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Ask Slashdot: Any Dishwasher Hackers Out There?
New submitter writes: I just replaced my dishwasher with a basic, inexpensive Sears model. It works fine, but only has 3 different wash cycles. I'm betting that the code to manage more cycles (as in more-expensive models) is already in the microcontroller and just needs inputs to select it. Is there any information available on this? Beyond dishwashers, have you done any useful hacks to household appliances more generally? I'd probably support a Kickstarter project that adds nice wireless notifications to my oven, clothes washer, and dishwasher.
Different firmware is loaded into each controller. Not to mention the cheaper models probably won't have the hardware to run the omitted cycles properly.
Adding a few spoonfuls of trisodium phosphate to your dishwasher is hack #1. Most consumer-grade detergents these days no longer contain phosphates, since they act as fertilizers and promote algae growth when everyone disposes of large quantities in wastewater. Unfortunately, the missing phosphates have not been replaced with anything as effective at cleaning your dishes. Trisodium phosphate (TSP) is sold in powdered form in the paint section of hardware stores, because it is used for surface preparation. It's cheap. Don't get the "TSP Substitute" - it's not effective, just like the weak new detergents these days. Toss a couple teaspoons of real TSP in with your detergent for truly clean dishes, if you're not too concerned about the plague of algae growth. It works extremely well.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
Near field communication tags, instead of wireless, since all these things listed complete based on time, I just set the tag to start a timer on my device. When it's done, ding!
Boil a pot of water for cooking? 8 minutes. Preheat the oven? Ditto. Cycle of laundry (both drier and washer complete and ready for unloading), 50 minutes.
The other benefit of this method is being able to see how much is remaining for planning, rather than waiting for a wireless update to know what's going on, and lacking info in the meantime.
NFC tags are also useful for other stuff, "nap" tag stuck to the side of my bed turns off certain phone sounds, sets a 25 min. timer and disables auto-rotation of the screen.
NFC tag on dash the car, disables wireless, enables dashcam (and/or nav software), enables autorotation of the screen.
The NFC stickers cost pennies per, so you end up buying at least a dozen and putting them to various uses.
Stop fucking with electrical devices that control mains water inlet into your house.
Seriously.
And I echo all the "one setting" / "won't happen" posts here. You probably can't (often there's a microcontroller but pissing about with them nowadays is almost impossible. Even simple PIC chips can be made "write-once" very easily and often are. The whole ELM327 clone market came about because of one chip not protecting it's code and it no doubt destroyed profits overnight.
Even if you DO get a firmware from it, reverse-engineering it is a lot of pissing about. Even if you get a replacement firmware / modifiable firmware / emulated board back into the device, what do you think it's going to be able to do? Activate pump. Deactivate pump. Activate heater. Deactivate heater. Open valve. Close valve. That's about it. You might be able to play with timings and temperatures but more likely you'll have several months of flooding your kitchen, blowing the fuses and/or setting the place on fire by running over-spec.
And what could you gain? Very, very, very slightly cleaner dishes. Possibly.
There's a reason that the washing machine market is nearly 100 years old, and yet in all the time that it's been electrical (I remember large rotary electromechanical switches on a washing machine, etc.) or electronic, nobody really bothers to make "clone" spare parts for those things. They rarely go wrong (the pumps themselves? That's another matter). Rarely can be tinkered with in any significant way. Rarely would be worth the time, effort and liability to play with.
I ripped mine out because it wastes water, electricity, and is noisy. Do the dishes the old fashioned way.
Way back in 1975, I started as a technical trainee at the Nevada State Highway Department. They had just recently purchased a bunch of Compucorp (?) electronic calculators, some of which were programmable. The visible difference was a slide button on the top of the keyboard that could be set to "program", which meant memorize the series of keys being pressed, and "run" which would execute your "program". I found that if I carefully pulled back the metallic faceplate on the non-programmable models, the "program" key was still there and could be easily manipulated with a pencil. Using an X-acto knife, I modified all the non-programmable models by cutting out a hole in the faceplate that almost looked factory. Not sure what this has to do with washing dishes, but thought I'd share.
The reason they suck is they now have very weak motors - to change that out is not an easy modification. One can change the computer to use enough water.
People are washing on the long cycles and multiple times - using a lot of water in the sink rinsing so they will get clean - the regs are not doing what they think.
I wish I could have the Maytag I bought in 1986 - it worked really well.
They have destroyed Dishwashers, Washing machines, water-heaters, shower heads (they did improve conditioners. )
I just want the government to stay the F*** out of my life.
If you rinsed the gunk off your plates as soon as you finished eating, threw them into the dishwasher and ran the dishwasher before your food had a chance to get dried out, moldy and lord knows what else, the dishwasher would work just fine on a single cycle.
Hammer Software http://hammersoftware.ca/ Good service, Creative solutions - Hamilton, ON
Not sure why you need more than one cycle, named "Dirty". What other kinds of dishes would you wash??
My OCD wife pre-washes the dishes before loading them into the dishwasher. So the dishwasher just needs to rinse the detergent off them. So, of course, she uses the "heavy duty" cycle to do that.