Great reverse engineering documentation, with colors and nice diagrams !

A really great read. Although, I now feel like I 'need' a logic analyzer, looks fun! And I'm looking forward to the firmware analysis mentioned at the end.

this is the sort of thing that makes me want to buy Miele. and I'm just starting to think about buying a dishwahser as well.

Sweet mother of god. The sheer number of different skills marshalled to reverse engineer that little board is inhuman. Huge respect to the guy for all that work and the patience he had to constantly push through every failure.

Tune the washing machine chip for aggressive popcorn effect on deceleration, vroooom!

ah... https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-universal-washing-mac...

I’ve been having good luck buying pieces of part-outs on eBay for old appliances.

Someone will take a machine apart and list all of the pieces individually. It’s a fraction of the price of a new one. It’s a used part so it’s a gamble, but they can be so cheap I just buy two and have a spare.

I fixed a malfunctioning refrigerator by replacing the control board, which happened to be a PIC16-based device used by many brands. This design is as close to "universal" as you can get, and this generic board was around 20% the price of the official replacement part.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/152763501102

It is still worthwhile to try to troubleshoot something like a washing machine these days before calling someone to service it, or buying new.

We just had a ~8 year old washer start dying with an error code, with digging it turned out it was the hall effect sensor on the drum motor that needed replacing. Cost $12 and change and was over nighted from Amazon.

What would have been nice if we got a detailed diagnostic code and not just "FE" on the front panel.

I replaced the heating element - twice - and the control board for the motor on my washing machine.

Never needed to touch the controller board, so my experience is different.

With a little work, it's sometimes surprising how easy things are to repair. My TV died a few years ago and just refused to power on. I don't really know much about electronics, but I assumed since there were no lights of any kind that it was probably a bad power supply. I opened it up and it turns out the power supply is a separate board with an easily detachable cable. I ordered a new one for less than $40 on eBay by looking at the part number and it only took a few minutes to replace and saved me several hundred dollars.

I'd imagine someone more familiar with electronics possibly could have figured out what specific component was wrong and replaced only that for an even smaller fraction of the cost.

I'd rather have the machine use compute running open source firmware from my tower in the next room

Ive seen these universal boards for sale on AliExpress. Always wondered how they perform.

If everyone had a Miele washing machine and put it on their front porch facing the street, maybe.

Did you know that with a strong enough LED pointed through a window into the living room they could also disrupt TVs by changing the channel or even turning them off remotely!

No, obviously not.

Fun fact: Speed Queen also uses IrDA as a communications method on many commercial washing machines for programming and diagnostics.

They used to use a PalmPilot (and a WinMo) app. Nowadays it can be done with a PC with a weird NFC-based interface they’ve built with a wand you hold in front of the control panel in a specific location.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thnxm821yco

I know HN loves Miele, but they are very Apple like when it comes to repair — they don’t make their parts available to the public and since a few years neither to independent repair shops.

In contrast I had a great experience repairing a Smeg stove and buying all the necessary parts directly from them, so it’s not like it’s impossible.

After having used their repair service for over 10 times for my dishwasher during its warranty period and having broken off its front handle (well, the entire front panel really) after 2 more years, I'm never buying an AEG device ever again. I opened it up and fixed it myself, and oh my god, the whole thing just screamed cost cutting. They literally used the power button of a different model or machine, and then just mounted a different power button on top that presses the underlying one. And of course the load bearing thing that holds the front panel and display onto the door frame is a just two tiny bolts in the corners. Great idea to have the entire thing flex constantly in one place. Absolute junk.

How new is your washing machine? Mine (US market, Electrolux branded) displays fault codes through the main 8 segment LCD and makes component tests available from that same diagnostic menu. Service literature was available directly from Electrolux — from a paid service with a free trial, although there are plenty of youtube videos covering the same information.

It's either the current or previous generation.

I hate that.

I had an old suv that would throw errors about the suspension.

Turns out there are lots of systems on a car that you can't diagnose with standard OBD2 readers. Same with transmission, etc.

As a matter of fact, don't know why all of this isn't easily available to the owner, not just a code, but a full message.

Some people love the fact that they have old appliances still running fine. I have my grandma Siemens fridge, 30 years old, still running fine. On one hand, a more efficient fridge would cost less money on the long run, but on the other hand i'm afraid to buy a lemon. So I'm patiently waiting for my Siemens to die

Could you actually buy those parts? Miele started locking down their parts to just registered Miele repair centres a few years ago, making a mockery of the right-to-repair movement (and slipping a big middle finger to business which repair a variety of brands, not exclusively Miele).

All Miele refrigerators (at least currently) are made by Liebherr.

Also:

Reverse Engineering the Miele Diagnostic Interface - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44593975 - July 2025 (4 comments)

Miele, Bosch, and Speed Queen do the old-school engineering based on failure analysis and have basically the same reliability as the super-simple machines from the 70s and 80s, so 20 years is a common lifespan with outliers in the 30- and 40-year range. If you adjust for inflation, you find that the super-simple machines from the 70s and 80s cost basically the same as machines from these more expensive brands, so if you care about filling landfills with broken appliances, you should probably consider purchasing them and supporting the business model.

No one would make cost-engineered stuff that fails just outside the warranty if people didn't buy it.

We had a Samsung dishwasher. Took exactly 5 years for it to spill water to the floor.

Now we have a Miele, as we do have their laundry machine and fridge already. The laundry machine is soon 20 years old, been doing laundry around 5-6 times every week and works still like new. The fridge is supposedly built by Liebherr. It feels really high quality: the door handle feels nice and locks the door properly. There are multiple different temperature areas that hold the temperature quite steady.

The dishwashers have certain tiers. I don't know if it makes sense to pay for the TwinDos detergent system: you can wash dishes without filling detergent. The detergent is proprietary and quite expensive. Sadly if you want to connect the dishwasher to your home assistant, that feature is only in the most expensive models. The door that opens automatically when the program is done is great though. You can do the eco program which is quite slow, but it spends the last hours just the door open, and in the morning you have clean and dry dishes with minimal water and energy use.

bought a few years pretty much top of the line miele. works great. ability to insert cartridge and just to forget about having to add detergent for a few weeks is amazing

We’ve had our Miele dishwasher for 5 years. Running on average 1.5 times a day. It’s flawless.

Here in the UK the customer service has been amazing. The company we bought from (AO.com) installed it incorrectly (the water pipe plug wasn’t removed) they told us to get stuffed. We called Miele. They sent someone to us the next day and fixed it free of charge

Cautionary tale from here in UK. We had a Neff (same company as Bosch and Siemens) dishwasher which we used heavily for 10 yrs then it started to leak because they'd used plastic in the base which got warped with heat. So, ditched a perfectly running machine due to a design flaw. Replaced it with a Miele in the hope that'd be better. So got a nice-and-simple base model, about £750 I think (as opposed to £400ish you can pay for another Neff). Turns out its made in Czech, not Germany. Although apparently Germans are cynical about their own factories these days, and it may be same quality. So far, it has a design fault that the drain detector is over sensitive. If bits of food fall on the base it interpets that as its still got water in and perpetually keeps trying to drain unless you pour a jug of water in to disperse food bits. Also depending how you close the door sometimes it seems to not engage, have to open and re-shut to make it work. One of the solenoids somewhere sounds a little rattly / not totally healthy, but that may be nothing. Quality of cleaning, and ease of stacking, appears less good than the Neff was. Suffice to say, I reserve judgement on whether paying extra for a Miele is worth it. They claim they're good for 20 yrs but if you read the small print that's at only 5 runs a week or something , not every day. So it may not actually be much better than the Neff in the end. But the Neffs now look cheaper and tackier than the ones from 10 yrs ago. Not an easy decision. Our best appliance purchase ever was a "Tesco value" microwave, which is Chinese cr*p that's still running fine almost 20 yrs later. ;) Good luck with your purchase ;)