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The kitchen and the laundry, in the house.

Washing machine, oven and fridge talk to their make's app. In Lenou they sit in their room, with a notification when they are done.

What it is

Washing machine, dryer, oven and fridge talk to their make's app today. Most makes offer only their own cloud for it.

Lenou puts them in the room where they stand, so "the washing is done" becomes an ordinary notification of the house.

Cloud

Through Miele's third-party API. Miele has no usable local API.

Reads: Status, programme, phase, time left, door, failure, temperatures and light. Changes come through at once.
Controls: Start, stop and pause. Remote start works only when it is enabled on the appliance itself — a Miele safety rule.

Online once

Signing in once fetches the keys; after that Lenou talks straight to the appliance on the network.

Reads: On or off, door, status, programme and time left, and whether remote start is allowed.
Controls: A fridge's temperature and super mode.
Limit: The local protocol was worked out by an open-source project, not published by the make. A firmware update can change it.

Cloud

Samsung washing machines, through the SmartThings cloud.

Reads and controls: The machine's state, with the programme's name as its display shows it; start, pause and stop.

A rule on "programme finished" becomes a notification on every phone in the house.
The oven sits in the kitchen, next to the KNX lighting, with the same tiles.

Miele and SmartThings do not work without internet.
Signing in to Miele, Home Connect and SmartThings is done once by the installer on the box today, not yet from the app.