I've recently finished my first Arduino project and am hooked. I believe I can make a washer and dryer ball that could send a notification when the washer has stopped spinning and the clothes in the dryer are dry.
It would look like this
Inside will be the LillyPad Arduino, a LillyPad Xbee, and LillyPad lipo battery. They dryer will use a DHT11 humidity sensor and the washer will have a ADXL335 accellerometer.
I'll have them talk to the GE Wink hub because I believe it supports Zigbee.
If I have it correct in my head using the LillyPad, battery and Xbee, I should be able to save a lot of battery life by polling the sensors every 5 minutes or so throughout the day for a just second to see if anything is happening or is finished happening. IE test the motion sensor every 5 minutes, if it's been active the past 3 tests then the washer is in use, when a test for motion then returns negative, the washer is done, power up the Xbee and notify the Wink to notify me.
One issue is placing these wireless devices inside a metal box so I'll have to test and see what it does to range.
Can anyone think of a good on/off switch so they don't need to run all day everyday?
Does anyone have experience with the battery life of a LillyPad on battery? and I'm assuming the Xbee will be better on power than using WiFi.
People doing similar projects have used accelerometers to determine whether the washing machine is running. Then it's ok to mount the device on the outside and you can plug in your power.
For an indication that your clothes are dry before the dryer cycle completes, you might try a moisture sensor in the dryer vent.
You could put a 120vac relay across the drum motor leads. When the motor is energized, the relay is energized. When the motor is off, the relay is deenergized. just check the relay contact status. Or you could use a brick and a piezo shock sensor.
One issue is placing these wireless devices inside a metal box so I'll have to test and see what it does to range.
The range will be just about 0.
I did rough tests with my phone and the signal dropped but was still more than enough to receive email. An Xbee will have worse range I'm sure but maybe bluetoothed to a nearby charging dock that then has the WiFi in it.
wildbill:
People doing similar projects have used accelerometers to determine whether the washing machine is running. Then it's ok to mount the device on the outside and you can plug in your power.
For an indication that your clothes are dry before the dryer cycle completes, you might try a moisture sensor in the dryer vent.
I've thought about the vent and it doesn't seem like the most user friendly getting it into the vent inside, and outside powering it would be difficult.