Hacking Major Appliances For Fun And Profit?

waynelorentz asks: "I've finally reached a point in my life where my time with my family is more important than my money, so I've given in to my wife's persistent urging and bought a Roomba robotic vacuum. While I'm waiting for delivery, I googled for additional information about it and found there is a fledgling community of Roomba hackers outfitting their Roombas with cameras and other equipment. So, it got me wondering - what other appliances have Slashdot-types hacked? I remember when the Internet was young, there were coffee and soda machines you could ping, and the fabled Jellyjet toaster. Anything else?"

Comments

Re:Retro hacking

[anubi]

hehe.. lemme tell you the washing machine eats socks and lingerie too.

They will do one of two things: wedge themselves between the tub and basket, so that agitation is labored and the spin is piss-poor - and you would swear its a loose belt, or they will go wedge themselves in the water pump impeller and bring the whole show to a screeching halt.

Its a little aggravating to try to recycle a washer motor. They are about 1/2 horsepower, the one I recycled was capacitor-start, reversible, and had two speeds. Problem is that its some sort of induction motor, and it didn't take well to SCR / TRIAC type speed controls. It worked, but not well. It might work a little better if I worked out some scheme to replace the capacitor and centrifugal starting switch with a little microprocessor to time the energy and phase angles delivered to the old motor's start and run windings, but for one old Frigidaire washer motor I recovered, it's just not quite worth the research effort for me to do so. But it does look do-able.

I did recover one helluva nice 1 inch hardened-steel shaft from the machine ( agitator drive shaft ), pulleys, water valves, and assorted mounting hardware. The switches are so special-purpose that they are darned near useless, and I suppose you could rewire the timer so that it would cycle endlessly, doing something like turning lights on and off in a room to give the illusion someone's home. Rube Goldbergian, but at least the price is right.

Don't overlook the old steel frame. Just turn it around, take the back completely off ( or saw it off with one of those metal-cutting skilsaw blades ) and you have a very sturdy steel workbench. Just make a nice wood top for it and it makes a nice addition to the workshop. Hint: put it on casters so you can roll it around to the job. The one I had was really made to take being jostled around - all I had to do was mount shelves in it and it really came out nice.

For now, I will be quite content to hold the motor in the attic as replacement in the event my table-saw, grinder/buffer, attic fan, or drill press motor fails.