Hacking the Bob Dishwasher soap cassette’s DRM, 98% cost savings

Bob is a sleek and compact countertop dishwasher with a built-in water tank that can be filled by hand, requiring no plumbing and minimal space. It is also internet-connected (of course), but why in the world does a dishwasher needs internet anyway?

One of the headline features of Bob dishwasher is the Bob Cassette, an all-in-one detergent cartridge. Just pop it in and off you go! No need to manually measure and add detergent each wash, very convenient! But a 4 pack costs £29.90 for 90 washes! It might not sound like much, but it quickly adds up.

GitHub user dekuNukem decided to reverse engineer the cassette.

The cassette uses a simple I2C EEPROM. And the detergents are very similar in composition to readily available detergents costing much, much less.

Read more about the reverse engineering and alternative process on GitHub here.


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