For EU front loading washing machines with time delayed doorlock, the best way for monitoring the cycle is measuring the power consumption of the doorlock itself. This device consists of a PTC heater attached to a thermostat in such a way that when the door is closed and the heater is powered by the controller, the thermostat trips and both mechanically latches the door and closes an additional contact to signal the controller that the door is closed, and the cycle can begin. When the cycle ends, the heater is powered down and after some delay, the latch and the contact are opened.
You can detect the cycle start by looking for a ~80 W power inrush peak from the PTC doorlock being enabled. Then, the doorlock power stabilizes around 8 W during the whole cycle until it ends, the controlled commands it off and the power draw is reduced to standby values. This last event can be used to detect the end of cycle.
I have this setup working almost flawless for more than a year. You may need to tweak the power values but nothing else.
Mine works since 8+ years now. But what I started the thread on was how to find out (at best 100% automatically), when the washing machine was cleared out - so I donāt have to spam me with alerts, if I in fact did clear it out! ā¦or increase spamming, if I didnāt!
Another approach:
Use a humidity sensor where you hang your clothes. If the humidity has not increased after finishing the washing machine, then send a reminder.
good idea in principle. But sometimes we dry them in the dryer, sometimes (summertime) outside, sometims (wintertime, rain, ā¦) indoorsā¦ Thatās unfortunately unreliable in our case.
This discussion keeps coming back to ideas for getting the first notification, but the main concern is āhow can openHAB determine if the humans have ignored it?ā.
It definitely sounds like āwe leave the washer door openā is the only behaviour that can be acted upon.reliably.
Assuming you can and would want to open the machine: I would try to find the springs holding the drum. They should be longer with laundry in the machine. Maybe you can attach some contacts there, that only close when it is empty. I would expect errors during the washing, but I guess these should be simple to ignore.
Guess best way is a vibration sensor. Each washing machine I saw so far, makes not only noise, but also vibrations. Based on this you can say definitely that machine is still working.
An exception is a night program where machine stays in stand by mode. But thatās something which you can not determine by above sensor.
Before you goā¦ there were some bluetooth sensors and evaluation kits from company having B at the front of its name and h and the end. [ruuvi have it too]
but Iāll guess everyone has their own approach on telling, how the washing machine is ready and are eager to share that information!
Again: Iām more than happy with my consumption-based approach on how to tell itās READY
What Iām testing right now, which ādoor sensorā Iāll try to apply on it to tell, if itās CLEARED/EMPTY, because we tend to forget to do that - and then we have to wash our clothes again - which is time and energy consuming.
You are right. You can also be sure that washing machine door opening will trigger a properly callibrated vibration sensor.
I remember that some of ble tags had also movement/acceleration sensor. Glue it to machine doors and observe their acceleration reading. At least two axes out of three should change at the same time when doors are opened (assuming it does not fall).
I also use a consumption based approach, also for detecting if the machine has been emptied: when the machine is finished it still consumes a little bit of energy until it is actually turned off manually (I own one of the simplest non-Smart Miele models). Therefore I can detect when it has been switched off manually which means that it usually also was emptied. This leaves only the case when someone switched it off but was too lazy to empty it before that (the machine does not open when switched completely off) but luckily this does not happen at home.
ā¦or increase spamming, if I didnāt! 