We have a Samsung refrigerator. Worst purchase ever. The condenser coil in the fridge portion accumulates ice all over the fins and fan, and causes the fridge/freezer to gradually lose cooling.
Samsung refuses to honor the warranty about this issue.
I've jury-rigged 2 temp sensors with a photodiode to my existing IoT infrastructure (https://hackaday.io/project/12985-multisite-homeofficehacker...). As of right now, if the temp goes over a set point for more than 5 minutes with door closed, an alarm will be sent to our lights and my laptop (wherever it may be).
But this alarm means I have to take out the bottom shelves, unscrew the panel, and clean out the ice with a heat gun. It's better than having spoiled food.
I have a 65" 4K Samsung TV (JS8500) purchased 1 year ago. We bought it because it was the top of the line, best reviewed non-curved, non-OLED TV. Worst purchase ever. The entire goal was to buy high end and avoid hassles. Had I known what a PITA it was going to be, I'd have just gotten a vizio at Sam's club.
The day it was delivered I noticed the 2 bottom corners were very bright (my wife didn't when she accepted delivery). It was incredibly distracting. It looked like somebody was pressing on them. A thread on avsforum.com for the TV indicated that lots of the 65" JS8500 had started showing up like this the week that I got mine. The retailer first asked me to deal with Samsung for a warranty replacement. I went through level after level of tech support, with each level telling me to basically pound sand. I bought it, that was normal for LED TVS, too bad. Others in the AVS forum thread reported similar experiances.
The retailer, after speaking to a manager, replaced it for me with the same model. This one we opened before delivery to confirm that it did not have the issue.
That experience has taught me to never buy Samsung again.
Oh, and did I mention the pop up ads on my TV thanks to their smart tv software? FU Samsung.
I have a 5 year old Samsung fridge also. It's a piece of shit - since Day 1 the freezer makes ice and everything else stink of chemicals. Even after numerous air-outs, cleans, baking soda, the works. I can't wait until it dies. Fuck Samsung.
Weird—we've got an ~3 month old Samsung washing machine (uh oh...) that also smells strongly of chemicals. I'm beginning to doubt the smell will ever go away.
Don't have any complaints about it otherwise (unless it turns out to be an exploding model) but I've never had a new appliance smell so much for so long. You've got an hour, tops, to get the clothes out of it and into the (older, other brand) drier or they'll stink of Samsung chemicals and you'll have to run them again.
We bought a Samsung fridge and while we didn't have the serious issues you're experiencing we did have a problem with Samsung's warranty policy. Within a month of owning it the freezer handle started to crack, Samsung claimed that it wasn't covered by the warranty. We contacted them several times hoping for a different customer service agent with a different response, no dice.
I keep seeing this. Last time it was someone trying to get a different outcome from Apple.
The products in question all have serial numbers and tie into a database that reps all have access to making it simple to re-deny an already denied claim. Do people ever have success talking to multiple reps?
> We have a Samsung refrigerator. Worst purchase ever.
Interesting. I thought the same thing about a Samsung dishwasher. We bought it because it was very quiet, but it took two hours to do a half-assed job cleaning any dishes. Nearly useless.
We thought about taking it back, but we were selling the house when we were forced to buy it and didn't have time to deal with replacement. I just left the receipt in the drawer next to it and let the new owners deal with it.
I have a Samsung front-loading washer and dryer set, about four years old, and it works great. My wife grew up on the far side of the Iron Curtain, and she's always saying how washing machines in the US are surprisingly cheap and flimsy compared to the battle tanks they had when she was a kid, and she loves the washer we have now. So I guess your mileage may vary.
I think you meant the evaporator; ice on the condenser would mean it's running backwards! Was it advertised as having automatic defrost/"frost-free"? Not all are. If you live in a humid climate, even the auto defrost may not be sufficient to remove all the frost.
I'll certainly not correct you! I'm not a pro by any means on HVAC and chiller technology. I just came up with a solution, albeit not a "good" one. I do know one thing; I'll never buy Samsung again.
I know, whatever it's called, has copper pipes hooked up to a heatsink, with a blower fan that spreads the chilled air. It's in the bottom of the fridge side, inside the refrigerator chamber.
The failure mode, which is evidently widespread online, is that condensation seizes up the fan blower, stops the fan, and temps rise gradually.
I also have a Samsung fridge with the same very well known issue, so it's likely not the refrigerant level. I don't have the wherewithal to rig it like OP has though.
As long as you have a spare computer (seriously, a RasPi would do well!), and don't mind doing some small electronics, you could do this as well!
The link is a complete how-to for my whole infrastructure, which spans multiple buildings, and sends all my sensor data to a central server (sitting next to my DSL modem at my house, no less).
I use Tor extensively, including my whole network topology. It allows me to create a cloud of my own machines, rather than depending on $CloudVendor. :) But everything is documented. Have at :D
Is Samsung making washing machines without out-of-balance detection? That was figured out by 1960. Today, a 3-axis accelerometer chip is $0.86, quantity 1. If a microprocessor is running the machine, the way it should operate is to back off the spin speed if it detects excessive vibration. As water drains out, the maximum speed at which vibration appears should increase. If that doesn't happen, shut down and sound the out of balance alarm.
Mine is later than 1960 (but not by much), with all-mechanical controls, and I don't think it has out-of-balance detection since it will jump around and make loud banging noises long enough for you to notice and stop it. It's happened to me once or twice. A search of the Internet for "walking washing machines" reveals that this isn't uncommon, and there are many others discussing the balance problem with stories of machines moving several feet and shaking loud enough to be heard throughout the house --- but not any mention of "explosions", and very little mention of similar damage to the machine or its surroundings.
That really makes me wonder what's happening with these Samsungs --- the article has quotes like these...
One Georgia mom was pulling clothes from the dryer, with her 4-year-old son nearby, when she heard the boom and saw the damage.
...which make it sound like the machine was behaving perfectly normally, and then spontaneously self-destructed with no signs of vibration beforehand. That is very unusual. Even in the destructive videos on YouTube where the machine is deliberately unbalanced with an extremely heavy piece of non-clothing, they still shake loudly and viciously for some time before disintegrating.
I've a Samsung washing machine, and it usually spends about 15 minutes dicking about, spinning slowly in random directions, before actually starting to wash clothes. If it can't balance the clothes, it complains loudly. I've rarely ever heard it knocking while spinning dry.
Granted, it seems European machines are smaller and faster compared to US so maybe they spend a little more effort here, becase they would explode if misbalanced and spinning at 1400 rpm.
But if there's a bug in the software, all bets are off.
This is really what concerns me about their patch for the Note 7 that attempts to reduce the chance if the battery exploding by limiting the charge to 60%. We've go no reason to trust their software engineering any more than their hardware engineering.
Maybe the problem is not the missing technology but just about finding the right balance between preventing explosions and keeping the machine running. If the machine plays it too safe, consumers are likely not satisfied.
> Some washing machines, the suit alleges, vibrate violently under heavy loads, causing the tub to “become unfastened, resulting in a dramatic centrifugal explosion that destroys the machine and nearby property.”
Any washing machine, if not level and if overloaded, will shake violently. The picture in the article showed a very small, seemingly fragile washing machine. I imagine one must take extra care to not overload such a machine. In fact, I know that these machines do have warnings to not overload them. What more could reasonably be expected of Samsung?
> In fact, I know that these machines do have warnings to not overload them. What more could reasonably be expected of Samsung?
Standard IANAL.
Unfortunately companies can't always offload all their liability to the customer in this manner. We will see with the result of this lawsuit whether this is such a case.
They're likely going to argue that a reasonable person who buys a washing machine expects that it will continue to operate safely with any amount or configuration of clothing so long as the it fits in the drum and the machine isn't modified. Sure, if you 'overfill'[1] the machine one might expect the quality of the wash to degrade, but not that the machine will become dangerous.
From a practical standpoint, it's perfectly possible to create a washing machine that can handle any amount and configuration of clothing simply by making a tumbler that strong enough to handle many times the weight of clothes. Or the machine could simply refuse to operate if it detects that it's over weight or off-balance. So Samsung won't get very far if they try to argue that it's not possible to manufacture such a machine and that their customers have no choice but to take precautions. But undoubtedly they will argue that it's cost prohibitive and that their customers are responsible for taking those precautions in exchange for the simpler and cheaper design.
[1] I use scare quotes because for sure they will call into question Samsung's use and meaning of the term.
I think it's not "offloading their liability to the customer", if company says that the washing machine can take 4 kg and the customer then loads it with 7 kg. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that if you do this, the machine will not be able to maintain its balance.
(Seen that happen and customer complain, in no way specific to Samsung.)
Would you say the same thing if a manufacturer produced a car that exploded if you put too much weight in the trunk? Or if it flooded the cabin with carbon monoxide if you missed an oil change deadline? Both are "covered in the manual".
This "explosion" was not actually an explosion, just an imbalance and mechanical failure.
But if I put way too much weight in the trunk of the car, and start driving, and the rear axle fails and there is an accident, yes, I'm still saying it's a user error.
(It's by the way worth considering how much weight you do put in the trunk, or perhaps more importantly, how much you put in a trailer. I transported some concrete garden patio slabs and without calculating the actual weight, put a bit too many of them both in the trunk and in the trailer. It was definitely not fun to drive.)
I think the issue here is, as many other have pointed out, that the imbalanced/weight problem for washing machines has been a solved problem for nearly 50 years. It's fine that we're moving away from all mechanical detection methods and more energy/water efficient washers, but removing the previously solved operational safety functionality just seems silly. I completely agree it's an issue of operator error, but that's not the problem - the problem is that it was a _solved_ issue of operator error that is now a problem again because it seems like there were no safeguards put in place. It would seem to me that there has to be a grand number of chances to figure this out during the QA stage for these washers and determine a simple software solution, even if that solution is the washing session cancels, drains, and the LED errors with "Overloaded" or something. The owners may be annoyed, but at least the machine isn't ruined and it can train them to use the correct load size.
Honestly, I don't think it's too unreasonable for any given person not to be able to estimate the mass of a load of laundry. I assume the recommendations (4kg, as you suggested) are educated guesses at best as it's hard to tell how much water any given item will retain during the spin cycle. Since it's an imprecise calculation anyways, wouldn't it make more sense to instead just let the machine dictate its own limits so the user can adjust their washing habits subsequently?
edit: mistyped and forgot to write "...because it seems like there were no safeguards put in place."
cough Tesla cough
The song was fucking different then, wasn't it? "Manual, warnings, itd itp"
Disclaimer:
I still agree that unless those washing mashines were abused in a drastic manner Samsung should feel the hurt.
No, I don't think it's reasonable that a modern washing machine will implode due to overloading. As others have pointed out, this is a solved problem, and I would expect Samsung to have built standard safeguards.
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. All it takes is a simple weight sensor, couple your suggestion with an "overweight" LED to give the user some feedback and this becomes a non-issue.
Except if your weight sensor if the first thing that breaks when the machine gets old.
I think all this is completely over the head. Say what maybe 3 machines exploded? That's far below the "noise" you have in every thing, it is statistically irrelevant.
Also, side question: when I pay for a product like a baby stroller from a western company, which part of this money is spent on "law abiding", i.e. the verbose amount of warnings sticked everywhere and all the lawyers behind? I just bought one and this kind stroller tells me loudly I'm stupid from every side of it. I had a Japanese stroller before: cheaper, lighter, just better for kids and parents in every respect, and a just a brief non-liability warning. If I put 4 ten year old fat kid is will break, OBviously. That would be my fault.
Indeed, this feels like it's just an attempt at riding onto the "Samsung=explosion" bandwagon. A quick search on YouTube shows plenty of washing machines spinning themselves apart, not only Samsung but LG, GE, and a few others, and going back several years too. This failure mode is not new, it's not specific to Samsung, and IMHO it's also partly operator error combined with the increased fragility of cost-down optimisation. I wouldn't even call it an explosion, as the drum itself remains intact --- all the damage is from the extreme vibrations breaking off everything else.
...and just for fun, there's also plenty of videos of deliberately unbalanced machines doing the same, for a bit of sordid entertainment and as a reminder of why you should always take care to balance the load. Here's one rather amusing example:
To be fair to the operators, they may not have reason to believe that their machines are overloaded or unbalanced. I've washed a lot of clothes in my life. It's been my experience that even properly loaded machines will occasionally shift the load in such a way as to become severely unbalanced. I don't think it's such a cut and dried case of operator negligence. The machines themselves provide little to no feedback to the operator. Older machines had clutches installed which would prevent the machine from spinning the drum hard enough to vibrate the machine apart. If Samsung et. al. have removed this hardware safeguard from their machine, they better have a damn good story to justify why they don't need it.
That said, then there should be a weighing mechanism and correct slow start procedure to balance the load. Probably an accelerometer to slow down if a vibration threshold is exceeded.
I am talking about safeguards costing pennies per machine, including implementation.
Consumers generally have a quite reasonable expectation that their products aren't dangerous in non-obvious ways. A knife might cut me if heavily used or misused, and I couldn't possibly sue in that case; if the blade leached toxins into the food I cut with it, I'd sue and so would anyone else.
Much law turns on various "reasonable person" standards. A reasonable person, IMHO, does't expect a violent, potentially lethal, mechanical disintegration just for overloading the drum by 10%.
We've invented consumer regulations so that you don't have to fear death or injury from a random common item you buy.
Otherwise... are you keeping your smartphone in your pocket? Are you aware that this thing is basically a live grenade, held together by cheap manufacturing and good wishes of engineers who designed the battery controller?
I think physics always trumps "consumer regulations". I do not believe in the power of law above physics, e.g. IMHO a law that declares gravity illegal would not work.
A heavy thing rotating at 1600/min is potentially lethal, you can put as much engineering in it as you want. Yes you can make it safer, but it remains potentially lethal. It's the physics of a heavy thing that rotates at 1600/min.
So is the physics of lithium-ion batteries. Just as you don't worry about your phone exploding in your pocket (the generic you; you specifically should worry given you have Note 7 :P), you shouldn't have to worry about a washing machine accidentally mauling you. Sure it may happen, but consumer regulations are written to direct manufacturing towards minimizing that kind of occurences to below "I have to consciously care about it" level.
Yes, and to completely destroy my karma here for the 3rd downvoted to the abyss comment:
A lithium-ion battery is potentially lethal. You can have as much regulations, laws and red tape as you like, you can't change the fact that lithium-ion batteries are potentially lethal.
And if you overload a washing maschine by stuffing in a 50% more than it was designed for, you should be aware that you do this to a potentially lethal thing.
And putting a "Don't put a cat into a microwave" sticker on a microwave doesn't change the physics of the microwave, it is potentially lethal to the cat. You can't regulate the physics of microwaves.
Same goes for cars. Potentially lethal. If you drive it beyond it's - or your - capabilities, it will kill you - car manufacturing regulations can't save you. It is potentially lethal. It is potentially lethal even with all the regulations and driving the car within your and it's capabilities, e.g. when a tire explodes. Regulations don't save you. Using potentially lethal thinks is potentially lethal.
No one's suggesting regulation can overturn the laws of physics, it's about assigning responsibility for their consequences in such a way that incentivises safe design.
And if the incentives are structured right, it can be entirely reasonable for consumers to assume that potentially risky things are in fact entirely safe.
>you can't change the fact that lithium-ion batteries are potentially lethal.
And yet you feel comfortable carrying it around in your pocket. Which is exactly the point.
Agreed: the law does not trump physics [0]. Consumer safety regulations don't require safeguards to be perfect, just to properly address normal use and various failure modes, and that's what Samsung failed to do here, in contrast to basically every other washing machine manufacturer.
There's considering it potentially lethal generally, and considering it an actual mortal risk if I sneak a couple of extra t-shirts into the wash. Understanding that something I own contains a potentially lethal mechanism doesn't void my reasonable expectation that safeguards have been built in that handle the intended and common use cases--like every other washing machine sold since WWII.
Yes, this happens to other manufacturers. It's also extremely atypical. Samsung is in trouble because, as with their Note 7s, there's a basic design flaw or lack of safeguard that's causing/allowing it to happen with significant frequency. No one's claiming the law can prevent this entirely. It demonstrably can cause manufacturers to build safer products.
>In fact, I know that these machines do have warnings to not overload them. What more could reasonably be expected of Samsung?
The question of what to "expect" is beyond my pay-grade, but this sounds like a design problem.
The traditional solution to this problem is an interlock (eg microwave doors). An accelerometer might sense when vibrations exceed safe limits and limit the drum speed or cancel the cycle.
As Don Norman points out, text labels are a sign of unclear design.[1] Do washing machine users and and washing machine designers have the same definition of "overloading?" Can you show it graphically? Project a laser level? Change the shape of the door or front cover? A visual line directly in the drum itself? (the drum ideally returns to a 'home' position)
Odds are that it does sense abnormal vibrations but that there is a corner case where it gets up to speed and a load shift causes it to blow out before the stopping mechanism kicks in.
Samsung (and LG) washers have design peculiarities that seem to be unique to them. For example, the bearings are actually part of the drum, so if they fail (a not-uncommon occurrence), you end up effectively having to replace the entire washer. (Ask me how I know!) So it doesn't surprise me that Samsung has other engineering issues baked into their products.
Every washing machine now has bearings as part of the drum, so if they fail you have to replace the entire washer (at least here in the UK). It's not a Samsung design peculiarity, it's just another example of the rise of planned obsolescence.
A modern washing machine, if not level and/or overloaded, will shut off. And then you'll have to rebalance your load and turn it back on again. This has been common since decades ago.
Is it too much to expect Samsung to have implemented a standard feature everyone else in the industry doesn't seem to have a problem with?
Warnings only get you so far. A reasonable consumer might expect overloading the machine to cause vibration and shaking, maybe damage to the motor. But not that level of physical destruction and damage to nearby property.
It should be reasonable to fill the drum in the washing machine with clothes you expect it to wash. It is borderline fraud to make a washing machine that can hold 10 shirts but explodes as soon as you run it with more than 6. They have a label that says don't overload it, but without explicit markings that say a load is 6 shirts I would assume overloading meant the drum can hold 10 so don't put 14 in there. It isn't as if the user is doing something unexpected like loading it with bricks.
"What more could reasonably be expected of Samsung?"
Goodness knows, I'm sure making a noisy beeping sound, printing "Load too heavy/unbalanced" on the LCD and refusing to run would be totally unreasonable ?
If it turns out that a mounting bracket or some other structure used to hold the tub in place has failed, either from corrosion or fatigue, then it should be expected that Samsung take responsibility for the problem.
You design these things to handle the load and stresses seen in an imbalance before the safety mechanism can shut it down.
Well that's just bad hazards risk analysis and engineering. It goes to show that Samsung didn't account for the possibility of the explosions bit or even worse, knowingly ignored the risk of the explosions without putting in some sort of safety mechanism to halt the progression of risk.
Safety can be easily explained by the Swiss cheese model. In order for a catastrophic safety incident to occur, usually you need a series of events to align one after another like having the holes of several Swiss cheese layers match up before you can go straight through.
Looking at the affected models, they all seem to have one thing in common: far too much plastic. At least the cabinet is still metal, which helped contain those fires. The cause of the fires is apparently an overheated electrical connection, but on a machine with far less flammable parts all that would happen is probably a little smoke and it'd just stop working.
The news of another exploding Samsung product offered the Internet plenty of fodder.
I don't find it useful to reproduce sarcastic tweets in the middle of a Washington Post article. I believe it does not add any information to what the article is describing, and actually makes it look more like infotainment. The issue is already serious and interesting enough.
Worst case scenario, they can just rebrand themselves.
Samsung does a lot of things: Cars, phones, refrigerators, TVs, life insurance... it's pretty diversified, so if there's a Samsung washing machine recall, I don't think that Koreans will cancel their life insurance policies.
Did you know Kenmore washing machines are actually LG? I didn't either until now... it's all too easy to just do a rebrand or latch onto somebody else's as a supplier, if things go nuclear.
To say nothing of calling in the emergency PR salvaging operation (like Lenovo did just recently with their BIOS update that locked out Linux on its consumer ultrabooks -- just have the press deflect blame on Intel for not jumping through onerous hoops to support Lenovo's crazy single-drive RAID scheme on Linux, but I digress).
Curiously, though Pinto is a synonym for unsafe car, it was almost exactly as safe as every other subcompact at the time. They were used as a test case for car safety. Ride in any tiny, cheap car and get hit by a truck and it isn't going to be pretty. Kind of unfair to Ford but that's history.
This seems like an odd case of defective parts leading to an early failure. I had a GE washing machine fail due to a defective pump (located under the drum and driven by the motor). There was no evidence of abnormal NHV and it is placed on level ground. The interesting thing was that the replacement pump (which cost me like $25 and took an hour to replace) was more robust. It has lasted twice as much as the original part.
When buying a washing machine, there is really no point in buying anything other than a Miele or Bosch product. The same is true of most other kitchen appliances. They may seem expensive, but it's a false economy to buy anything else.
If you can afford one, this is good advice in my anecdotal experience as well. A family member had a supposedly fancy Fisher and Paykel (NZ) dishwasher that cost more than the Bosch they ended up sticking with, and didn't clean dishes nearly as well even after servicing it regularly and having it inspected by a company rep. Meanwhile, the Bosch cleans far better and more quietly though it does need its filter (?) cleaned more regularly, if I recall correctly.
Also, Miele vacuums are amazing for their reliability and durability compared to something like a Dyson, which has over the years evolved into an overpriced and poorly built item.
So, almost all situations described in this thread would fall under legal warranty in the EU. Which is at least 2 years in the case of big appliances like washing machines.
Importantly, the warranty is between the buyer and the seller, not the manufacturer. They must either repair (within reasonable time), replace with equal or better model (at no extra cost) or give your money back. The point is that the buyer reasonably can expect a certain kind of functionality from the product when they buy it, such as a washing machine actually cleaning your clothes, not destroying them and functioning properly at least 2 years. If not, buyer and seller must come to a reasonable solution (it's all very reasonable). Although the seller tends to try to point to the manufacturer and sometimes manages to convince buyer to pay some of the costs, they shouldn't have.
Anyway, Samsung would be pretty stupid if they didn't pay extra care to manufacturing quality of products sold in the EU because of this. This implies that other regions that do not have this legal warranty because the free market demands it, necessarily must get slightly-less-carefully-quality-controlled items. Avoiding Samsung because of this seems like setting yourself up for the next brand to screw you over.
My Samsung washing machine is already on the list of things to replace. It came along with the place I'm at, and the previous owners apparently didn't know that front loading machines need to be left open when not in use. Upon our initial load of the machine we discovered it to be filled with swathes of mold/fungus. Took a week of heavy, caustic cleaning to get it usable. Apparently it's a fairly common issue with frontloaders; only recently did manufacturers get around to including sanitizing features.
Knowing that Samsung is selling machines that explode and catch fire ... I guess I'll bump our replacement up on the schedule. I do like the little ditty it plays when its done though. Reminds me of traveling through eastern Asia. Cute ditties seemed to be very common over there, from vending machines to garbage trucks. It's a small thing, but it has a way of brightening your surroundings the way an ice cream truck in America does.
Front loading machines aren't supposed to be left open, are they? I've used decades one always closed, never had mold/fungus. Could it depend on the water quality?
Based on my research, prompted by finding the machine filled with mold/fungus, yes. It's a container filled with moisture, locked behind a water tight seal, with layers of soap; more or less the perfect conditions for mold. It's a prevalent enough problem that there were rumblings of a class action; though it's America, so take that with a grain of salt.
I'm not sure if there's another variable that would lead to different experiences. Like you say perhaps it's dependent on water. Water in my area is very hard. Perhaps it depends on soap. Some detergents contain borax which is particularly good at killing mold in this situation. Maybe some machines are better at draining and/or airing out when not in-use. Frequent use of bleach may help.
The previous owners of the machines were not ... the best of tenants. Perhaps they did something else to compound the issue. Excessive soap is an additional culprit.
Not just rumblings. A recent settlement was reached and consumers who own various models of Whirlpool, Kenmore, or Maytag front-loading washing machines are entitled to numerous clams including a 5% discount on a new purchase, a $50 rebate, or a $500 reimbursement for previous repairs. [1]
My LG front loader has a special feature just for this purpose. The door has two "closed" positions: fully closed and sealed for washing, or if you just close it gently there's a magnet on the door that holds it slightly ajar. This way the door is not fully open and in the way but is open just enough to let it air out.
Gosh, the finish tone on my one goes for a solid minute or more. After the initial load, I was considering unsoldering the speaker until a search provided the secret key combination to turn the damn thing off.
Still better than my old LG washer-dryer which would sound an alarm when it had finished, only the door would remain locked for the next minute or so afterwards. So you'd go to empty it, realise that it was still locked despite only being on a wash cycle, wander off to do something else and forget about it, then remember the next day that you had washing sitting in the machine. By this time it smells stale and you have to wash it again. So you set a timer slightly longer than the wash cycle to remind you to take out the washing. Success! Only then you load another pile of clothes and forget to set another timer. Fuuuuu...
Purchased a Bosch washer-dryer after the LG decided it no longer wanted to pump water out of the machine, eventually flooding our hallway. The Bosch works nicely - you can open it when the alarm sounds! - but you have to reset the cycle toggle for every new load (basically set it to off then on again) otherwise it just beeps at you and won't start the cycle. If we can buy $50 touch-screen smart phones with a fully fledged OS in the supermarket, why can't we bolt similar devices to dumb microwaves, washers etc to make them smarter? I mean, why do I have to dig out a manual to figure out what the fuck error D7 means?
Price. Those things are expensive and prone to fail when exposed to prolonged humidity. A longer LED display with scrolling text would be good enough.
The cycle wheel alarm reset is an interlock so you cannot accidentally launch the program again by opening and closing the door.
If this happens to washing machines, I guess it either was a pretty good idea for them to sell their Techwin subsidiary a couple years ago, or they miss working in that field. :)
How popular are top loaders vs front loaders in the US? This seems a flaw inherent to top loading machines. Gravity stops uneven loads in front loaders.
Samsung refuses to honor the warranty about this issue.
I've jury-rigged 2 temp sensors with a photodiode to my existing IoT infrastructure (https://hackaday.io/project/12985-multisite-homeofficehacker...). As of right now, if the temp goes over a set point for more than 5 minutes with door closed, an alarm will be sent to our lights and my laptop (wherever it may be).
But this alarm means I have to take out the bottom shelves, unscrew the panel, and clean out the ice with a heat gun. It's better than having spoiled food.