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this post was submitted on 23 May 2025
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Technology
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I'm not sure where whimsy fits into that list, but my dishwasher plays a little victory tune when it finishes washing. It sounds like something from an early 90s jrpg. It makes me smile every time I hear it.
I've got an anecdote in a similar vein about my dishwasher. It has a little lighted screen that tells you what phase of the wash it's in. At some point part of the screen broke so it doesn't show the G in "washing" and "drying" anymore. When I look at it, it reads as Washin' or Dryin' and it makes me smile because it feels like my washer has gotten a little sassy in its old age
I enjoy technology that feels like it has a little personality.
I have a zojirushi rice cooker that’s similar and I love it!
Other then that my oven, coffee maker, kettle, kitchen fan all have the same shrill beep that’s hard to know what’s what.
Every device should sing its own song. Maybe if you start them together they can form a chorus? Like some sort of appliance band.
Why am I stuck thinking of the turrets from Portal 2?
The rice cooker jingle slaps
Whereas I think the opposite with my washer and dryer. It plays a little tune when it’s done. I’m sure that’s nice but I’d rather tha annoying loud buzz because I’ll actually hear it.
Maybe I missed the boat and no one else has laundry in their basement anymore, but I want a notification that successfully notifies me.
I always wondered why there wasn’t a basic pluggable notification capability. Consider a landline phone or a doorbell: you could buy devices to vibrate or flash, or be really loud, so hearing impaired folk get the notification. Don’t those same hearing impaired people also need to do laundry? Don’t lots of people with good hearing still have laundry in basements and garages? Why hasn’t there been a standard cheap notification output for decades, even from analog times?
Being able to plug in a notification device would be awesome.
You could plug in a power meter with wifi and look what power is used.
You could use a babyphone or a camera (e.g. an old phone).
I'm not sure if an Alexa (Echo Dot or so) would react on the little tune of your washer, but it hears the standard annoying beeps of my washer.
I saw a gadget once where they used a motion sensor to sense when the washer and dryer were done.
I have a baby monitor for my kids (1 way audio because I wanted to limit the privacy risk and I suspect more than that can lead to some bad habits) and it clearly filters for sounds at roughly the frequency of kids voices because you can't consistently say something over it and hear it on the other side, but my kid can go up to it and dictate a 500 word essay that summarizes down to "there's a bug on the window" and we'll hear every breath and word
Our machines have the ability to turn the buzzer on after each cycle, but it's not sticky. Given how far away from everything else the laundry room is, even with the chime you can't really hear it. So I have it set to just ping our phones when a load is done