I got three Siemens devices with home connect, washer, dishwasher and coffee machine. But is it just me or did they not put a lot of thinking into those “smart” devices?
My latest addition was the coffee machine. I would have loved getting up in the morning, telling “Hey google, make me coffee!” and google telling homey to tell home connect to start up the coffee machine and brew me a fresh cup.
And yes, this was all possible and very easy. The only thing I needed to do was place an empty cup the night before and homey could start the device and order coffee. But… again…, they did not think this through. Because what is the first thing the coffee machine does upon starting? Perform a clean program that will dump filthy water to the same outlet that will later produce fresh coffee afterwards.
So when I start this create coffee command I do get a cup of coffee, but it would always have this first round of cleaning water in it as well. Not very smart and useless for remote control this way.
Second is the washer. They probably don’t trust their developers enough to provide a secure solution, cause if you want to do anything remote with the machine, you have to enable it first with a physical button on the device and then it will allow up to an hour or so of remote commands.
What the wife would have wanted here is an option to ask how long a program will still be running. So, I made this flow where Google TTS would announce its program progress and remaining time over all google minis. But they seem never set and always at 99% still running for hours.
This is the same on the dish washer. The variables are there, but not working. While the home connect app is telling me the program finished, it can’t be used within Homey.
I have the same with my induction hob and ventilation, both have the Home Connect feature but absolutely useless. I understand it’s probably for safety but for example when I want to start a hob to boil my water then I have to physically press a button to start it after sending the data through the app, it’s only a bit useful for sending programs to the hob like “bake a steak”. But then you also have to have special pans and so on.
Same for the ventilation, I’ve first set it up through Home Connect but then it loses direct connection to the hob. So the hob has to send a signal to Home Connect’s cloud and then the ventilation has to receive that signal from the cloud to start automatically. 9/10 times it didn’t respond. So now the vent and hob are directly connected to each other (wifi signal) and this works 10/10 times.
And to be honest, I never missed the “smart” functions… It’s just a gimmick.
Tnx for your response, those products were also on my wishlist as soon as the current needed replacement, but I now see they have the same issue. Indeed it are all gimmicks that make me prefer those usually more expensive products over other products.
I love further automating my house and live, I don’t realy “need” any of it, but getting downstairs with fresh coffee waiting for me would have been nice when properly designed.
I had a Miele before, I had to switch it on, wait minutes for it to warm-up and clean, then press coffee what would take another minute. With this feature you could feel like being “served” a cup of fresh coffee right out of bed.
With the washing machines starting a program is a bit useless, you still need to insert everything to wash so can press the correct buttons to start it afterwards, but asking if it is done already would have been nice if it would give a valid answer.
It seems as if they do some minor half way implemented low budget development to be able to put a “smart” sticker on their products so people like me buy them because of that .
Did have the same experience with the coffee machine too. I used to always get up in the mornings at 7 am. So my intention was to have a fresh cup of coffee in the mornings, but as you have noticed, when turning the machine on, it flushes… Don’t want to have that dirty water in the cup. And than you don’t even take into account the fact there is always something you have to do, either clean the coffee residue, fill the water, clean the machine, fill the beans… So yes, pretty useless… Only thing I did with it was to turn the machine on at 7am so it saved me 1 min in the morning
Don’t get me wrong, the link between the hob and the vent is perfect when you connect them directly. Since I “abandoned” the connection through the cloud it works smooth every time and both products are great.
But like you said for the washing machines is the same for the ventilation, it starts automatically when you start cooking on the hob and it sets the intensity according to how much damp there is. In that way it’s smart enough and it really doesn’t need more smart automation so if you find the same without Home Connect and it’s cheaper, then it’s an easy choice…
The only thing I could’ve used Homey for is creating a flow: IF vent is on THEN start led-light in kitchen. But then I have the troubles with the connection between hob and vent so I’ll put the light on differently (could use a smart plug perhaps).
Shame that they worked out the coffee machine that way, because it’s almost the only product that really could make advantage of Home Connect.
Just like the home connect I’m useless before my first coffee in the morning as well. So I would prefer all the chores the machine needs as well before I go to bed and to place a cup as wel (cup sensor would have been nice as well for a smart device).
Best way would have been if the machine moved the head away from the cup for cleaning and back for real products, but if that is too hard I would even settle for a software work-around like “skip initial cleaning procedure”. I could as well do that the night before, but there is no option to do so.
I always wonder if the people creating these products take only the slightest amount of time using them.
I do not think they think it through… they already have a coffee machine which does everything they want but wanted to make it smart. Just create a app and hook it into the already excising software running on the devices… … voila a smart machine…
I don’t have any devices with Home connect myself. There may be the possibility to integrate the Home Connect devices via the detour Home Assistant. Here is the integration:
Tx, but I don’t think the integration itself would be the issue here. There is an app for Homey, it’s just that the logic itself seems poorly implemented within the Siemens/Bosch appliances. Don’t think that talking to it through Home Assistant would be any different as the device itself would still give you the dirty cleaning water before pouring fresh coffee.
The notifications are probably not set as nobody ever presses the “allow communication for an hour” button. That would also be a restriction for home assistant.
This might be a stupid question but how do you contact the developer of an app? With Home Connect, it seems crazy that I can not ask Homey to get my coffee to switch on the cup warmer - as above, making the coffee automatically does not really work, but preparing the machine, warming cups etc is a useful feature.
The developer is Athom so the only way to get that extra feature is to contact support. I know BSH is gathering feedback in order to improve the app in the near future.
Has anyone actually contacted BSH to ask whether a SW update to skip initial cleaning could be implemented for the Coffee Maker? As mentioned, this would probably be the best use of a Home Connect feature and not just gimmick…
Yes, I have been talking with their home appliance manager about this. They can’t remove this function but if you want to make a coffee in the morning without it flushing, you can set the auto off timer to a maximum of 12 hours. The machine will stay on and make your coffee in the morning without flushing first. It’s a compromise…
Hmm…mine only allows up until 8 hours…
Seems strange though that they cannot remove it, with the “compromise” its still useless I think.
Also, having made integration to Google Home, I only can see the On/Off command. Any idea why it does not show the various recipies? Cheers
Probably because it is not in the home-connect API yet.
You can start the current program selection though through Google Home with the play button in the center when you select the coffeemachine device.
I think Siemens has listening because on the new EQ900 serie you can skip the first rinse if you want. And then you could actually use it in the morning.
Yes, it seemed like a bit of a “first attempt to create something smart” that ended up pretty dumb :-). The “end of program” sometimes seem to work, but most of the times indeed don’t. I thought perhaps with a small program that ends while the remote control timeout did not finish yet it was working, but it is more at random, I’ve had large washing programs send the end of program sometimes as well.
For such a big company and expensive devices where you pay more for the “smart” part it’s bad that they couldn’t make it work better.
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