Feedback on Washer Alert

[Ajax2012]

Hello everyone,

I’m new to the webCoRE community and was wondering if anyone had any feedback for me on my first washer notification engine. I shortened the amount of time per “activity” (contact sensor acceleration stays inactive for…) to test it and it seemed to work, but I would love to know if anyone has feedback to make it better or easier to use.

The goal was to send an alert when the washer finished, so I created 2 separate routines - one to set a global variable called “WasherOn” to true and the other to send notifications when the sensor was inactive for more than 2 minutes.

My main goal with this post is to learn how to create better pistons in the future and improve this piston, so feel free to rip my code apart, but please do not just come in here telling me it sucks.

Cheers

[milhouse]

I tried similar. The accelerometer wasn’t sensitive enough to reliably know if the washer was active or not. If yours is, good for you. I ended up switching to a power monitor and could trigger where power dropped to zero.

For you trigger, instead of {@WasherOn} changes to true and accelerometer stays inactive, would you be better off the other way - accelerations stays inactive and {@WasherOn} EQUALS true?

One other thought: if the dryer is running, then do you still want the notification? In mine I send the notification if the washer is done AND dryer isn’t running. Otherwise I trigger notifications based on the dryer.

Here’s mine for washer and dryer both:

[Ajax2012]

@milhouse

Thank you for your reply! I will give your suggestion about changing the variable to “is” instead of “changes to”. I wasn’t sure what would work better, but this didn’t end up working today…it seems like the global variable didn’t change, but I’m not sure how to track that. I’ll give this a try and let you know the next time I do laundry (probably tomorrow).

I want the first notification to appear so I at least have something that reminds me that there is a load in the washer, but I don’t want the repeating notifications, which is why I changed that in the loop.

On a separate topic, what do you use as a power monitor? I have been looking for various automation projects I want to attempt, but haven’t seen anything that works for me. My washer is a PoS, since I live in an apartment, so it picks up vibration easily, but I hope to move out of here next year, so that might work better in the future.

[eibyer]

I have a piston that I use for my dryer that’s based on vibration. I will modify it for sharing so you can give it a try and see if it works for you.

[milhouse]

I use the Aeotec Smart Switch. It’s just a wall wort smart plug, but it does power monitoring. You have to run a few loads and key an eye on the values so you know what works for you. Not all washers might drop all the way to 0W. Mine does, and never while a load is running, so it’s easy.

For the dryer, I use a smartthings multisensor. It doesn’t detect the vibrations, so temp works. I tape it to the dryer. As long as the dryer runs, the temp goes up. So my trigger is the temp dropping = dryer is done. (There’s actually a cooldown period, hence the wait). If it rises past 87 degrees (well past ambient) that’s how I know it’s running. That’s how I set the DryerRunning variable.

[Ajax2012]

@milhouse - is this it? https://www.amazon.com/Charging-Wireless-Control-Security-Automation/dp/B00VQISOCG

[Ajax2012]

@eibyer Thank you! I really appreciate it! This is my first set of cores on here, so I created these just based on what I know from my programming background and what I’ve seen on other peoples’ examples.

[milhouse]

Yes, that’s it. Aeotec stuff is kinda pricey but I have great luck with it.

[Ajax2012]

@milhouse I’ve seen worse…but yeah, I’ll have to hold off on it for a bit. Thanks for this, I’ve been trying to find something that will do this for…probably a year and a half now. The heat seems like a really good idea. Right now, I have mine on the door of the dryer as well, so I should get great readings from that. Thanks again!