Internet Connected Appliances

There are a growing number of appliances out there that are web-enabled but really, is it a good thing?

Ariston have them, Miele have them, LG are selling them but are they any use to the consumer? What possible benefits does an appliance that is connected to the internet have?

Once you get past all the hype about a washing machine, dishwasher, fridge or whatever connected to the internet, in my opinion, not a lot of use actually. Yes you can monitor your dishwasher over the internet and see what it's doing but do you care? Surely most consumers just want it to do the job it was intended for and not to watch it remotely from their office. Of course there is an inherent flaw in this plan that not many people seem to have picked up on, you can't remotely load the dishes into the machine, or a load into the washer, or move the load from the washer to the dryer!

In a connected home that is automated the only possible use for these devices is to alert the house and thereby the owner if there is a problem with the appliance or that it has finished its cycle. The problem with fault reporting is that, thus far, it would appear that this reports to the manufacturers own service (whatever that may be) and allows the customer zero choice in his or her choice of repairer, allowing the manufacturer carte blanche to charge what they want to repair the appliance. In my experience, it is also virtually impossible for a non-agent to attend these appliances as well as they have fault codes, diagnostics and resets that the manufacturers will not divulge to third party repairers or, if they do, it's at a horrendous cost to get the CD/DVD with the information on it.

But then we have the connected fridge, the "smart" fridge the first example of which is from LG at nearly £3000! It can connect to the internet via it's built-in 56K modem, which is too bad if, like any connected home should have you use ethernet and a central access by router to the internet as you will still need to get a phone connection close to it. Even if it does tell you what it's doing, what would it tell you? I mean, either the appliance is working or it's not and it may be interesting for a week or so to see how often the door was opened or whatever but you would soon tire of looking at such pointless statistics and, in any case, you really know how you and your family use the fridge anyway!

The next bright idea is to put a barcode scanner in the door so you can scan in and out all the food. Great idea, but not in the real world of using the appliance! I couldn't imagine even 10% of my customers would even care about it and I know that there is no way I could talk my partner into scanning the milk everytime she took it out to make a cuppa. Nope, i can't see that being a winner somehow. then, on top of that you could bet your bottom dollar that some deal will be done with a supermarket to automatically provide you with the shopping that you had used, so that means one of two things either:

1. You only get in the delivery what you used from the fridge
or
2. You have to scan *everything* you use!

Do you start to see why I see this as an impractical idea right now?

There are plans in place to try to use the tiny electronic tags that can be used instead of barcode scanners to identify useage of food and other domestic perishable goods etc. but its a long way off being a system that can be fully realised.

In my opinion the current crop of connected appliances are nice gloss on the manufacturer's ranges but, in all honesty, I see them as being no more than that or maybe perhaps a gimmick to sell more expensive machines. The technologies in this field are also moving ahead rapidly with new automation protocols and systems promised in the near future from big players like Microsoft so buying a connected appliance now may well be a mistake as the technologies will march on and you may well have a device that is of little use in a couple of years time.

For more information on home automation technologies please have a look at Automated Home

As I'm sure you'd guessed I'm not too impressed with the current ranges of connected appliances and believe it or not, one of my primary hobbies is home automation so I'd love to see useful devices like this, but alas as far as I can see, there are none.