SmartDry was a smart home product that did something useful: tell you when your clothes in your dryer were actually dry.
A small pack mounted inside nearly any dryer drum could prevent clothes from shrinking, save you energy costs (at least $60 per year, the marketing claimed), and even warn you about clogged vents causing high heat—or, much worse, gas buildup. A second-generation version could even turn off your gas dryer automatically. Reviewers greatly preferred it to their own dryers' unpredictable dryness sensors.
The problem is that SmartDry alerted you to dry clothing by connecting to your home's Wi-Fi; the device sent a message to parent company Connected Life's servers and then relayed that message to your smartphone. But Connected Life Labs is closing, discontinuing SmartDry, and shutting down its servers on September 30. After that, "cloud services will cease operations and the product apps will no longer be supported."
In other words, SmartDry will become a tiny brick inside your dryer unless you're willing to procure a little ESP32 development board, load some code onto it, plug it in near your dryer, and set up your own alerts in your Home Assistant server. If you had a first-generation SmartDry, this would actually be a slight improvement, as those devices used Espressif ESP32 chips with a forever vulnerability.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 31 2022, @01:48AM
Three months notice, https://www.connectedlifelabs.com/ [connectedlifelabs.com] dated June 17th, 2022
https://www.connectedlifelabs.com/meetsmartdry [connectedlifelabs.com] support ends September 30th 2022
fwiw, the sensor dry cycle in our ~30 year old Maytag has been working fine for the dozen years we've had it (came with the house). Very simple, once the moisture/dry sensor trips, then the timer is powered-up and gives some extra time, based on the "more/less dry" manual setting. Set to a "more dry" position for larger loads. No internet/cloud nonsense needed.
(Score: 1) by MonkeypoxBugChaser on Wednesday August 31 2022, @02:23AM
Can it just beep? No internet required. Even better if it was powered by heat exchange.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Athenion on Wednesday August 31 2022, @03:23AM
Bricked Laundry? Compressed? But hard to wear.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Wednesday August 31 2022, @03:50AM (3 children)
Apparently, it also presents it's sensor data to bluetooth and the encoding has been reverse engineered. I question how many users will be able to set up and program an ESP32 board to keep using the thing, but it's better than some shutdowns.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Wednesday August 31 2022, @07:34PM (2 children)
If the brick in the dryer could connect to your home WiFi, and especially if it could connect to bluetooth, then there never ever was any need for this to be cloud connected.
Unless they needed to charge a subscription fee. Because selling hardware once in a single transaction has never ever worked throughout all of recorded history.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday August 31 2022, @09:36PM (1 child)
Agreed completely. I refuse to buy networked things that are designed to fail if they can't phone home. Practically none of those things ACTUALLY need to call the mothership other than to act as spies or keep the "owner" tied to a subscription.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01 2022, @03:40PM
I have two next to useless seagate drives in the cupboard. Really should pull them out to get the hdd. Requires cloud login. Yes, I know, it was cheap ok ;(
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Wednesday August 31 2022, @03:57AM (2 children)
This is a good example of why I flat won't buy stuff that requires a connection to the internet or any sort of account unless it's absolutely necessary.
Today, a dry laundry app, tomorrow some app that unlocks your car door.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Opportunist on Wednesday August 31 2022, @05:36AM
The "do not buy" starts even earlier with "internet required" items. What this means at its core is that you hand the key to that device to someone else that you cannot trust. It's like handing someone the keys to your home you barely know.
It's especially bewildering when people do it with stuff like their entrance door.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Booga1 on Thursday September 01 2022, @12:12AM
It's already too late for the cars: Toyota Owners Have to Pay $8/Month to Keep Using their Key Fob for Remote Start [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Wednesday August 31 2022, @12:18PM (2 children)
A sensor that requires an internet connection just to tell you if your clothes are dry.... that is... stupid.
What? Idiots want to view dryer alerts on their precious smart phone? Morons.
In a proper world, nobody would buy such a device, and instead demand devices without this garbage.
My ~2004 washer dryer set don't have any fancy internet crap in them, or even computerized interfaces. Just a couple of dials and a button to start. They still work fine. As with most stuff these days, I fear the day I am expected to buy something "new".
I guess that is half the idea now - these internet connected dryers have reached their manufacturer set artificial expiration date. Time to buy all new stuff. And you will like it.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday August 31 2022, @07:41PM
The company executives, bored of directors, and investors obviously didn't think so.
It sounds like you are advocating that we revert to a backward life like twentieth century savages without the cloud.
Every internet cloud has a cat-6 lining.
The virtues of the cloud are (1)predictability and (2)reproducibility. When you know that your hardware is going to be artificially obsolete before its time, these two important conditions are met.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Thursday September 01 2022, @02:47AM
I have a half-sized dryer that's almost 60 years old, only knows TIMER, ON, and HOT, and still works just fine.
I wonder how much of the current internet-dependent crap will still be working in six years, let alone sixty.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Thursday September 01 2022, @12:41PM
An application that depends on someone else to provide cloud services or servers to make it work is SHUTTING DOWN the servers and making the app useless! Who could have forseen that ever happening?
Surely by now we should all understand that anything that you don't directly control can be pulled out of from under you with little or no warning, and your expensive hardware can be bricked with no recourse. Hell, Google alone [killedbygoogle.com] has bricked more services that any of us are likely to keep track of. (273 at last count)