Title text:
It’s important for devices to have internet connectivity so the manufacturer can patch remote exploits.
Transcript:
[A store salesman, Hairy, is showing Cueball a dehumidifier, with a “SALE” label on it. Several other unidentified devices, possibly other dehumidifier models, are shown in the store as well.]
Salesman: This dehumidifier model features built-in WiFi for remote updates.
Cueball: Great! That will be really useful if they discover a new kind of water.
Source: https://xkcd.com/3109/
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But does it have AI?
If I can turn it on remotely, that’s a good feature. I have solar, I want it to work when the sun is out and I’m producing excess energy.
Yes, I know I can use other peripherals to do this (sometimes) but its always nicer if its just built in so I don’t need to waste carbon on other things.The only thing I want when manufacturers add wifi to these things is to appeal to open source principles like allowing us to connect to it and communicate with it openly and not tie it down to some cloud service they run.
Do they have a model with AI?
Shh shh shh, don’t give them ideas.
Or Alexa?
I got new appliances a couple weeks ago and they’re all “smart”. Turns out a smart microwave just sends you a phone notification when it’s done. By default.
As someone with multiple people living in the house, I can confidently say this is the dumbest “smart” feature ever. Promptly disabled.
My appliances are ‘smart’ but I didn’t bother actually connecting them to my WiFi. I guess preheating the oven remotely could be cool(?) but nah.
The stuff I do use…
The microwave above the stove can talk via Bluetooth(no app or phone involvement at all). Turn on a burner and you can set it to turn on the light and/or vent fan. Another nicety is being able to set the clock on the stove with the full keypad and it just syncs to the microwave.
The only smart thing I’d want an oven to do would be to turn itself off. That’s it, really. Did I leave the oven on after I left the house? Easy fix. Otherwise everything else is pretty much useless.
My stove won’t preheat, I guess because it’s a safety issue. Apparently you can set a remote start capability ahead of time that gets reset if you open the over door. But I’ve never tried it, since that seems like a lot.
Any appliance with IoT is a value-subtract.
They do it so in the future they can monetize you in perpetuity in some way
Most people tend to stay in the same room (or a neighbouring room) when they’re microwaving something. They could probably save on the cost of having a full-blown computer with wifi inside the microwave by just having the noisy thing from an alarm clock. But, ah, the fuck do I know?
Some 90’s microwaves actually used some chips to measure humidity and using a little reference table adjust how long certain foods need to cook for, for instance, popcorn can be popped perfectly without burning and almost without leftover kernels if you can measure how much water is being released. The same goes for cooking frozen meats, vegetables, and so on.
But what we get in modern ones instead are horrendous touchscreens, simple timers that never quite match the food they promise to work on, and Wi-Fi.
You gotta spend for the moisture sensors and other fancy shit that actually works. We moved into a place with one of those microwaves and we are dreading when it breaks (I think it’s like 3k for a new one)
a full blown computer, depending on how one defines the term, is so cheap that they are available in disposable pregnancy tests. This shouldn’t be a thing because of the E waste and inefficiency but it’s how things are.
I’ve looked into many WiFi dehumidifier’s and the one thing I wanted from it was to notify my phone if it’s full. None of them do that. All they do is let you change speed and stuff. Nothing that is important to me. I just want to know if I need to go to the basement and empty it or not.
Right? Like half of what I want from these things is when is the battery low? When is the outbox full? When is the feeder empty? And metrics to verify the device is generally operating safely.
Controlling the device? We’ve known how to do that for 50+ years. Help me maintain the device.
I feel you, trying to find a smart gadget that is actually smart in 2025 and not just a data collector is nearly impossible. Learning to DIY a lot of these projects. Throw one of these or similar in there with a little control board set to email you if 0 changes to 1 or w/e
I need to look into this and see if I can have it send me a text or something when it’s full. Another diy project to add to the list.
This is the around the long way method, but it’ll start you on a crippling hobby to instrument your entire life.
Raspberry Pi home assistant zigbee USB zigbee water sensor.
you could stop here at notifications.
or
Descend into madness, put a small ac submersible pump into your dehumidifier tray with a smart outlet. When the sensor trips full, have it run the submersible pump for x minutes.
Jokes on you I have like 5 raspberry pi’s that aren’t doing anything labeled future projects.
Hey if your list of projects isn’t insurmountable what are you even doing with your life?
Most carriers have an email to sms gateway address Usually your number@carrier.com or similar.
https://aeotec.com/products/aeotec-water-sensor-7-pro/
This little thing is a beast :)
Do they at least tell you how wet your wifi is?
Haha no they don’t which is why I went with one that didn’t have WiFi to save like 20$
I feel like I’d benefit from a smart dehumidifier.
I’m on a Time Of Use tariff where my electricity is very cheap at night. I’d like to be able to schedule for it to come on for those 5hrs in the winter to take the moisture out of my shed-office. It achieves nothing to put it on a smart meter as you have to physically press go on the dehumidifier
Just use a smart timer with a dehumidifier that either doesn’t have a switch, or has an analog one that can stay in the on position when power is off
Meanwhile here I am installing ESP32C3’s into everything in my house to automate everything.
I can turn on my floor heat, hallway light, or even open a vent from an app on my phone. And bonus, no shady manufacturers to spy on me. Just China.
Can you flush toilets tho
I can do that but I don’t wanna - Bart Simpson
that vent thing is surprisingly clever, thumbs up 👍
Hey thanks, I’ve got tons of cool projects and gifs like these, and I love to share them and read the comments, but I don’t know where to post them on Lemmy. I used to post them to Reddit but they started shadowbanning my github for some reason. Didn’t even find out until the ESP32 mod messaged me and was like “we can’t even manually approve your posts”.
What about !diyelectronics@programming.dev?
Or if you are using Home Assistant you could post in !homeassistant@lemmy.world
There is a Lemmy community search function here if you want to check other options: https://lemmyverse.net/communities
What about !diyelectronics@programming.dev?
I tried there but my posts never showed up. Tried twice. Not sure what I’m doing wrong. I’m on old.lemmy.world so it looks like old reddit.
That’s odd. How far did you get? Any error?
Federation from your instance Lemmy.world to the instance the community is on (programming.dev) is healthy, so that doesn’t seem to be the issue.
My guess would be that you’ve tried to upload an image that is over the size limit - I think this is imposed by your own instance (Lemmy.world), and I’m not sure what the size limit is but I think 5MB per image is pretty common. If you drop the image size or upload elsewhere then link it, does that work?
I just hit submit and it spat me back out to the new posts, but mine wasn’t there.
I wasn’t trying to directly upload an image, just directly link to an imgur gifv.
Hmm odd. Maybe just try again?
It would be a lot more difficult to hide a backdoor on a bare ESP device, than a proprietary Tuya one, just putting that out there. Regardless, I still block internet access from my ESPHome devices, because I don’t want to feel like I need to constantly be on top of updates, that can cause things to break at times. I do them every couple months when I have the time to sit down and make sure everything’s still working, or roll it back where it’s not.
I just installed motorized dampers in my crawl space using Shelly smart relays! Now I have an automatic schedule so I’m not cooling rooms that aren’t in use (like the bedrooms during the day and the lower level of the house at night). Already seen significant power savings!
I work at a dispensary. In theory this could actually be helpful for my job.
In theory the IoT could be secure. -In theory.
There really is an xkcd for everything.
