Steve Walker wrote:
Just another gimic. Our dishwasher is capable of control via an app,
over wifi, but to what purpose? Once you have loaded the dishes and the
detergent, you can start it there and then, quicker and easier from the
front panel. If you want a delayed start, that can be done quickly and
easily from the front panel too. The only thing the app can do extra, is
to see how long is remaining before the end of cycle, without going to
look at the machine - and I can just remember when it is due to end instead.

The problem with a lot of 'smart home' stuff is it's actually quite dumb.
Controlling the dishwasher from your phone is a good example - a nice
gimmick but pretty useless in real life. What you might want is actual home
automation: to be able to tell the dishwasher to run when the electricity
cost is lowest (perhaps the weather outlook is good for your solar panels),
or maybe to activate something when it finishes (a fan to vent the steam for
example).

Being automation, once you've set it up you don't have to do any work.
This is unlike the manufacturer's app, which is primarily designed to make
you interact with it to sell you ads (or something). It's the needy toddler
versus the pro you can trust to do the job for you.

I can see some use for apps - earlier I went to get pizza and forgot to
put the oven on to warm it for when I got back. Being able to turn the
oven on remotely would have been useful - however, I have a wife a 3
children, so phoning home is good enough ... and they can check that
nothing has been left in the oven first as well.

It really depends on your lifestyle, but an automation might be to turn on
the oven when you leave work. You put a potato in there in the morning, and
the automation detects when you leave work and starts the oven. You get
home to a freshly baked potato no matter what time you end up leaving.

Then there are those of the opinion that setting a variable temperature
profile is the route to the perfect roast. That's the sort of thing that's
more easily done in the app than with a fiddly control panel. You could of
course set a reminder to go and change the temperature dial, but perhaps
you'd rather get on with something else and let the dinner cook itself?

I'm not sure how much I'd pay for this stuff, but I'd guess quite a few
people have a 'killer app' that would make it worthwhile - it's just
different for everyone.

Theo