Slashdot Mirror
eSuds
AndyAMPohl writes "An article from Yahoo! News mentions IBM plugging washers and dryers into the internet. This has several advantages: coins aren't needed since credit cards are accepted, the machines can be monitored through the web for maintenance purposes and to see if there are any machines available, and users can even control things like add soap!" The eSuds homepage has informations, FAQs, etc.
...internet connect appliances were all washed up?
*groan*
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
This post was washed over the internet. Please Don't Stain.
DoS attacks on my laundry? Oh my!
Does this mean IBM can help me find all the socks I lose in the wash?
my missing socks?
Once Microsoft DRM systems are in place on the washers and dryers, clothing can be checked for DMCA and other copyright/patent/trademark violations. Have a DeCSS shirt? The dryer door locks and refuses to release your clothes until the police can come by and talk to you. Have a company trademark on clothing which is not officially licensed? Likewise.
-Rob
Now how am I supposed to get a date?
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
Of course, this has already been done byt the Geeks at MIT
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
Isn't saving quarters one of those things that you do in college that you can tell stories about later? How you ran to the student center to get change in your wet clothes becuase you didn't plan on running out of quarters before you could start the dryer...
With credit cards, it all seems too easy and boring.
I have been pwned because my
Hopefully, someone will invent soap made from recycled motherboards!
Now sick Japanese men can check when the local girls school is doing laundry and steel all their underwear and put them into vending machines...
1. Steal Underwear
2.
3. Profit...
I solved it... Steal Japanese schoolgirl panties.. And #2 is... Put in Vending Machines... #3 is profit..
#4 can be put spy camera in vending machine, take picture, extort man for more profit!
Lemmie guess, they bought that domain name in 1998 for $50,000 and they're still operating out of a plush Silicon Valley office with pool tables and Aeron chairs.
Honestly...it just seems so 1999 of an idea.
If it continues like this, everyone will die when the Internet Connection goes down. Like the bynars (or how it's spelled) in TNG...
This would have been great in my college days when I'd scrounge for quarters every week looking for laundry money. Would have loved to use a credit card. And for those college kids who get a credit card from their parents for "emergency purposes" what better way to spend it than on laundry and pizza. It could be a vicious cycle, buy some pizza, get it on your clothes, wash them, order a pizza while you wait for laundry, get it on your clothes... An ingenious plan for any student wanting pizza and clean clothes.
#!/bin/wash :)
:))
# wash is the washing Shell.
mkdir washing
grep $stains / > washing
tar xcf washing.tar
ftp ftp.washingmachine.org
put washing.tar
sleep 50000000
get washing.tar
tar xf washing.tar
(For Penguins Whiter than white
:-D
---
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
Of course, once the clothes are actually dry, my offensive abilities would be deactivated.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
I don't want to use quarters. In fact, I *hate* the fact that I have to keep all this loose change around in order to do my laundry.
.75 but one cycle never does the job).
;)
Laundry has become SO expense recently it isn't worth NOT using a CC. I have to sink in $1.00 to wash and $1.50 to dry (really
Then the washer/dryer people wouldn't have to go around and empty the damn things. That would make their lives almost too easy.
Now, if they put in some video games that take CC's I will be there. Golden Tee just better never do it or I would be more broke from that addictive piece of shit than now
Do they make anything like this for the home, maybe a simple laundry interface that lets you see where the machine is in the cycle, change options (like soap, load size or softener), or report problems with the washer to a remote terminal? Maybe even starting a wash cycle from a remote location, or pausing in the middle of a cycle if you need to use the hot water for a shower or other purpose?
I would buy one of these tomorrow, if not outrageously priced.
For the cracker, this will give entirely new meanings to "dirty money" and "money washing".
Geeks will never again be known for their poor heygiene due to spending days on the computer. Now with the click of a button, we can again become clean.
Xaotik Designs
"I may be quite wrong." - Socrates
I bet you could make a water/sud based implementation of ehternet to control it. And maybe a 240v overcharge to electricute fscks who try and steal your clothes...
I kind of feel like we've been in a technological slump in general the last few years...
A Beowulf cluster of these to finally answer the last great question of the ages:
Where does that other sock go?
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Add this to your list of College Experiences to Remember:
"Dude, your floor smells horrible."
"Yeah, I know. Nobody can do their laundry."
"Why not?"
"Some bastard hacked the laundry server. Again."
"Damn, that's m4d l33t, d00d."
This has bigger implications that using the things in your house. This will be a boon for people who use laundromats as well as help laundromat owners keep their machines in good working order.
Just imagine when you come into your laundry room to find it full of suds and your clothes shrunk so much it wouldn't fit on your kids. "I'll p4ck3t j00r w45h3r lolol"
Hello gentlemen.
What you say?
All your socks are belong to us!
do not read this line twice.
* Imagine a beowulf cluster of washing machines!
* Someone slashdotted my dryer!
* Overclocked washer shrunk my clothes!
and ofcourse...
* But does it run Linux?
It's LAUNDRY MACHINES on the INTERNET!
We'll be rich!
I have been pwned because my
At my educational institution (Umass Amherst) all i have to do is swipe my student ID and the washer tells me how long it will be until my laundry is ready.
BUT, if this system can call my room/cell phone when my loads are finished, it sounds like a definate improvement. After all, if i leave my clothes in a washer/dryer un finished & unattended for more than a few minutes, then some asshole will come along and dump my clothes on the ground.
So whats the advantage? I'll be alerted when my laundry is finished? This system is only good for video game addicts and other people who have no sense of time . . .
In a spam message near you soon :
See your t*e*e*n next door underwear getting cleaned in your browser
original video from the nearest college laundry !
In Hackers 2, the h4xx0R kids will find a new way to get back at the goofy FBI agent: they'll hack his washer and bleach his black shirts!
--
Score -1 Not funny
We have many, many years of this to come.
"$COMPANY has connected $DEVICE to the Internet meaning that $FUNCTION can be performed remotely. This is going to revolutionise the way $DEVICE is used."
Do you have to go through run-level "spin" to reboot?
The idea of internet-wired appliances has been done before. Lawn Sprinkler, Anyone?
On Slashdot, we don't say "thank you." We say "that's enough..." -_-;
A little of this technology already exists at some places. At my University, we can pay for laundry using a smart chip on our ID cards, and we can call a telephone number to hear the status of each washer and dryer in each laundromat and how much time is remaining in the cycle, if any. A web-based interface is the next logical step.
/gleffler
...I've seen The Silence of the Lambs a few times, and the "machine availability" option bothers me. I can easily envision some sicko sitting at his PC at 3AM, surfing the all the laundromats around the local university, searching for one with just one dryer running.
Hopefully, there'll be video surveillance (did I just say that?), with a closed-circuit recorded feed and signs indicating constant monitoring. Also, adjusting the web interface to display simply that at least n machines are available might negate just that sort of abuse.
Now all i have to do is write some lisp to wash in emacs
(wash(my(clothes(with(esuds))))))
I will never buy, purchase, or patronize any new product or service that uses the prefix 'e'. It's a tag from the days of the dotcom, when electronic hype ruled the market. Now it's all BS. eSuds, eWipes, eFood, eService, eClothes...
eNOUGH!
There was one eensy tiny problem when they set it up, though... somebody misconfigured the machines, so that they tried to set themselves up as router/gateways for our network... no Internet for Mac for about a week until they figured out what was going on...
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
--Winston Churchill
This is a grea idea. Someone is INNOVATING. It's about freakin time.
The possibilities for foul play are kind of interesting though... if you can hack into the network, you can make a machine FLOOD itself with soap and ruin the clothing inside. Or at least have em start and stop randomly... lol I can see the next washer virus wreaking havoc on laundromats!
hope they're not powered my IIS.
The price we pay for immortality... is death. Narnia The Great Fall
The need to actually get up, walk to the machine, and put clothes in the washer, as well as take them out and put them in the dryer.
A laundromat near me has gone the route of laundry cards that you can fill up with money...it eliminates the need to use quarters, as you can choose to put $10s or $20s on.
As far as dispensing soap from the internet, I don't really get this...I'm going to go to the laundromat, put my clothes in, go back to my room, start up my computer, then indicate I want soap? What if I want a different brand of soap?
Bah, progress.
Beware typoes.
... I just want some way to turn off that damn buzzer.
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
so now instead of losing a buck when the dryer stops working, it might take $500 from my credit card, either from software going crazy or because someone hacks the machine and steals the numbers. great.
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
The people at Icepick have included toilet stats in their wired house, namely temperature and duration; man, I hope temperature refers to bathroom temperature and not...ugh.
Will they add webcams inside these things so we can finally solve the riddle of the missing sock?
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
After the wide spread use of CD trays as cup holders, tipp-ex on the screen, support people will now come across laundry in the floppy drive.
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
Why not just give the students Internet access in the laundromat? I have seen a couple Laundromat/Internet cafés - this seems like a good idea to me. You need to kill (or usefully work) a few hours while waiting.
...rinse and repeat!?
I have a buddy that tried to do this 15 years ago. His system used serial connections and a modem, but it was the same basic idea. His system would allow people to punch in PINs to gain access to their laundry accounts and would send alert messages when machines broke down.
He had a few customers for a while, but it just wasn't cost effective for the laundry mat owners. The problem was that a laundry mat is simple enough to operate that rather than ease the work load of the owner, the technology made things more complicated. It didn't take long for the owners to see that they really weren't getting enough value from their new system and discontinue the service.
It will be interesting to see if IBM can add enough value to a washing machine to make it worth the while of a launrdy mat owner to upgrade.
---
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
Make it easy for cc's to be accepted and watch the price go up, since hell, it's so easy. Not like americans have a problem with overspending with the use of these things, hmm? Besides, more technology isn't necessarily a good thing, make a more complicated system and there's more links to find a weak one in.
The only practical use I see for connecting washing machine/drier would be like the following example:
I'm sitting on my ass in the living room, watching some reality show about people trying to stab each other in the back and the washing machine or drier finishes, it would be handy to have an indicator flash on the screen somewhere.
The epic failures of past couple years have something to do with the overzealous pursuit of useless technology. Too bad some real babies went out with the bathwater.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I just graduated from Boston College this May. The majority of the washers and dryers on campus were already networked into the student billing system allowing students to pay for their laundry on their student ID that also functioned as our key to the buildings/library/meal/bookstore/dominos take delivery/card. We could add money to our accounts via credit card anytime we wanted.
We 0wnZ uR S0ckS!!
Sorry, could not resist... Seriously, I hope your launderette VPN is seriously firewalled... =)
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
MS-Laundromart will probably only allow you to set the temperature at fixed settings - you *could* set an arbitrary setting, but it violates the EULA.
Also, it will only work with Microsoft washing powder, which doesn't actually clean your clothes, unless they are made from Microsoft fabric. Instead it just paints them with paint that is the colour of the existing fabric, so it looks like they are clean, but they are not really.
- "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!"
- Buffer Overflow == Washing Machine overflow
- Trojaned Dryer leads to credit card fraud
Ahem.What happens when someone hacks the washing machine and tells it to put more detergent in, and the machine starts spitting out laundry bubbles all over the place? ;-)
Ah am not a crook! (\(-__-)/)
Some script kiddie is gonna put bleach my jeans.
"I love deadlines. I love the wooshing sound they make as they fly past" Douglas N Adams
Remember sh!tt!ng your pants or not wiping sufficiently and just tossing the underwear in the hamper? Well, now people can see your poor hygiene. 8-)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The rest writes itself
<fnord>OBEY</fnord>
eToast!!!
Toasters need nic cards too!
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
Could it e-mail me when my laundry is done? Seriously, I hate waiting around, but I don't want to leave my crap in the washer/dryer for too long for fear that someone will throw my clothes in the garbage etc...(people are bastards)
E-mail would be great too for people who can receive it via cell phone or pager. Not really sure that we'd want to stick a qwerty button array on the washer though (could get confusing, although I don't think Dvorak would help either (stupid joke)).
(Note: I didn't RTFA. You've been warned)
Ok, so I can see the advantages, what with the machines taking credit cards, etc, but it seems kinda silly to me. You still need to be there to load the friggin' thing up after all, so you might as well pay with cash, and personally I'm not so anal with my laundry that there's a specific point in the cycle I need to add soap. laundry+soap=clean, I don't need to add such a pesky variable as soaptime.
If the whole point is to reduce work then they need to eliminate the trip itself - once you're physically there, anything else you need to do (soap, paying) doesn't change the fact that I've hauled 30 pounds of laundry three blocks, waited around for an hour and hauled it back. Besides, they don't need to be connected to the 'net proper to take creditcards - a plain vanilla phone line to the creditcard company's server will do just fine.
I'm not saying this isn't a cool hack, the epitome of geek, but I'm not going to be really impressed until a robot picks up my laundry, washes it, debits my creditcard and returns it, preferably folded.
Triv
cell phone batteries.
Some cell phone makers are unhappy about third-party batteries. So they encrypted the status information that the phone reads from the battery. If the phone detects an off-brand battery, it drains it - quickly. They then claim protection under the DMCA for the encrypted battery status readout, to prevent third-party reverse engineering.
So though I know your juxtposition of DMCA and laundry is meant to be funny, it may not be too far from the truth. Imagine for a moment "detergent cartridges" so that the washer can meter and monitor detergent. Then encrypt that link and claim DMCA protection. Now assume strategic alliances between washer and detergent makers. When you buy your washer, you've just chosen what detergent you're going to use - until alliances shift, and then you get to change brands.
The situation might be similar to inkjet cartridges, including home refills, except in that case the horses got out of the barn before they got the door shut. If such a washer/detergent alliance were to get into this mode, no doubt they'd look at both cell phone batteries and inkjet cartridges to plot their course. I really wish they'd look to their customers, instead. But in these days of the DMCA and criminalizing your customers...
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Hint:
1) You can't use x and c flags together with tar. x is "eXtract" and c is "Create". Not to mention, you don't tell tar which files to add t to the archive, so if it's GNU tar, you'll get a "cowardly refusing to create an empty archive" error (If you had the flags right)
2) Your line to run ftp is fine, but then what? You don't log in to the ftp server at all (Unless it accepts anon logins...)
3) You can't use get or put here. ftp wont see them, and the command interpreter will try to run them, resulting in "get: Command not found" and "put: Command not found" errors.
Try replacing the use of ftp with "ftpput" and "ftpget", which if I remember correctly, are included as part of ncftp. Its been while since I've used ftp in a shell script, though, so I may be wrong...
Oh wait, this is real?
Spammers love this - it makes listwashing so much easier...
www.eFax.com are spammers
This will give a whole new meaning to buffer overflow
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
I thought this was about beer. INTERNET beer! Not beer as in free, but still pretty nice. Today was looking up for a moment there.
Oh well...
One of my seniors at college had done something similar for his final year undergrad project, a short description of which could be found here.
:-)
/non-pre-determined/ stuff and perform things like tuning of a radio).
He'd connected a PIC to one of the ethernet cards (the system had two Eth0 and Eth1) and had implemented a simple HTTP into the ROM.
Only Eth0 could access Eth1, so you could access Eth0 through a webserver and send/receive requests, which would be translated into queries for Eth1. Eth1 would selectively process these queries by just looking into the request string, and trigger responses in the micro-controller.
The micro-controller could in turn use these requests to perform pre-determined operations, like switch operations, or even analog operations.
This way, he could use a web based interface to control external devices. You could put up the server on the web, and you can access the lava lamp in your room from the net
It's old, but this is the only implementation that I know which can perform analog operations too (like he make it do
Very interesting stuff.
*sound of children starving to death.*
...but I can't deny that most of these technological advances are advancing by leaps and bounds while basic human needs are being neglected. I'm not saying you shouldn't throw that 10/100 NIC into your toaster, I'm just saying: hold off on the champagne a bit. Keep things in perspective. Try to remember that there's a world that needs technology to improve its quality of life -- a world outside of your laundromat."
At the risk of being sent down to the -1 kiddies' table by the moderators, I'd like to express in this forum the faint buzzing sound in my aural periphery when I hear about technological breakthroughs that allow me to rlogin from my iPod in Nepal to a laundry dryer in Brooklyn. The buzzing sound is my political mind trying to be heard. It's saying: "..hey, lunkhead. The reason you sleep better at night having spent the day compiling open source code on a linux box is because it makes me happy, too -- your political mind. You know that free software, stealing Microsoft's market share, etc. are positive actions politically.
"...bzzt."
But ones gone missing. Now I only have SOCKS5
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I'm here all week! Hey, its Friday....
Imagine a beowolf cluster of...
*ducks and runs*
Did these people do any marketing research into this.
Who is going to be your #1 people to use something like this
Geeks
Whose too busy to wash clothes
Geeks
That means you're left with no market to use the product
The coup de grce would be, of course, if the washers could be accessed and controlled via the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
This is EXACTLY why Internet 2 w/ IPv6 is designd the way it is! As time passes, people are going to start connecting more and more devices to the Internet. IPv6 is designed to allow for every square foot of the planet (including the oceans) to have an IP address ... so perhaps it is a little early to be putting nic cards into washers and dryers, but the "new" Internet is designd for just that ... so we may as well get used to it :)
... you'll be able to control when your laundery is done, when your dish washer starts, open and close your garage doors, the temperature of your house (and fridge), the volume of your TV, and which lights are on at your house at any given time (in any room) ..... FROM YOUR DESK AT WORK!
... ...
Think of it this way
I can hear real estate agents already
This lovely homes comes fully equiped with a web based control panel for all of the appliances and light fixtures in your house
(Actually, this already exists, but we're not all named Mr. Gates)
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
No, No... you all got it wrong ! They are just trying to clean the internet of viruses and worms ! ALL RIGHT, GUYS ... FLUSH'EM OUT !!!
You got serious financial problems if you need to charge the 50 cents it takes to fire up a washer.
This Putting appliances online is nothing new, the origional Drink machine at rit dates back to the 80's, and there was a similar machine at CMU about the same time. The cool thing I see about this is the credit card acceptance, though for their sake I hope they queue up all of the laundry you do in a day, otherwise per transaction fees will kill them.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Do they use SOAP? ;)
1. Come up with a good idea. The idea must use the internet, and although it sounds good, it probably answers a question that nobody asked or fills a need that nobody needs. In other words, it optimizes some aspect of life that nobody cares to have optimized.
2. Put some serious financing behind the idea. (IBM?)
3. Sit around and wonder why the world hasn't beaten a path to your door.
Honestly, I wouldn't want to go online prior to doing my laundry to see if any were available. Laundry is a chore. I just want to take my basket of clothes to the laundry room and dump them somewhere and have them magically cleaned. Better yet, I'd rather that my laundry basket cleaned anything left in it more than 5 minutes. I already have a laundry card that I keep next to my detergent, so direct credit card billing adds no value for me. It seems to me, that the whole dotcom economy was about building an internet infrastructure around things that either don't need or aren't ready for an internet infrastructure. IBM's laundry implementation shows a remarkable resemblance to many failed dotcom ideas.
Lately, IBM has made some major good business moves, and now it sounds like they didn't learn anything during the last 3 years.
IBM out-spin Microsoft!
I hope that IBM have patented Underpants Gnomes (c) profit formula 2002:
Step 1: Hooks dorm washers and dryers to Internet
Step 2: Collect underpants (my favorite part!)
Step 3: Profit!!!
You could do some damage if you hacked into one of those, like flood out a laundromat, ruin lots of peoples clothes, etc. Some things were just not made to be internet connected.
Some of the features that could be abused (from esuds.net):
*sell injected detergent and fabric softener as part of a wash
[snip]
* service machines on an as-needed basis, reducing service costs and machine down time
So you can break the machines and flood the laundromat with suds. How reassuring.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
IBM demo'ed collaborative work it was doing with the German white goods manufacturer Miele at the CeBit show in 2001. There is some information (in German) here. (If you don't do German, try a Babelfish translation.)
... and charge you $1000 if you try to cram a load and a half in the thing at one time.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
Since you have to go to the laundry center anyway, as clothing can't be transported via the net, yet, the system seems interesting but only semi-worthwhile.
UC-Berkeley's washers and dryers are all networks and controllable by a box in each laundry center. The box lists the availability of washers and dryers, and you can use your credit card too. Each box controls all washers and dryers, campus-wide, so you can go to any laundry center if you decide half way to class that you want to add more drying time. This system seems more useful to me as it's easier to pay and such at the laundry center than from my room.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
is to sell the washing machine and give the washing programs FREE with a very restrictive EULA which forbits using any competitive products etc. and that could be changed any time. EULA could be updatet easily with internet connection.
Also they could make all the normal software licensing tricks like making the washing program non transferrable and DMCA protected (just encrypt something.. anything - maybe the status leds?) and all that shit.
After all of this they just show the user a friendly looking front panel which can tell him, what kind of socks is he allowed to wash today and with what Washing Powder(tm).
After all.. they have made the washing programs. They should be able to tell you, how those programs are supposed to be used.
Let the revolution of WMAA (Washing Machine Assosiation of America) begin!
How long before these machines come equipped with MP3 players? I can just see the RIAA exec's ranting to the press about it now...
(Uptight exec with nasal voice):
Copyright infringement in the LAUNDRY ROOM!
Copyright infringement by the NEW WASHER AND DRYER!!
(Apologies to Negativland.)
An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine
if i can control it via SOAP
I actually know how to do this myself using the lirc project, but I have better things to do with my time than write that particular piece of code.
Back on topic...I can see this as being useful on a local network in a college dorm or apartment complex...cool if you could have the washer/drier lock itself until you log in and unlock it to keep ppl from throwing your still wet clothes all over the place. Checking status would be very nice too.
putting it on the public Internet probably isn't the greatest idea in the world though.
"The system, called eSuds and developed by IBM and USA Technologies" I can tell you for certain that IBM had NOTHING to do with developing this technology. I worked for e-Vend.net which later became Stitch Networks, which was eventually bought out by USA Technologies. They started out in the small little mushroom growing town of Kennett Square it was an incredibly fun job, until our fearless leader ran it into the ground, laid everyone off, before selling out to USA tech. (Thanks Dave.)
odd timing for this story. my washing machine, according to the guy who fixed it on wednesday, crashed on monday. it was a hotpoint washer and he had to yank out the main controller and replace it with a new board which seems to have a newer revision number on it.
can't connect it to the net though. i suppose washer crashing stories won't be all that unusual at that point.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
"But I don't *want* a web-accessible clothes dryer! Beeeewwwwweeept!"
Beowolf Cluster, better known as a laundomat.
.MIL network.
Traceroute: Missing sock.
What happened? There's 3 inches of water in the basment!
Ping flood.
All clothes come with additional new tag: EULA
The new tag may NEVER be removed under penalty of law.
FBI arrests student for hacking washing mashine: Claims he didn't realize it it was on a
RIAA proposes bill granting them immunity from prosecution for any clothes they damage, so long as they suspect the laundy contained a copyright violation.
Dude! What's that pile of slag in the basment?
Somebody posted a link to my washing machine on slashdot.
Slashdot article on the difficulies of doing landry with over-clocked machine submerged in liquid nitrogen.
Microsoft announces X-box hydrid.
What's the gross gunk all over your clothes?
The filter on the drier couldn't handle all the SPAM and it backed up.
Java Virtual Machine gets clothes virtually clean.
Error: These clothes require cookies. Enable cookies and try again.
www.britenyspearsunderwear.com
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
... can you imagine a beowulf cluster of those?
You shouldn't have an article with "suds" in the title unless it's about beer.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I used to work for Stitch Networks before the sold out to USA Technology. We used to do other cool stuff too. Like sell Joe Boxer underwear out of talking vending machines. Our most profitable program was selling Kodak disposable cameras out of vending machines at tourist traps... I miss the old days with the e-Vend crew.
now all we need is transporter technology so we can eliminate actually having to go put the clothes *in* the washer :)
They're using a Sun/Oracle cluster to power these things??? http://www.esuds.net/technology.html I suppose it would be too late for the "Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?" comment...
My day of vindication is at hand!
___ I don't respond to Anonymous Cowards, and I Never Mod them UP.
A friend of mine in college did something similar for an engineering design project back in '97-'98. While he couldn't hack the washers to add soap, etc (Obvisouly, they were owned by a laundromat and we didn;t think they'd want us opening up tyhe machines) we did manage to connect sensors to the washers and dryers that detected the various cycles and time remaining. These sensors were in turn connected to a computer which displatyed a webpage showing the status of each machine... complete with animated gifs of the spin cycle. ;-) Always seemed like a great idea for laundromats and dorms... hopefully they'll actually bring such machines to market.
...Where does that other sock go?
A few years ago, my dryer died. Being geekoid, I took it apart to see if anything was salvageable. Motors, relays, etc.
A *double handful* of socks was inside the box, outside the drum. Along with ~$4 in change and bills.
So, yes, Virginia, the dryer DOES eat socks.
I submitted this article 28 hours ago, and they demed it not worthy. Grrr.
Every time I turn around some big corporation wants to poke their nose into my private life using the internet. You know they're going to log everything I put into that machine. The last thing I need is some company abusing my privacy so that they can air my dirty laundry in public! >:I
[camera shot of laundry room - digital displays on machines]
Machines start to vibrate and bounce around.
S U K I -- S U K I -- S U K I
scrolls across all machines. Mayhem ensues.
[cut to cute little girl on home PC]
Mom: "Suki - time for bed!"
Doesn't this seem just slightly pathetic to everyone? You have to carry your laundry to the machine anyways. Once you put it in, there's almost always a clean indication of cycle duration. If you aren't smart enough to be able to either set a timer or check you watch to know when the laundry will be done in an hour WITHOUT using the internet, then how the heck did you get into college.
The internet IS a useful tool and I wouldn't care to be without it, but truthfully there are some things that it doesn't need to be used for. If people become so useless as to need an online reminder that their 1-hour wash cycle is up, then what have we become.
How far will this go? I mean, it could be that 10 years from now you get your email from your watch...
FROM: toilet
Subject: You just flushed
Just a friendly reminder from your toilet... don't forget to wipe. Also, the air is getting pretty thick in here, turn on the fan. A little bowl cleaner and disinfectant would be nice too, I'm getting skid marks.
Idiotic inventions make money off of idiotic consumers... don't buy stupidity!
...an eBlender. When I get home, that margarita will be ready to go!
-Valiss
Yes, I see it has an option to email you when it's finished...but how does that prevent someone from stealing your laundry when you walk out? If you don't want your shirts stolen, your better off waiting with them.
You'll be leaving yourself open to a denial of laundry attack.
Great -- now my websites can get DoS'd by washers and dryers too..
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
Something like this has already been done at Smuts Hall, a residence at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. The guys on the network comittee in 2000 set up internet based monitoring for our laundry. The monitor indicates which machines are free and what stage of their cycle they are on.
The system uses a custom designed ISA card to capture the state of the machines and a Java applet shares the information with the rest of the world.
Stanford has a vending machine network that takes student ID cards, but it's usually down. There are a few commercial systems like that, usually antiquated; X.25 over 2400 baud serial links is typical.
I guess the ./ effect on their poor little webserver would cause a Denial of Suds?
...at least as far as the "electronic pay" part.
When I was at Virginia Tech in 1995-1996, they had just upgraded their network to support doing EFT/POS transactions on just about every vending machine on campus that could accept money. They called the system the "Hokie Passport", and it basically used your VT ID card as a debit card.
One of the applications was in the on-campus laundromats. THey had boxes on the wall where you'd type in what washer or dryer you were using, swipe your card, and it'd deduct the money from your account over the network. The only downside was that it only worked with the VT IDs (no credit cards, and ATM network based EFT/POS was in its infancy then), and I couldn't be bothered to go the the Passport office and put money in my card.
AFAIK, the system is still in place, though (since I haven't been on campus since 1997) I don't know what improvements have been made.
-lee
UC Berkeley already has a similar system in place. Students can put money on their ID cards and swipe those in the laundry rooms.
The real reason laundromats are such a great biz. is because of the ready amounts of cash. Most are more profitable than reported.
Have you seen some of the people who use laundrymats? Do you think they have credit cards?
The one I go to is full of freaks with the occasional hot latina chick sorting her bra and panties in front of me.
God, why didn't they just send this stupid idea to /dev/laundry ?
catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }
Can't say how I know this, but trust me. USA Tech, the company partnering with IBM here, uses embedded Linux in their vending machines. The "bricks" that they put into these things are actually really cool little Linux boxes. Now the washing machines might not be running linux, but the vending machines that they have are.
so then we can all know that those lost socks in the dryer really DID go to /dev/null.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Tape drives and printers have always been a lousy, nightmarish part of a sysadmin's job.
Now that we have to take care of washers and dryers, too, I may be looking for a career change.
Why isn't my kettle and my toaster on the 'net yet? How the hell am I supposed to eat breakfast with this primitive equipment?
I have a life. I really do. I've just chosen to ignore it.
I lift the lid and pour in soap.
Sometimes the right question is "why" not "how"
Carpe Deez
While this is, indeed, a cool hack, what about
A) students that don't have PCs
B) students that don't have credit cards (more likely than A)
The article mentions that they avoid vandalism because they contain no cash, so at least the models they're installing don't accept quarters. I suppose in a dorm you could use student IDs, but what about laundromats? Yes, it would be FREAKING AWESOME to reserve your machine over the internet with your CC, then walk down there with your car load of clothes, but what about the bums who hang out there? How do they do their laundry?
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
I guess if you get pissed off at your local laundry mat you could always DOS the machines ;)
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Yeah, but what button do I press to send my laundry over the Internet to go straight to the machine?
I remember some MIT students doing this years ago. IBM are just slow children at play in this case.
Wow, can you log the content that goes into these devices in a database and sell that information to marketing companies? What about smart medicine cabinets for people? Will you be able to exploit those and make people overdose? Will I one day be port scanned from a Microsoft online toaster that was exploited? Refridgerator rootkits?
I'd tend to think the washer/soap market is more like inkjet cartridges than captive batteries, too. It wasn't so much that I think it likely as that the DMCA seems to be creeping into some odd places. The washer market was mentioned as humor, but there *is* a path and precedent for it to happen. I'm glad to hear that the captive battery was a market failure. I hadn't heard that part of the story.
Besides, many people do tend to have strong feelings about both washer and detergent brandings. Forcing links where non existed previously would probably tank the whole "soap cartridge" idea, no matter what other merits it might have had.
OTOH, back during the energy crisis, makers of outboard and inboard/outboard motors bought up boat makers, in order to "secure a transom for their product" to be mounted on. This situation still exists, and boat/motor brand preferences tend to be strong, like appliance/detergent. So there is a precedent for this being done successfully.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Myself and a group of friends did this a while ago as a project for an embedded systems class.
We web enabled the washer for status of the load and time remaining statistics. Completely removed the controls and inserted our own front end device. (Even custom made a replacement front end to fit our display)
We went for the simplistic approach and used a touch pad interface with a basic display. However, we did not make it a credit-op machine. It was intended to be free for the dorm rats to use.
This is a fairly easy retro fit and can be done for around 400$? (you have to work with some crappy gear though, no bells and whistles on a stripped down controller).
Damn, had I known throwing a credit card swiper on there would have made me famous....
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
saw the news over at www.e-review.tk as well
I can't believe it made it to slashdot!
I used to work at e-Vend.net, which had a breakoff called e-Suds.net then it was collaborated into StitchNetworks.com... Overall, this company somehow managed to survive its dotcom startup - and didnt falter too much, I sense that this whole idea will not amount to much. The students at MIT didnt like the pilot program much. And btw, esuds did the MIT pilot.
Well, as usual, Yahoo gets it wrong. Check out the original IBM Press Release:9 11 7A83E6270985256C25005F885C
http://www-916.ibm.com/press/prnews.nsf/jan/B07
IBM is merely providing a service of transaction authorization hosting and web hosting to USA Technologies, who developed the technologies.... or rather they BOUGHT the technology in the form of an acquisition of Stitch Networks of Kennett Square.
It is a shame that the "journalist" had a basic problem in reading comprehension from tranlating a press release to a news story.