Writing tagged "household"
RIP iRobot - we'll miss you(r repairability)
The U.S. vacuum robot manufacturer iRobot was sold to a Chinese company for scraps a while ago. The once leader in household cleaning robot technology lost their way somewhere along the line, stopped innovating, and was left behind. For a long time, they made damn fine vacuums, though.
My apartment is still home to one iRobot j7, lovingly called Wayne Inhalierts, and it will continue to live with us until it breaks or the new Chinese overlords turn off the servers.
Post mortem: vendor-agnostic non-invasive washing machine monitoring
The washing machine ETA is a lie.
Everyone agrees, nobody has solutions. No, a washing machine that needs WiFi to do its work is not a solution, just a larger collection of points of failure.
I wanted something that works with any basic, repairable washing machine, and doesn’t void the warranty. So, attaching to traces on the PCB wasn’t an option.
In the end, the computer vision route worked pretty well until the ESPCam I used for it died. That’s why this is a post mortem.