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Re: IOT enabled Engineers
Poo, poo it all you like but sooner rather than later all the punters will want IOT stuff and will avoid buying appliances that don’t included the technology.
Fridges already have CCTV cameras inside so you can remotely check up on the contents. Next they’ll have barcode scanners for in-built stock control so whilst in Tesco you can ask your fridge how many burgers are left. Or remotely lock the wine chiller when the kids are home alone. The washing machine can tell you if the liquid detergent reservoir is getting low. Turn on the oven’s plate warmer if you decide to drop by the takeaway on the way home from work. The possibilities are endless and the guys in R & D are already testing out the next generation of ‘we never knew we needed it until now’ gizmoids. 😕
IOT is here, make no mistake. Get ready for all the troubles that will quickly follow.
Re: IOT enabled Engineers
LG trialed an American fridge freezer with the barcode reader and built in internet shopping over 10 years ago but nothing much come of it.
I am sure it will come back soon but it only works if you remember to pass the bar code past the bar code reader.
Bob
Re: IOT enabled Engineers
Martin I don’t think so.
I live in a connected world full of automation way beyond sticking a camera or a tablet on a fridge and calling it automated but the reality is that there’s a whole bunch of things that just don’t lend themselves to the cost or hassle of being connected.
iOT reminded the tech community of that in a way just a week or so ago with a massive attack that brought huge online tech companies to a grinding halt just because they are fundamentally flawed.
To check progress on something in the oven, use an Echo, get Alexa to remind you or even have the HA remind you or though the like of a Sonos system. There is no need and no argument IMO for a connected oven.
Ditto washing machine.
Ditto dryer.
Ditto dishwasher.
And pretty much, ditto fridge.
Putting a camera in a fridge, utterly useless for most of the thing’s packed is as you can’t see bog all anyway. Any of the fridge guys will tell you how many new lifeforms they’ve come across at the back of fridges and freezers. Camera’s or much else won’t help that.
Customers, whilst stupid aren’t completely stupid. They’ve sussed this already and in droves are staying away from this sort of thing and, many have already been stung with “smart” TVs etc that are rendered dumb by the failure to update services, if they ever used them in the first place.
Which gets you to, if you never used it on the telly, that more people spend a whole heap more time with than the fridge, why pay for it on a fridge? What benefit does it bring?
As Bob says, this isn’t news, it’s been around for ages and has failed to take off, I think for many of the reasons above, too much for little more than a gimmick.
I’d love to see the sales figures for the things as I’d wager they sell in minute quantities.
A suspicion I have as, despite a huge buzz, advertising and all that malarky when Samsung launched their campaign to sell a connected washing machine at over £1000 JLP managed to sell little over 30 of them nationwide the first week they were available.
At least they found thirty daft punters to buy them…
Wonder how many repairers they could find to fix them when they broke, which they did.
K.
Re: IOT enabled Engineers
You see a lot of fridges with dents in the doors.
If you have large screens then you will be seeing lots of cracked screens & you cannot cover that with a fridge magnet.
The television screens and internet barcode reader and internet connected LG fridges sold mainly from Currys about 12 years ago were only on sale for about 8 months and then withdrawn from sale.
Parts were not produced for them as it was only on trial to see if there was an interest in them.
Lots of them had problems and ended up scrapped as the parts were not available.
Customers also complained of not being able to position the fridge so they could watch the TVs, you would have thought they would have thought of that before they bought them.
I had one customer requested could I disable the door alarm so they could leave the door open at an angle to watch the TV
Not the brightest in the bunch as he had not thought about what would happen to the food in the fridge and said he thought it would work alright as supermarket fridges worked without any doors.
I think the manufacturer who brings out a washing machine with only three programs or a fridge with only an on off switch and the temperature preset to the factory optimum temperature will be on to a winner as a lot of customers I speak to like simple and cheap as possible products.
They seem to have purchased more expensive and flashy appliances and found a lot more can go wrong.
Bob
Re: IOT enabled Engineers
Yesterday a man was sent to prison for ten years for “playing” with his techno toy whilst driving and killing four. Is it really necessary to be able to connect to an appliance from a distance?
I would suggest that the vast majority of people would see such fancy gadgets as toys for nurds.
Think how many times have you shorted out an oven clock relay when the customer says “never use that”? A designer once told me think KISS Keep It Simple Stupidwilf
Re: IOT enabled Engineers
My 17″ Samsung smart TV in the kitchen can only now receive one channel (Dave). Have I been hacked? 😳
Re: IOT enabled Engineers
Possibly.
Most of those devices have woeful security in place. Then poor support when it does go sideways.
K.
Re: IOT enabled Engineers
Just found out you can get an ikettle operated from your phone – a snip at £99 but you still have to put the water in and pour it out by hand. Perhaps repairing kettles is back on the agenda I’m sure Ive got one of those ‘castle screwdrivers’ for repairing Russell Hobbs tucked away in the garage.
Oh but didnt the old teasmaid pour it into the cup for you – plenty of them at carboot sales. Money to be made from an iteasmaid?Re: IOT enabled Engineers
It seems the call for more ‘IOT trained white goods engineers’ is losing momentum. :rotfl:
Oh, and my Samsung smartie hasn’t been hacked after all. I just needed to replace the triple A’s in the remote. Panic over :clown:
Re: IOT enabled Engineers
It’s too early for most to see it yet, probably most of the repairers have not seen an IoT product yet. But they will.
Shipments are meant to increase of them by a massive margin by 2021 according to all analysis I’ve seen. I suspect that means they are to creep into stuff lower down the food chain, even Vestel has connected product due to be sold under the Sharp brand.
Are the guys expected to repair those for the same rate as they get for a basic £180 washer sold as a Bush from Argos? Would anyone think that even remotely sensible or a reasonable ask by the manufacturer?
Whether it happens or not isn’t really the question, it’s whether the repairers are ready, manufacturers also and everyone is on the same page with what it will cost to deliver service to them.
K.
Re: IOT enabled Engineers
kwatt wrote:
even Vestel has connected product due to be sold under the Sharp brand.Are the guys expected to repair those for the same rate as they get for a basic £180 washer sold as a Bush from Argos? Would anyone think that even remotely sensible or a reasonable ask
That’s my point ,if it’s seen as a consumer must have then the “lower end” brands will have to have it otherwise they will lose customers ,there are already some brands you can’t get the simplest of parts for ,so what hope an LCD screen
Re: IOT enabled Engineers
For a lot of people a connected appliance seems useless, but everyone has different lifestyles and needs and these appliances can fit in pretty well for some people. For instance, a washing machine sending updates to your phone may seems useless to someone who can hear their machine finish from their couch, but for someone with their washing machine in a garage, it’s really convenient to know when it finishes.
I’ve had some training on these and more scheduled for the near future, it’s something I’m pushing as a priority for our business as like it or not, Martin is right and this is the way a lot of appliances are going so we all need to keep up.
Re: IOT enabled Engineers
But “how” do we keep up ,I’ve done training on them but only for one manufacturer.
For the average multi brand engineer in years to come how are we meant to keep up with advancing technologies ?Re: IOT enabled Engineers
Just ignoring the obvious like appliances should be running completely remotely like that as it’s asking for trouble…
Here’s the big thing…
Manufacturers are trying to sell this sh.. sorry, stuff.
They need to pump up the revenues and hopefully profits until the cheapo boys catch up and scythe the margin out it and this would appear to be the strategy to do that.
Now to get there they need to see it. They need to sell it to the punters, some of who will buy into this but I suspect most won’t. But they also need to sell the idea to you guys to make you think it’s a good idea and, they really need to sell the retailers on it so they flog it.
If the support is crap then the retailers will switch off as, it then becomes more hassle than its worth.
Bottom line being that, in my opinion, all have an uphill battle to convince everyone in the chain that this is worth the bother. Brainwash everyone basically.
But that’s before you even get into the minutia of how you get it fixed when it breaks or doesn’t work.
Not trying to be funny here but, I can just see half or more of you lot trying to figure out why a machine won’t connect to a antique 802.11a router or WAP or how it can’t get an IP from a DHCP server or that it can’t been seen outside as the NAT on the LAN is screwed up. Or that it can’t see the WAP as there’s a brick wall with steel beams in it in the way. Or it’s in a metal shed acting as a Faraday cage, aka a garage!
Then there’s the ones, like Samsung that you *NEED* to use an Android device to set it up with, you cannot do it with an iOS one.
And yes, I was very deliberately trying to demonstrate that it won’t take much to lose most of you with this stuff at all.
And the solution for many will be, change the module as that’s the obvious thing to do when you don’t understand it. Only that won’t solve any of the problems above, not at all.
I do know that the above may well seem harsh and, so be it if anyone has a problem with it but I see things from both sides of the coin and I can just envisage what’s going to happen, with not too much doubt I’ll be too far wrong.
Punters will just bin them. You won’t even get a sniff at repairing them which isn’t good for repairers.
I’m sorry but I really can’t see many, if any, positives from connected products and I’ve yet to see any sort of decent argument to support them.
K.
Re: IOT enabled Engineers
Lawrence wrote:But “how” do we keep up ,I’ve done training on them but only for one manufacturer.
For the average multi brand engineer in years to come how are we meant to keep up with advancing technologies ?A chunk of the visits are likely to be user error so you just need to be confident dealing with wi-fi devices in general. Customer complains wi-fi won’t connect to their router, you setup a hotspot on your phone and connect through that, if it works then you can confidently tell them there is no fault with the appliance and your job is done. If it’s caused by a component failure, you swap it out just as you would just now with any other faulty component. In reality you are talking about only a few components that are actually handling all the wi-fi side of things. I actually would venture a guess that a simply reboot is potentially going to fix a lot of issues that would be reported as well, it is afterall a computer and things like memory leaks are more likely to affect this type of appliance and slow them down over time. I don’t see it as being such a massively difficult thing unless you are planning to get into board level repairs for this type of fault, which I personally have no plans to do.
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