[domiflichi] is human and fallible. So he can’t be blamed for occasionally forgetting the laundry in one of the machines and coming back to a less than stellar result. However, while fallible, he is not powerless.
What if his washer/dryer could email or text him about his laundry? It seemed simple enough. Add a vibration sensor to the side of the machine along with some brains. When the load is done it will bother him until he comes down to push the button or There Will Come Soft Rains.
He started off with an Arduino-and-ESP8226 combination and piezo sensors. The piezos had lots of shortcomings, so he switched to accelerometers and things worked much better. We really like the way he mounts them to the side of the washer dryer using the PCB’s mounting screws as angle brackets. The case is a standard project box with some snazzy orange acrylic on the front.
It took some fiddling, but these days [domiflichi]’s clothes are fresher, his cats fed, and his appliances more aware. Video of it in operation after the break.
Piezos don’t work unless they are squeezed or deformed. They are not mics or vibration sensors unless loaded with mass.
They seem to work when you put voltage to them. :P
When you put a voltage to a piezo it deforms and makes sound. Yes. When I first made a self sustaining guitar (think e-bow) I tried piezos. Too tinny, no bass till I had one under the bridge with a lot of down pressure on it. The loudest seems to be where it is loaded to a physical level halfway in it’s range of output swing. At that point I could hear it out of a speaker sans amp! Tune down to a slack key and the output falls. This effect messed with the sustaining loop gain so I gave piezo up. I now use a real mic imbeded in the bridge.
They work as mics or beepers, but as vibration sensors you need a mass, like you write. The usual piezo disks work when the middle is bent/deformed relative to the rim.
Hahaha ripped from my kickstarter page.https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1046563173/laundrifi-never-forget-your-laundry-again?ref=nav_search
Surprised that somebody was so blatant in their ripoff of such a wildly successful Kickstarter.
Don’t snark! JT’s version looks very polished.
That said, we’ve seen this before here too. It’s a common enough problem that it’s been solved a few times, probably independently. I would hesitate to call any of them a ripoff.
I imagine this has to be a selfless plug for your KS… Vibration sensing with wifi capabilities is basically radioshack getting started with electronics kit level nowadays. I think, as others have mentioned, the only thing that makes your KS stand out is that you pay for a nicely polished case.
shameless plug*
should proofread before I hit the button.
Hahaha shameless plug I wish. That kickstarter is so dead.
I would agree, except the radioshack getting started kit would cost you at least $100, the KS version was only $20, and looked nicer, and was more compact that home grown stuff.
This is clever (and a common problem – I’m surprised that it’s not standard in new high-end machines).
This gave me a little eye-twitch: ” our dryer is not working too well at the moment. We have to run it 3 times before our clothes are fully dry.” How can you build a device to phone you when you forget, but not take the back panel of a dryer off to check for a burned out heating coil, defective thermostat, or clogged fan?
And clean the dryer hose! That is what was wrong with mine.
My mom moved to a one story house and the dryer vent hose ran in a big swag thru the cold attic to the side of the gable. Water collected in the hose till it blocked it. In investigating a dryer I didn’t expect to get drenched!
Was on a circa 1980ish pair I had. Knob marked Alarm on/off… and it would bleepwhine when it finished a cycle.
A current sensor e.g. reed switch with coil or hall sensor with coil would be another possibility.
KISS, I put a tilt sensor on the rotating knob when I built mine.
I taped a photocell over the done LED on my washing machine. The buzzer on the dryer is sufficent for what it does.
That’s a great idea! http://hackaday.com/2016/05/05/clever-and-elegant-tilt-sensors-from-ferrofluid/
Lol ;)