresh squeezed” juice bags? What’s next? DRM petrol/gasoline for hyper-performance (eco + power + range) auto fuel... but it’s regular gas with a couple drops of stuff added? Music player + headphone combo but you can only listen to Neil Young?
And we have cheaper electricity between 00:30-4:30am so I just always schedule that 3h long eco wash for then.
All my stainless steel pots and pans have a starch layer after cooking potatoes or rice. I've tried all kinds of detergents and am using Alec's "use some detergent for pre-wash" method.
BTW being from India and new to using dishwasher I got into the habit of rising the dishes before placing them in dishwasher. I recommend it. It’s a little extra work but the dishes come out sparkling clean every single time.
Our filter clogs really quickly if we leave too much on the dishes, even with prewash detergent.
As a tea drinker, unless you are very fastidious, handwashing generally doesn't remove everything and a layer can build up in cups which needs standing in bleach every so often to clear out.
Plural.
We're you using two tabs per wash? If not, you aren't prewashing with detergent, so you are washing your dishes in the filth.
This seems unreasonably optimistic
Technology Connections explains why you actually want to use powder:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04
TL; DR: It allows for the pre-wash/rinse cycle to work properly and gets things cleaner, faster.
It has remarkably increased the “crud busting” power of my Bosch. I used to be fastidious about pre-rinsing before going in the dishwasher. Not I’m more confident to just go from table to washer (with a super quick rinse)
Even if you use tablets, buy a bit of liquid or powder and put about a teaspoon into the initial rinse.
On a tangent, the dishwasher is such a wonderful improvement on hand washing. My parents generation still sees the dishwasher as some kind of cheat or lazy way out.
They are so much more efficient and environmentally friendly than hand washing.
If you have more than one or two pots, you’ll easily use more than the couple of liters of water your dishwasher uses (and the heat for that water has to come from somewhere).
We still use it because with kids, every minute saved is a small win.
Heating up water takes way more electricity than running the pumps.
And considering that practically all of the energy use is heating the water, that translates into low energy use.
(Note this is not the case for the normal compartment - that does work differently)
TLDR, bake some baking soda for a few hours to make washing soda.
https://www.drkarenslee.com/make-your-own-homemade-washing-s...
Salt needs to be dosed (read the manual and check the hardness of your water) which is not possible with tabs.
The rinse aid in the tab would be released at the wrong time together with the detergent. (Not sure how big of a problem this is).
I assume he skipped comparing full cycle because showing that there isn’t a difference doesn’t result in a catchy title and an interesting video.
Although it is proprietary, to be fair on two points: there wasn't really any "DRM", it was literally just a one byte counter on an EEPROM so that a cartridge could digitally record the number of washes remaining, and the machine made no attempt to prevent this being changed. The manufacturer also did not prohibit the cartridges from being refilled by owners, this is in stark contrast to printer manufacturers.
I agree they could have done way more to make it easy for users to refill, although it's not prohibited it's completely impractical without some EE knowledge, and as the author says sending cartridges around the world is not a very efficient way of getting detergent back into these things. To be honest a better design would be no cartridges and a couple of reservoirs with level sensors (As you essentially suggested regarding measuring detergent level), since the machine already seems to be capable of pumping an accurate amount of liquid out of the cartridges they wouldn't even need to measure, just fill... I suspect the reason they didn't do this was for a more "consumer friendly" design where users have to do the least possible work, as it is more of a luxury product than a utility.
I'm not entirely convinced they are trying to make a serious margin on the cartridges, they work out about 3x the cost of the most expensive dishwasher tablet, but they have to send the thing back to france to be reprocessed and programmed... probably not at a scale to be very cost effective.
I do love the article though, it's great to be able to hack on stuff like this when the manufacturer made poor decisions.
I'd happily buy one of these but, my current one runs like a champ and it's ink-advantage model, so it's really cheap to run.
Mine has split drum and toner. Its life is very long, but I need to find a new drum for it soonish, and it's a bit hard to find. Also Samsung's transfer to HP isn't helping.
Don't want to throw it away because it's a small business printer and a flawless machine from my point of view.
They're more serviceable, longer lasting and they're generally faster and higher quality overall. When used in light duty, they run as long as you can find refills for it.
I always buy original refills BTW. Yes, they're expensive but, they last for a long time and I sleep better at night.
In the days of HP Deskjet 500C/510/550C trio, HP sold official black cartridge refill kits. It was a bit clunky, but you inserted your cartridge to a contraption, pulled some levers in order presented on the device and you'd have an officially refilled cartridge.
The black cartridges on these printers were transparent, held really liquid ink to the brim and the refill device had aluminum, HP branded ink bottles. Oh, the cartridges had air-pillows inside to maintain a positive pressure at all times.
Early restrictions on printer cartridges in the 1990s were simple: they could be bypassed with a bit of tape, or pressing a combination of buttons on the printer. Later, the chips could be reset, probably in a way similar to this. Now, there are encryption keys etc.
> suspect the reason they didn't do this was for a more "consumer friendly" design
That is naïve.
> That is naïve.
We are supposed to avoid this kind of retort on HN, but I'll try to read underneath the surface.
I am more likely than most to infer exploitative and manipulative intent behind the choices of large corporations. However I am also very much a realist.
Consider that this company (whom I never herd of before this post) is not some multinational behemoth like Samsung. This product is coming from a very new, small manufacturer of luxury, miniature home appliances in France (so far a manufacturer of 1 appliance it seems). Given their niche target market, it seems far more likely to me that their choice to use cartridges is an attempt to fit that market, than an attempt to milk people for huge margins at scale on a consumable. Yes it's far from economical, but nether is their product.
I may be wrong, but I am not naive.
- Give up on additional revenue;
- Costly to make machine more robust/tolerant to variations in composition/pH/viscosity/etc. of 3rd-party detergent;
- No good way to enforce rinse/calcite removal inside machine - without DRM, user can just pour water as "rinse" liquid, and then lie when RMAing the washer that eventually clogged up and broke.
Obviously anything that means you rake in less money is against the short-term interests of the sales department, but not necessarily the long-term interests of the company.
FWIW this also protects against ignorant drivers who through no fault of their own have never filled up gas. Many countries are full service, as I believe are some US states?
Beats me why filling up gas is made out to be such a difficult task...
>Credit where credit's due, Daan Tech didn't completely lock down the machine with Bob cassettes. Once empty, you can leave it there and add detergents manually.
If that was the true concern they'd have locked that up as well. They want you to pay for convenience, not for the warranty's sake.
I have air filters that notify you when the filters should be checked or changed, I have coffee machines that tell you when you should descale them but they all let you override or ignore the issue if you so desire. And they're a lot less sophisticated than this device.
I'm not a fan of ad-hominem but I do agree with Symbiote that your take in a bit naive. You don't need to be a behemoth to embrace a crappy business model. Remember Juicero?
It's also the almost cliche case study in undergraduate business school. Known as the "Kodak" model or the "Gillette" model: "Give away the camera, sell the film" or "Give away the shaver, sell the blades" and while it's not an exact fit (I doubt they're selling the washer at cost) it's in the same vein.
Look at the lengths Juicero went to create a subscription model for juice. Clearly there is a desire for that business model to be applied more broadly than just inkjet printers.
Absent any indications to the contrary, my default assumption is that we're seeing the same business model applied here.
Their deceit is made more egregious by their supposed care for the environment.
Bollocks. DRM would have been to digitally sign the EEPROM.
This DRM will prevent the average consumer from refilling the cartridges even if it's easily defeated by those with a working knowledge of embedded electronics.
Pretty irrelevant "argumentum ad verecundiam", but for the sake of argument, you are not "average" anymore. Being able to pick Schlage and Kwikset already puts you in the probably 0.1%.
Anyhow, back on track, the average customer does not refill their cartridges. I doubt the idea of doing so has even sparked in their head. (and yes, the average consumer is dumb).
Yes, and this is why this rudimentary hardware DRM is sufficient for the current market. If the marketplace changes and the hack becomes easily attainable and widely used, SW DRM may emerge.
What percentage of the general population knows how to dump an I2C EEPROM, do some reverse engineering to find the counter, and update the counter value? It seems easy to us because we're on HN, and many of us are EEs or other embedded systems people, but it's pretty specialized knowledge in the population at large.
This is absolutely DRM. Not effective DRM when squared off against an embedded systems engineer, but DRM nonetheless. Yes, they could have used a hardened encrypted EEPROM specifically built for these kinds of applications (for example, the ATSHA204A from Atmel/Microchip), but that would have cost more and in applications like this COGS for the disposable element is king. They probably assumed that a simple unencrypted I2C EEPROM would be good enough, and quite honestly they're probably right: unless somebody goes and starts selling a little dongle to reset these cartridges to consumers, it's only going to be a handful of technically-inclined power users resetting them.
A right-click blocker script or those domain locks on old Flash games is a form of DRM as long as it keeps you from copying something. Doesn't have to be elaborate, doesn't have to involve crypto. It just has to have the effect of stopping you from copying something that copyright law protects. Once you have that, then it's unlawful to remove the DRM unless it's for a lawful purpose; and it's unlawful to tell anyone how to remove it for any purpose.
I was in the market for a new washing machine and noticed the Miele W1 machines now have something similar called "TwinDos". You can still add detergent the old-fashioned way but it had me wondering if this is a lead-up to the same business practices we see with Nespresso and inkjet cartridges.
A 70yo family friend loves Miele. Never bought anything else for a dish washer, washing machine or drier. When his dish washer broke down two years ago - he proudly mentioned that it lasted him 22 years - he obviously bought Miele again.
Just half a year later it broke, he called a Miele technician, who said that this wouldn't be covered by warranty: You see, the manual explicitly states that you must run the machine with a higher-temperature program every so-and-so-ishth time, since the ECO program, which is selected by default every time you turn that goddamn thing on, doesn't heat the up the water enough, and all the gunk will add up in the machine's pipes over time, damaging it.
Now that's all fine and logical and I would have shrugged it off if this was an Ikea or no name brand from the local store, but a goddamn Miele that costs premium and is supposed to be a quality product? It's designed by German engineers which probably qualify as rocket scientists in every other country on this planet. And they cannot figure out how to add a counter to that thing so it would warn you if you used ECO mode too many times, or even better yet, make it just raise the temperature automatically even though you selected ECO?
Traditional German companies complain about not being able to compete with competition from eastern Europe and China, but then go ahead and pretty much offer the same quality by going to alibaba.com and ordering from there, with a Miele logo slapped on, while keeping the price the same as before. I can only see this being a short term solution, thanks to those old folks who have your brand image burned into their heads from thirty years ago, and will keep buying your stuff. The family friend from above? He got a discount of 50€ for buying a new Miele, which he happily accepted. qed.
I don't think you can blame acquisition- it is the eternal cycle of brands that at some point they start frittering away their value instead of building it up.
> it is the eternal cycle of brands that at some point they start frittering away their value instead of building it up.
Yeah, maybe I'm reading a bit too much in there, sometimes you just need the wrong guy in charge.
Their washing machines and vacuum cleaners tend to last 30+ years in the experience of my parents, and my vacuum cleaner is over 15 years old at this point as well. Still more silent than most new ones, with great suction, and ergonomic.
That said... the thing about Eco mode is quite horrible indeed. There should be a self-cleaning program that runs as often as necessary and a corresponding reminder on the display.
This is not for you since you mention prices in Euros... I am always surprised when I read about bad experience with their products in the US. Especially the service seems to be some overpriced BS. Miele service is what regular electricians do in Germany.
Yeah this kind of "convenience" makes my BS meter beep. It's a non-problem, and I'm always suspicious of things like this because it's usually a sign they're trying to sneak something past you. (Or marketing to "the new generation" of domestic chores deficient people)
I mean, sure, I get that a dishwasher that needs no plumbing is a good idea, but at the same time, it's too few dishes (in my case) to be a big chore.
Sony had proprietary cassettes for all kinds of products over the years, even when there were standards available (Betamax is the most famous but only one example)
I have 4 handheld voice recorders from the 1970s from my father. Philips, Norelco, Sony, and one other brand. All use the same size microcassette except the Sony. Fuck you, Sony.
Beta had porn.
Furthermore, that's not how home video worked. VHS and Beta were sold on their TV recording capabilities, not their home video libraries. Home video was supposed to be handled by disc formats (Laserdisc, CED, VHD, etc); selling movies on $100-ish tapes was prohibitively expensive compared to ~$15 discs.
Eventually this was worked around with video rental shops and falling prices of VHS tape, but a consequence of this is that neither Sony nor JVC were licensing content for distribution on their tapes. Remember, you could record whatever you wanted on the tape; that was the point.
The design behind VHS made camcorders cheaper to make as well as enabled them to be used to play video. Betamax at the time had a more complicated solution where a separate player was needed and also initially a two stage solution where different tapes had to be used.
eta: I've just looked up the constituents of the dishwasher tablets we've been using, and yes, indeed, they're mostly NaOH, an inert carrier (Na2SO4) and a variety of water-softeners, packaging films to keep everything in tablet form (but soluble) and a small number of helper enzymes, perfumes and whiteners. Looks like a teaspoon of NaOH might work justabout as well. :D
If anything, it'll help clean your sewage pipes!
PS: Most draincleaners are just a concentrated NaOH mixture. Consumers pour them down their drain all the time and nobody worries about this either...
"Lauge" is German for "lye". They're called that because they're made with it.
[1]: Though when I switched my phone keyboard to German just now to test it out, the predictive spelling corrector suggested "Laugenbrezel", not "-brötchen", when I'd got as far as "Laugenb".
The compound is fine in your dishwasher because it will fully react and neutralize in your plastic or coated metal dishwasher casing.
We just mechanically clean them out ourselves, anyway.
They'll generally use a snake/auger. Home Depot sells a basic one for $15. The beefier, further reaching ones cost more. Or, for smaller jobs, there are single-use plastic snakes.
Instead of rinse aid I’m using a 50% citric acid/water solution. The final rinse is at 85c or 185f. The stuff dries instantly. A built in fan/condensation system prevents moisture inside and outside the machine. I’m using two commercial grade peristaltic pumps for the chemicals. I have also considered an enzyme pre-wash; Protease and Amylase. The diswasher is commercial grade, but the racks and operation is just like a normal household dishwasher.
Drinking glasses come out spotless. Rinse Aid is not necessary. I hold them up to the sunlight for inspection and I see nothing.
I’ve come to the conclusion that buying “consumer” or even “prosumer” appliances is a lost cause, all the brands use the same 3 white label Chinese manufacturers and you get the same quality no matter what you buy, you can expect to be shopping for a new appliance in <5 years time.
I’m hopeful that commercial appliances aren’t yet at that stage, you end up paying a significant premium but you save in time and lost effort when you don’t have to deal with buying a new one so soon.
In general that's very true across industry now. For more information on this white labeling phenomenon this documentary is great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeTgLKNb5R0
Norway. Asko DWC5926 (DWC5926W). Seko PR-4 and PR-1.
This is the short version. There are some issues and fixes you should be aware of. Like how to fix a design fault at a circulation pump wire. There is also an easier way to rewire the machine from 3 phase to single phase if you’re doing that. Generally the Asko machine is a unicorn. You can also look at the Miele professional dishwashers that come with automatic dosing systems and sanitizing rinse.
I used to have breakfast on the way, lunch at the Uni/work, and a small dinner. 6 plates is therefore close to what I'd use in a week. It's also close to what I'd use nowadays if I weren't still in home office. And while I do have enough room now for a full-sized dishwasher, that wasn't always the case.
They also are more efficient, water wise. Our dishwasher uses 8 liters per wash. If I fill our sink with 8 liters, it barely covers anything. Dish washers use more detergent though, this is why I switched to powder which can be dosed better.
one person, almost one week of plates, washed while you're doing something else
or put some of those pots and pans in instead of plates, if they'll fit
I am guessing college students, vacation homes, etc.
Anybody who owns one up for dumping the contents of their dishwasher's conversation with Mom?
They'll extort our very last penny we can shed and we will be happy about it and march into this future willingly.
Then the same for the washing machine, and there it is super useful since the machine isn't inside the apartment, but in the washroom, and it is a real problem if I forget the clothes.
But doing this with the dishwasher is not useful.
Then again, I also get notifications multiple times a day when the backups of the servers finished successfully or failed, so it appears that I'm ok with receiving notifications (from machines). Or when devices have connected to the wifi.
Also: brilliant hack!
I'm considering replacing it with an ESP32 and wrap a wire around the cable which should then detect if current is flowing, but I lack a bit of motivation since the current setup is working.
However, I still remember how scarily fast did TV manufacturers go from "the internet is for a richer experience" to "all your data are belong to us". And the worst part is no one, not even regulators flinched a muscle while this data grabbed happened before everyone's eyes.
2) these cassettes are optional
>Credit where credit's due, Daan Tech didn't completely lock down the machine with Bob cassettes. Once empty, you can leave it there and add detergents manually.
Somewhere in some tiny text somewhere, it says you are prohibited from using other similar pods.
Anyway, I adore these kinds of blog posts. Tinkering, naughtiness and a big dollop of technical knowhow.
Not sure where you get that from, "Bob" is made/from Paris, France https://daan.tech/en/about-daan-tech/
In Western/South West Europe (Portugal, Spain, France), full-sized dishwashers are a bit more uncommon I think, especially in single/double room flats in bigger metropolitan areas where flat sizes tend to be in the smaller range. As an anecdote, I've lived in maybe ~20 places and only two of them had come with a dishwasher, only one of them was an apartment.
This is the first time I hear about "Bob" and my current place couldn't fit a full-size dishwater but in order to save time and water, I might actually get this. The price is a bit high for what it is though.
I had to pay it myself once in 2013. It was a sunken cost I was ok with given how cutthroat the real estate market is and how much I hate to do dishes.
And as a singleton, you don't often make enough dishes to justify a full load either. (although a twin drawer dishwasher would work a treat there)
I'd gladly use a tabletop dishwasher if I didn't have one, otherwise I'd have to use paper plates and plastic cups.
I've rented in the UK for decades and I've never had a dishwasher or space for one. Friends haven't bothered with dishwashers until they had kids, and then they needed to create a space and add some plumbing.
Dishwashers in the UK seem like the opposite of ubiquitous. Maybe I live in a strange bubble.
Maybe older builds that haven't been updated wouldn't have any space for one as you say, without re-jigging cupboards, so maybe people do. But then you're losing work surface for it..
I lived in Paris for a while. Large appartement have dishwasher, but in single units, it’s uncommon.
I remember looking for solution like that for a renter in a small place without proper plumbing to accommodate a dishwasher.
I also see a market for the so called tiny house folks or full time RVer.
I don’t find that particular product appealing too much, but I would like to see more like that. And I know folks around me that would buy one if it’s was more open and fixable.
Like rearranging plumbing/electrical however you want.
Whether landlords use this advantage for tenants quality of life is a whole other story.
(I've been meaning to get one since the beginning of this year but cashflow has been pretty tight, so it keeps slipping.)
Here's the 2019 data on dishwasher ownership in the UK [0]. More than 50% of two-adult households have them, rising to 64% for two-adult-two-children households. Retired single adult households have the lowest percentage (28%)
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/289337/distribution-of-d...
I assume the target is the tiny home/mobile living market.
I'd love to see an overview of what devices and software they used for the initial connecting to a computer, memory dump and memory modify.
I'm quite interested to learn what other household items could be replaced by getting commercial equivalents
It's a clear method to milk consumers and they can hardly justify the benefit in most cases.
I even don't buy the idea of capsule coffee machines. I like those that give you the option to use pads, but not those that only accept capsule. The environment impact is one reason, but I also want the freedom of choosing the supply and the having control on the running cost.
For a second there, before I'd fully parsed your sentence, I read "milk consumers" as "consumers of milk", and all kind of wild ideas started running through my head: "What, they're going to implement the cartridge scam with MILK?!? How's that going to work -- the carton is connected to the Internet, sends a notification somewhere every time I open it, and I get billed according to the number of times, or...?" Then I realized "milk" was a verb here. Whew!
OK, so call me paranoid... But still: I think the fact that the idea even occurred to me says something not only about me, but about the current state of the world.
A few weeks ago while standing ten deep in Safeway, I read the label.
Right on front, they listed at least 11 ingredients. Nothing looked outrageous, but I thought about all the times I didn't rinse that well.
I now stoped using it on my dishes.
I think the lawyers told them to list the ingredients in bold print?
Anyhoo--I now rinse much better than before, and on the lookout for just plain soap.
It would have never come into my mind that this is something that even exists.
What's with the tabs you put into the little chamber, or which I'm just dropping into the cutlery holder since the chamber lid broke of. Aren't they compatible or what?
----
For their website:
Is the use of a Bob cassette mandatory? No. However, to ensure optimal washing quality and higher Bob life durability we recommend using the Bob cassette.
Can I refill my Bob cassette myself? No.
We use a highly concentrated detergent formula which is not publicly available for sale.
So we have set up a way to collect used cassettes, clean them and refill them in our factory.
This allows us to offer you an optimal washing quality with a zero waste solution!
Seems fair to me.
Are you aware that if your dishwasher has a pre wash cycle before the main wash cycle; then your detergent will be wasted. ? A pre wash cycle is common in european dishwashers.
Pre-Wash cycle ("Vorspühlen") is an additional button which would need to be in a depressed state for this short cycle to be additionally executed and fully exchange the water, but I never use it. I think the main cycle also does refresh a certain percentage of its water, I'm not sure about it. But just using one tab is not enough.
I buy the cheap ones from Aldi which are € 0.04 a piece. I use the machine 1.5 times a week, so that extra tab is ~ €1.40 a year.
But what a great article it is. All the details are in there.
Of course, from a pounds-and-pennies sense, the work he did, hacking the washer, was probably worth enough to buy a dozen of them.
Technically even this single byte is "DRM", it's just a really simple DRM.
Or, technically, it's not "digital rights", since the "R" stood for copyright as applied to works of art (music/movies/video games).
Maybe they should just make each cartridge have an NFT, snort.
Running a second rinse cycle will still put you ahead so far as water consumption, because dishwashers use much less water than hand-washing.
I wouldn't worry too much about it. I do rinse my dishes with cold water before use after I take them out of the washer though.
Perhaps the updated version will use encryption, and it'll be like the story in Unauthorized Bread:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...
Well I suppose they could add useless gimmicks like "Version 1.2 can now talk directly to Philips Hue bulbs so the dishwasher can blink a lightbulb to notify you"...
And apparently it's even true for such crazy good home products that really don't get enough visibility.
I mean it's the first time I discover this washing machine, and I want one. It's almost like this hacking article was just designed as a disguised advertisement for this washing machine.
Dishwashers are a solved problem and have been for decades. If you search hard enough you can find lower-profile models that solve the "size" problem this current product is trying to address.
I'm not sure whether this company is profitable. Most likely they aren't and the proprietary cartridge system is a way to lock people in for future profits and potentially fishing for VC funding or an acquisition by a bigger unethical company happy to milk this thing out until it collapses.
Their whole eco-friendly concept (pseudo - because shipping the cartridges is anything but) is to appeal to environment freaks with more money than common sense and/or fish for eco-related awards or government grants (just like Solar Roadways).
I see this model as a financing hack... the reason you can buy an HP printer for like $40 isn't because the hardware costs $40, it's because you're effectively paying interest on an invisible loan every time you buy inkjet cartridges. The longer the manufacturer has you buying cartridges, the bigger return on their initial (invisible) loan.
What makes this model shitty to the consumer is there's no cap on the "interest". The "loan" ends once the plastic gear somewhere deep inside the machine breaks and your customer needs to get a new one. Then you're back to competing against everyone else offering the same invisible loans on the Best Buy shelf. If you're lucky, the consumer doesn't see the stockholm syndrome they got themselves into last time and they choose your product again because it's familiar.
It's not helpful to call this an "unethical proprietary practice". It's more helpful to see this as the useful "low teaser rate" financial hack it is, then try to think up new financial models that might be a bit more honest (while still being sufficiently profitable that it makes business-sense to switch).
This is still common practice: Sony and Microsoft generally either sell their consoles to break even or at a loss. The only difference between then and now is that they've made it much harder to run alternate operating systems. As far as I'm aware, Nintendo is the only console manufacturer that actually tries to profit off of hardware sales.
They certainly will be if even a small percent of their customers buy into their ridiculous subscription model. Look at those sweet, sweet margins!
I am currently living alone, so my 2/3 size (60cm wide) dishwasher stays for days in rinse/wait mode, until it gets close to full to do an actual washing. It is not very good for tableware.
A friend of mine got a cheap chinese countertop dishwasher with form-factor of Bob, it is not that fancy, but still got color LEDs inside) She is totally happy with it, except small bits like draining used water into bucket with a hose. I can see Bob's designers didn't solve that too.