What reason could a dishwasher have for a firmware update? Did they not test their dishwasher? did they lock away features behind a subscription? Why would it need a security update if it wasn't internet connected?
In the past all software was offline. You had to get it right before you shipped it.
With 95% of work now being cloud-based, it actually seems to be getting hard to keep an engineering/product culture that can deliver right-first-time software, because most engineers, PMs, and managers have never worked in one. I've actually seen products shipped now which wouldn't work at all without an update because the software wasn't finished, and the business decided to ship anyway (to retail) giving engineers a race to get the working version before customers opened the boxes in a few weeks. So yes, it may need an update, just for fixes, because that's how we roll now apparently. It sucks.
Could be analyzing waste water and come up with ads such as "I see you're running out of milk/juice/cocaine/whatever; would you like me to order some for you?" or "Hey, your current brand of <whatever> is unhealthy/expensive/difficult-to-wash-off; I suggest <brand> instead; btw click here to order your free subscription".
I would've hoped the current shortage of chips can put an end to this and 5G perma-surveillance, but here we are ...
Edit: not to speak of "We've detected remnants of the XYZ strain of the <whatever> virus; please isolate yourself now. This message has been passed on to the ministry of health and education. Thanks for your cooperation."
No software is perfect when shipped. Most dishwashers have had updatable firmware for at least a decade, it just normally required a technician connecting to it with a cable.
This is probably a joke, but tbe halting problem is way overused and doesn't apply in situations where a non-Turing-complete computer is running a known (not arbitrary) program.
The wifi isn't there for the firmware, it's there for the wifi functionality (Don't ask why it needs wifi functoinality, I can't answer).
But once you do have wifi functionality so you have wifi hardware, then the thing needs patching and upgrades too. Maybe some server address has changed, maybe a security fix, etc. And obviously if you have wifi hardware, it's the easy way to upgrade the software.
So the question I think isn't "Why does the firmware need to be updated at all"? It likely wouldn't, if the firmware just made the machine clean dishes. The question one should ask is, why does it have network features at all? What possible use case can exist?
Precisely. The reason it needs a firmware upgrade is that the manufacturer made the choice to make it so needlessly complicated that it ... needs a firmware upgrade.
And the UX should be a lot better on various white goods too: simple, intuitive and unobtrusive. I love my Miele dishwasher (not WiFi enabled!) but my Zanusi washer/dryer is utterly terrible in this respect.
Despite plenty of great physical abilities of the washer/dryer, it's almost ruined by a useless UX that obsessively locks one out of all sorts of perfectly legitimate transitions, meaning one has to frequently turn it off and back on to force the change of activity, adding frustration for something that could easily be handled if only they'd not crippled the device and made you wait while you cycle it.
Do you often create provably error free software? I'd love to hear more about it.
A quick google suggests the updates mostly tweak rinse times and temperature settings, presumably based on data that wasn't available before the model shipped.
It can be cheaper to do things in software so in the past you may have been able to tell the water inlet "fill machine" now you have to watch a water level sensor to control a dumb solenoid valve.
From what I can see, there's only two types of processes running inside a dishwasher:
- control loops. These can (and must) be fully articulated during the design phase, can be accurately modeled using a Mealy FSM, and can be coded and verified with 100% coverage.
- input processing. These take input from various sensors inside the machine, clamp and/or process the measurements, and pass on the data to some control system. The processes can be designed to be completely stateless (or maybe with hysteresis), which means that the only verification they need is that they always output valid data, even when confronted with spurious inputs. Since it's a feed-forward process and the inputs are bounded, 100% coverage is again possible.
The only other system is the UI, and its only job is to provide valid configuration data to the master control process. As long as that part is extensively tested, the rest of the UI can crash and reboot at any time, and it won't affect the operation of the fully-tested control process.
I've owned a handful of dishwashers over the past 20 years and not once has one ever needed a firmware update (or stopped working, for that matter). What is so complicated about this device that it might need a firmware update? You can probably enumerate every possible state of this device across all possible inputs in an hour. What's that, they have wifi and TCP stacks and probably "apps" now? Oh, I think I see the problem.
An update to cope better with people using detergent pods of using the detergent dispenser? This excellent video [1] explains why pods do not work well and also explains a lot about how dishwashers work that I definitely did not know.
I love vids like this - as its a good thing to have an understanding of how all things around you work.
Also, There are two ltypes of dishwasher owners: Those who pre-rinse things that fgo in and those who dont.
I ALWAYS pre-rinse everything. there are times when I use the dishwasher as a dish-rack and wash things by hand and just put them into the open dish-washer to dry... I prefer this to having anything on the counters.
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I have a set of LG washer/dryer which are wifi capable...
I have yet to find a reason to connect them, even though I have a wifi extender node plugged into the same power as the washer.
I do have "smart" lightbulbs in every socket in the house and can control them all with alexa and/or the Feit app...
I use it all the time, and like to be able to set every single light in the house to whatever color I want. So Ill often set the lights to "Firebrick" which is the most calming at night.
