Your Washer is Calling and the Dryer is on IM

netbuzz writes "Laundry Time, an eight-week pilot program from the Internet Home Alliance, begins next week with three Atlanta families and the technology and services of Microsoft, HP, Panasonic, Proctor & Gamble and Whirlpool. The idea is to allow family members to receive alerts and control certain laundry functions from their PCs, cell phones and TV sets, presumably so they can spend more time with their PCs, cell phones and TV sets." I am all for tech for the sake of tech, but I'm pretty sure this is one of the signs of the Apocalypse Nostradamus prognosticated.

y0u r pwn3d suXX0rs

Your soiled shorts, CowboyNeal Underoos and Ring-around-the-Collar are now on full view on the internet.

Washine Machine

A lot of people use laundromats. For those who have machines in their homes, they're already saving a lot of time to be able to start the thing, walk off, and return when it's done. There are audible alerts for washers and dryers already, and a majority of the time spent dealing with washing machines is spent loading and unloading. I'd rather see a program that can check my oven to ensure it's off or, if set to go at a certain time confirms its action remotely, when I'm away from home.

Re:Washine Machine

Whenever I go on a long trip, I am always somewhat nervous that I'm going to return and find my house burned to the ground because I left the oven on or something silly like that. My appliances emailing me every so often to let me know they're still in working order but turned off might be useful. Or maybe I should just see a psychiatrist.

Shocking alert..

Closet empty..time to do laundry!! Nothing calls for action than this!!

Wash-TV

"TV"? What's that?

from the article..

Of course, these Laundry Time partners are serious companies not in the habit of flushing R&D dollars down the drain.
 
..Its called marketing. Put a hare-brained idea out there and get people writing articles mentioning your company name.

Cool!

This is so freakin' awesome! Talk about a product everyone has been waiting for with baited breath! I know I'll throw down some serious cash for *that* technology!

Hah! And people say Microsoft is losing its touch.

Do not want.

> Your washer's calling and the dryer's on IM

hotpoint14: I take off your pants, slowly, and gently massage them in my soapy warmth.
maytagman: Oh I like that baby, after pretreating with detergent, I put in my robe and wizard hat.
hotpoint14: What the f*ck, I told you not to message me again.
maytagman: Oh **** damn I gotta write down your names or something

PHASE two RFID integration

... in other news scientist are using RFID embedded socks with RFID enabled dryers to solve one of the greatest mysteries of our time. Where do all the missing socks go?

Reason 10 for why we need IPv6

10. Not only are there billions of Chinese citizens who will be on the Net, now the washers and dryers want to IM each other.

Use case: the Shared Laundry Room

I can think of one, and only one case where this would be more useful than a simple audio alarm: the shared laundry room.

If you've ever lived in a college dorm, or in an apartment complex that provides a communal laundry room (and extracts cash from you, either in the form of quarters or a reloadable card), SOP is to put your clothes in the washer, go back to your room/apartment/etc., then come back when they're done. Chances are you've encountered the fatal flaw: When your laundry is ready to go into the dryer, someone else's clothes have often been sitting there, dry, for 10 minutes, and it'll be another half hour before they remember to pop in and take them out.

The low-tech solution for the one with clothes in the dryer is this: Check your watch when you start the dryer, do a little math, and come back in 45 minutes. If you're really worried you'll forget, set an alarm. You've probably got a kitchen timer at worst, and if you're reading Slashdot, chances are your watch has 25 alarm settings anyway.

The low-tech solution for the one waiting to use the dryer is to open it up and move the other person's clothes out of the way. Ironically, the solution to lack of consideration by one person is... lack of consideration by the other. Which can escalate into a cycle of anger, and neighbor feuds, and next thing you know there'll be a neutral zone and Jimmy Carter will be coming in to make sure that your complex doesn't break into open warfare. *ahem* Sorry about that...

Anyway, something like this could work as a remote "Your laundry's done, doofus, get it the hell out of the way" alert. You could use single-use pagers like restaurants do for reservations, but this way you don't have to worry about range, or (since people are using their own phones) someone walking off with the pager after they're done.

Pity that the one place it would be useful is also the least likely place for it to be implemented.

Re:Use case: the Shared Laundry Room

The low-tech solution for the one waiting to use the dryer is to open it up and move the other person's clothes out of the way. Ironically, the solution to lack of consideration by one person is... lack of consideration by the other. Which can escalate into a cycle of anger, and neighbor feuds, and next thing you know there'll be a neutral zone and Jimmy Carter will be coming in to make sure that your complex doesn't break into open warfare. *ahem* Sorry about that...

The even lower tech solution is for all concerned to chill out and accept that rabid pursuit of exclusivity does not work when resources are shared.

The one waiting should check his watch and come back in 5 minutes.
If, after 5 minutes, the dryer is still full, the person waiting should remove said clothes from dryer. The person who shows up to find their clothes removed from the dryer should know that they failed to keep on top of their laundary and perhaps even apologize to the person who had to move their clothing asside.

In 20 years of sharing laundary facilities with friends and strangers I have encountered exactly one person who got upset about this policy. I still consider him an anti-social dweeb.

Boil tea and check e-mail....

Are the first things I do in the morning. I'd LOVE it, if the kettle would send me an instant message, in addition to just quietly turning off.

This could be quite useful

Despite the usual "this is for lazy people" comments I can actually see this as being very useful in many contexts. I live in an apartment right now and my room mate is always using the washer and dryer. I usually end up doing the loads of laundry she already has in so I can get in a load or two and have clothes for the next day. Coupled with the fact that our dryer is terrible (the time limit is 160 minutes for drying, this usually doesn't fully dry clothes) I could definitely see a benefit to controlling the washer/dryer from somewhere else. It would also be helpful in a household with many people, dorms, etc...

Here we go...

This reminds me of the coffee maker [com.com] that uses SMS technology to turn on.

SOUNDS LIKE "SMART HOUSE" TO ME

It is truly amazing how bad ideas keep being recycled. In the late 1980's there was the "Smart House" initiative that would allow you to remotly control your appliances from your PC or from your phone. The vendors behind it promised the ability to control your thermostat, your oven, stove dishwasher, lights even your gas grill (hopefully the grill lights when you turn it on). Several demonstration houses were made and a lot of applince and industrial companies spent a lot of money on it. The technology worked great... but...

Guess what.... It was a dud! The idea is still a dud. Unless you have a self loading washer or dryer, a stove that gets out the food and cooks it for you there isn't mutch advantage here. So what if you are notified when the appliance is finished, unless it puts away the clothes or serves the food, you still have to pay the appliance a visit to finish the job.

Perhaps a more reasonable approach would be to have a bluetooth control that might allow you to remotly put in detergent or softener, but I'm not sure this has any apeal either. I put this in the same category as the flying cars "Popular Mechanics" promises are coming every 10-15 years.

It's all good...

...unless one of those devices starts calling themselves the "Post-Dated Check Loan".... then, I'll freak.

Yawn! Wake me...

Wake me up when the machine can collect the dirty clothes, wash them, dry them, and fold/hang them. Until then, I'm staying at mom's.

Impending apocolypse? NO WAY

I for one, welcome our comunicating appliance overlords...

But seriously, Who here hasn't been distracted by a late night tech, coding, or gaming session and forgot about the laundry that you needed to do so you could go to work with something clean on?

What about the fact that the sooner you get your clothes out of the dryer the less wrinkles you have.

I think this is an awesome idea that is a little late in my opinion.

Hi, This is your washing machine...

Hello I am a very wealthy washing machine in the small african country of Uganda. My father recently passed away and left me $200,000,000 USD. I am seeking your help in transfering....

C1al15 for cheap......

I just wanted you to know that you can recieve a home mortgage of up to $453,000 for as little as $898 a month...

Let's start predicting the malware around it!

Because one thing's for sure, if there's some harm possibly done, it will be done! Now, as long as those remote-controlling only allows you to check for states (like, is the oven off or the laundry done), there's little harm to be done. It starts getting dangerous when you can remotely control their functions.

Imagine a remote controlled oven where your ex knows the keys to turn it on, possibly burning your apartment to the ground. Remote controlled locks that faciliates burglaries. A stereo connected to the internet playing "My heart will go on" at full volume for hours (because you're not home).

There are certain developments in technology I simply do not need...

reduce complexity

Around the house, the same rules apply as in computing: minimize complexity. I want to get the job done as easily and fast as possible. Complexity can be reduced by keeping separate things separate. If something fails, I can pinpoint the source. The failure of one item should not influence the other. A hard drive crash still should allow you to make a telephone call or get some milk from the fridge or do the laundry. I don't want the light of the rooms be controlled by the same machine, which is used to play WOW by various members of the family. Apropos: why not go one step further and have your own house controllable from within WOW ...

On the other hand, I would not mind, if the computer would just be used as a reporting tool. The fridge or the laundry machine would have little web-servers installed, which when connected to the wireless network, would allow to check about their status and eventually control them remotely. The machines should still work by hand. Adding additional control is no problem for me but one should be able to turn it off and it should still work.

Remind me...

Remind me to add whirlpool2940 to my buddy list.

I believe this is the one referred to

I am all for tech for the sake of tech, but I'm pretty sure this is one of the signs of the Apocalypse Nostradamus prognosticated.

"Hallucinating flying windows over water in metal boxes;

Invisible messages are lost with the socks;

Floods of water destroy all life;

As circles of glass turn blue and die"

That Hacker shrunk my clothes!

This sounds like something for hackers to get ahold of to me. "Darn it, i took down my firewall for 1 second and I wound up with 15 pairs of really, really small underwear"

Funiest typo in a loooong time.

Proctor & Gamble? I think P&G will be over those perverts with a brandname suit in no time. :p

Microsoft writing the software ??!?

Are they sure what they are doing ? I can just imagine it now...

Dark and light clothes have been inserted together.
The wash program has performed an illegal operation.
                  Cancel Abort Retry

Not fully new, but can be useful

I am in college and the dorm I live in has the washers and dryers setup to connect to the network for years and there is a website you can go to on the local intranet that shows which machines are currently broken, which machines are empty, and which machines are in use. For those in use it also shows how much time is left until they are done. The two problems with this in my dorm is that the website often goes down (the server they have it on is not the best I guess and they are bad at keeping track of if it is working or not) and also many people just leave their laundry in there for awhile after it is done and thus it reads as empty even though there is still stuff in there.

If made more reliable though and maybe check to see if it has been opened since it ended (to see if there are still clothes in there or not) then this could be perfect for dorms all over with limited numbers of machines. As for in the house, well I don't see any reason to start or stop it remotely due to the fact you would have to load/unload it. Also for telling you when it is done would still not be as simple as just starting your stopwatch if you have a digital watch.

Oh noes...

Soon washers and dryers will be having organized revolts. This may not turn out well.

Time to go actually read the article...

IIT SSV Dorms have this

The State Street Village dorms at IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology) have washers and dryers that are network-linked, and can be monitored from a website.

Additionally, you can have the washer/dryer with your clothes in it send a text message to your cell phone when your load is done.

I used it once for fun. Thats it... Its a great feature, sure... except unnecessary and probably cost way more than the benefits it carries.

Why not focus this technology integration into devices that could be useful: i.e. a stove that reminds you that its still on; a fridge that warns of spoiling milk or low quantities of some product.

College

At Rutgers we have Laundry rooms in which the washers and dries will email you when your load is done. Also a web app can be accessed for availability info. Very cool...but pretty useless.

Real automation in washer/dryers

All that user intervention is silly. What you want is a combination washer/dryer [lgwasherdryer.com]. These were first offered in 1958 [plan59.com], and they're still around. No need to move the clothes from the washer to the dryer. The latest models even dispose of the lint down the drain.

This is way ahead of having to communicate with the thing remotely.

Another idea that seems to have disappeared from washing machines is a soap tank. You just fill one tank with Liquid Tide, another tank with fabric softener, and it does the rest. That was tried in the 1960s.

Some of the more advanced machines, like the Maytag Neptune, sense the dirt content of the drain water and the water content of the dryer exhaust air to decide automatically how much washing and drying is needed. The Neptune can deal with an out-of-balance condition by itself, too.

Another useful facility would be to have the dryer do an extra few turns every few minutes after it is done, to prevent wrinkling.

Real innovation

You know what I'd like to see. A washing machine that, whence done washing, starts drying the clothes!!! That way, when I remember I was doing laundry, 3 days later, instead of being all mildewy, they're actually ready to wear. Why the he11 do I have to get up, get all the clothes out of one circular tub and place them into yet another circular tub. Why can't the washer just kick into dry mode?!?!?!

This would save time: load clothes to wash, unload when dry.
This would save space: I only have one big box to find a place for, instead of two.
This would save money: I'm only buying one big box, not two.

O.K. some possible hurdles are:
- Manufacturers would have to charge twice as much to recoup lost revenue (or make them break twice as fast). I, for one, would be willing to pay the same amount for an all-in-one box as I currently do for two boxes.
- Something about putting a high current heating element in a device that slings around a high volume of water. O.K. surely the safety issues can be overcome, we do have water heaters, afterall.
- A washer is probably not very effecient for drying. O.K., so a little engineering would be required, but come on, look at everything else we can do, it can't be that difficult.
- Dryers tend to have larger tubs, for fluff. O.K., I don't know how they'll get the users to not stuff it so full that it won't properly dry.

Please add your thought.

All I want...

Is some function on my phone that tells me whether or not I remember to lock-up the house when I'm halfway to wherever... I can't say I give a damn about controlling my washing machine from the toilet in the train station, but I hate worrying all day about if my door is secured.

A better idea

it would be nice to get a text message on my cellphone or an IM when my laundry is done at the community laundry room. I hate having to go check it. There is no reliable amount of time you can wait to know it will be done, and I don't want to leave my laundry sitting around too long; Underwear gnomes and all.

Paging Washers and Dryers

There are those days when you put the cloths into the washer and you don't go back for a day or two, or you doing in the AM and then you rush out to work and don't try until the evening...

BUT when you in a rush and you want to do the full wash/dry cycle and you don't want to sit in front of the machines in basement or "laundry center" of your abode.. getting a page (SMS TXT) to your cell phone that the wash cycle is done would be handy.. I wouldn't pay a lot extra for it but if I had it I would use it.. and I would look for/seek that feature in machines I was buying..

Now if you have a modern dryer that can detect moister and it's nearing the end of the dry cycle getting a Txt that tells you that the cloths aren't done (yet) and giving you the option to remotely add on more time to the dry cycle would be neat, but I'd probally put the dryer on auto mode and let it decide on it's own to add more time (in which case I would LOVE a txt saying (your 40 mins. of drying is now taking 55 mins)..

I'd also love a txt reminding me that the cloths have been done for 3 hours and I might want to take them out before I get yelled at...

Ok, this has gone far enough.

How the HELL is this deserving of the 'bigbrother' tag? I've always been annoyed that most people associate the Big Brother concept almost exclusively with mass surveillence when the social concepts in 1984 (doublethink, doublespeak, thought police, two minutes' hate, etc.) were infinitely more controlling. Cameras in every home can't hold a candle to the soul-chilling reality of doublethink that surrounds us.

And NOW... now home automation suddenly becomes a sign of Big Brother? What the fuck? I couldn't care less whether the government knows that my jeans are done drying, let alone the people I share my LAN with. On top of this, I don't see any sort of sign that these machines will become commonplace, let alone mandatory and/or mandatorily monitored by the government... and for what, water restriction enforcements maybe? Yeah, I suppose it could be a possibility, but for fuck's sake let's worry about that trivial and unlikely scenario when/if it gets a little closer to becoming reality.

I don't care how dumb this idea is, it's not a sign of Big Brother. You want Big Brother, turn on the fucking 6 o'clock news. It may not be mass surveillence, but it's far more representative of the Big Brother mindset than some gimmicky net-ready home appliance.

One thing...

It's ProctEr and Gamble. Trust me, with a parent who has worked there for 20 years, you learn how much they hate to see their name misspelled.

2 things I learned as a child: don't misspell the Procter, and don't bring up the Satanist urban legend. The first gets them annoyed, the second gets you a batch of literature in the mail or a nasty telephone call.

laundry done?

I have a mailroom scale that wouldnt stay calibrated that I have wired to my laundry room. I have a whirlpool duet stacked system and the scale sits out of sight on the top. I have the scale wired to a linux box via cat5. When the laundry is done jabber complains to me (with snooze). When i actually do get around to doing the laundry (moving it from wash to dryer or out of dryer) i just need to hit the 'zero scale' and the jabber will shut up.

Really works great, makes for a lot of unfolded laundry :)

What moron connects their dishwasher to the net?

What an absolute fucking moron he must be, who has his entire house connected to the net. In all likelihood, the next "fridge DDOS" would hose your fridge and make it heat up everything inside, the next "pink underwear virus" would get your washing machine and make it explode soap suds all over your kitchen and the next "code red 4004" would hose your microwave and make it evaporate everyone in sight.

KISS

I think it's a neat idea to have the washer/dryer send a text message of some sort when it's done, but does it really require the combined efforts of Microsoft, HP, Panasonic, Proctor & Gamble and Whirlpool to make it happen??? What happened to starting with a relatively simple implementation, and increasing the capabilities (and complexity) as they get a better feel for what their customers want? I predict this will result in nothing but hype.

washboard?

You know, you could actually wash your own clothes and get some exercise, then hang them to dry.

This might be better than working the double shift to pay for that $1400 washer/dryer set, and then spending extra on the gym membership to stay in shape, all the while exhausted. ...just a thought.

The Fanuc Robotic Kitchen

Fanuc, the Japanese robot manufacturer, actually does have a robotic kitchen for their employee cafeteria. [fanuc.co.jp] Robots make up meals and do the heavy pot cleaning. It's not totally automatic. Yet.

Hackers reference.

The idea is to allow family members to receive alerts and control certain laundry functions from their PCs, cell phones and TV sets, presumably so they can spend more time with their PCs, cell phones and TV sets.

Does anyone else think of the second scene from Hackers? (Hint: it's the one where Dade takes control of the TV center)

Red Dwarf quote

Toastie: How-de-doodlee-do!Toastie Toaster's the name and Toasting's the game. Would anyone like any toast?"

Lister: I don't want any toast and he doesn't want any toast. In fact no-one round here wants any toast, not now, not ever! No TOAST!

Toastie: How about a muffin? Lister: Or muffins,we don't want muffins, no toast, no teacakes, no buns, baps, baguettes or bagels. No quassants, no crumpets, no pancakes, no potato cakes, and no hot-cross-buns, and definitely no smeggin flap-jacks!"

Toastie: Ahh, so you're a waffle man.

Lister: We don't want any smegging bread based products. Why can't you see that.

Toastie: I am a Toaster, I toast therefore I am. If you didn't want any toast why did you repair me?

Nostradamus

Fortunately for us, Nostradamus' dates for the apocalypse have gone by without anyone noticing. 26th July 1999 was the major one; and there was also one around a month ago I believe? that was supposed to be the alternate date if you read one of the bits in the prophecy in a different way. Hey, we're still alive! (Unless we're now a variation on sinfest's brains in a vat ;). His next prediction seems to be the year 3797...

Already have it

Colleges have been doing this for a few years now in the dorms. LaundryView and eSuds are the two big players in the market... you can look online to see if there are washers/dryers available so you don't lug all of your stuff downstairs only to find it completely full, and it'll notify you when your things are done. You can also sign up for alerts to let you know when machines do open up if they are all in use.

pfft, IM is nothing

My washer uses SOAP!

Dryer Delights...

What this REALLY means is that if the dryer is porn-surfing, all those socks that mysteriously disappear are going to be magically replaced with a wide variety of kinky garments.

Hey, lose something, get something back. It all balances out in the end. I'm thinking three socks for that red-orange rubbery thing that Mila Jovovich held up to the camera in 'The Fifth Element...'

Keep the peace(es).

New technology?

How is this different from the system Carnegie Mellon already has: ? We received emails or text messages when laundry is done, and can check what machines are available from a website.