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Is It Dry Yet?

badgerbadgerbadgerbadger.dev

81–90 of 147 posts

Re: Is It Dry Yet?

#81
post #72

I've wanted to do this sort of thing for a while, but I am a bit concerned about using many of the smart plugs on the market with large motors, and I assume most dryers contain a fairly large electric motor (not sure how large.) I'm in the midwest U.S., so my dryer is a gas dryer; so presumably, the only real thing being driven off the electricity is indeed a micro-controller and a fairly large motor of some kind. I…

> and instead use other methods to either measure current or implement switching. Yeah, I keep meaning to look at clamp style measurement. That doesn't give you control, of course, but I'm mostly interested in finding out how much power larger appliances are actually using (my dryer is pure electric).

A current clamp meter will not tell you anything unless you break out the individual wires you want to measure. Having both live and neutral running through the clamp will cause the electric field of the neutral to cancel out the field of the live whenever the device draws current, so the meter will be unable to read anything.

Re: Is It Dry Yet?

#82
post #73

I love the enormous artistic effort the author put in the images.

Is it not just the output of some "laundry room in the style of Van Gogh" prompt? Looks great, just not sure that's an indication of effort these days. Several non-sensical sections aren't cleaned up for example.

I really like the fact that the inside of the dryer is deeper than the housing of the unit itself. If we're going magical, let's just go full on magician's hat, Felix's bag of trix (or Harry Potter for those too young for Felix).

Re: Is It Dry Yet?

#83

I did something similar except I used a vibration sensor since we have shared laundry for the floor. When doing laundry we take the sensor and then stick it, using the magnets glued to the back, onto the dryer/washer. The distance drops the signal strength of the sensor which is what tells the automation that clothes washing/drying is in progress. Once vibration has stopped it knows that the laundry is done. Alexa th…

Is that a product you bought or something you made yourself? I've been wanting something like that but haven't figured out how to get it

Re: Is It Dry Yet?

#84
post #72

I've wanted to do this sort of thing for a while, but I am a bit concerned about using many of the smart plugs on the market with large motors, and I assume most dryers contain a fairly large electric motor (not sure how large.) I'm in the midwest U.S., so my dryer is a gas dryer; so presumably, the only real thing being driven off the electricity is indeed a micro-controller and a fairly large motor of some kind. I…

You can either wire a relay yourself, your smart plug just switches the relay, and you can size the relay according to your needs.

Or use smart switches made for geysers. Something like the sonoff pow3 can handle up to 5.5kW. Since it is just a relay inside I am pretty sure it can handle inductive loads fine.

https://sonoff.tech/product/diy-smart-switches/powr3/

Re: Is It Dry Yet?

#85

I did something similar except I used a vibration sensor since we have shared laundry for the floor. When doing laundry we take the sensor and then stick it, using the magnets glued to the back, onto the dryer/washer. The distance drops the signal strength of the sensor which is what tells the automation that clothes washing/drying is in progress. Once vibration has stopped it knows that the laundry is done. Alexa th…

smart, you could probably do the same thing with a cheap piezoelectric microphone / transducer (actually I wouldn't be surprised if a vibration sensor is basically just that) plugged into an audio line-in port on an RPi running the show.

Re: Is It Dry Yet?

#86
We decided to buy fancy WiFi washer and dryer for our new house. Apparently to meet the latest bullshit energy requirements, our dryer does so by not completely drying things.

So now I put it on timed dry, and that means I can just start a 60 minute timer on my watch.

Re: Is It Dry Yet?

#87
Not to knock other people's hobbies, but our dryer plays a loud jingle when done, no Internet connection required. Do other models not have this feature?

Re: Is It Dry Yet?

#88

Mechanical kitchen timer will suffice. You usually know the duration of most used programs. Doesn't need a hundred taps in the phone to get it working. Mental effort to set the timer is lower than with phone timer. You dial it and carry in a pocket. Zero distraction when you set it up or get notified -- you won't sink into the timer scrolling for half an hour. And in the end you'll get the notification.

Working, but so boring. For some of us it's nice to build needles stuff instead of using a better (but boring) solution ;) I like the needles stuff, you like the mechanical 'easy' solution

I was wondering what was going on in their life that the alert sound from the washer and dryer weren't sufficient for the purpose. My GE dryer sings a happy "laundry's dry" song when it's finished.

You're right though, this way is more fun.

Re: Is It Dry Yet?

#89
definitely thought this was about code and "don't repeat yourself". I thought it was going to talk about how it's not necessary to make sure your code is 100% dry it's ok to repeat yourself sometimes. Which it is. Specially while waiting your clothes to dry.

Re: Is It Dry Yet?

#90
For those wanting this convenience on a dumb washing machine, I used a single smart plug flashed with Tasmota firmware to monitor when the power draw dropped to zero. Notifications through Home Assistant.

Not affiliated, just a happy customer of:

https://cloudfree.shop/product/cloudfree-smart-plug-runs-tas...

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