The buzzer on a washer or dryer may be OK for most people, but what if you would like something a little more versatile to tell you when your laundry is done? Here’s an interesting solution involving an Arduino Yún that sends a text message when the washer or dryer is done.
Rather than hacking into your equipment, this device simply uses a dual-axis accelerometer to sense when a washer or dryer is no longer vibrating, thus not spinning. It’s powered by a 5 volt DC inverter, but a battery pack can also keep things running. Optionally, you can print a case for the Yún, and the source code for this project is available here.
To get things running via text message, you’ll also need an account with Temboo for getting your “real world” data online, and Twilio to help with the SMS portion of the communication chain.
This device is envisioned for use with laundry, but I could see something similar being used for many other applications. If you wanted to track whether a car was moving or not, this should be able to be done with no modification. With a little more work, it should even be able to glean something’s acceleration. I suppose the big question would be whether or not there was WiFi available, which could be a problem in a moving car!
4 thoughts on “Laundry Text Message Alerts With Arduino Yun”
Comments are closed.
ADVERTISEMENT
Join Make: Community Today
Haven’t seen the entire article yet but is it removable? This would be awesome for apartment dwellers who share laundry facilities.
Yeah, the article says that it’s running off of a 5 volt DC inverter but you could use a battery back instead to make it more mobile. That’s actually a really good idea. You would just have to make sure you have a wifi signal in the laundry room for the Yun.
Wow, that is a lot of work to do for pretty much the same thing as a timer app on your smart phone.
I am about to construct a similar item myself that will monitor a washer and dryer in a similar fashion and then send a text message. I am trying to figure out how to handle the “soak” cycle when the washer just sits there for a while without any movement. I don’t want the device to think the cycle has finished. My plan is to add in a timer to check for a period of inactivity before it sends the “wash is done” message.
Or, I could connect a 120 volt relay to the clock motor on the washer timer and then note when there is no longer power going to it. However, I really don’t want to hack into my washer to do this.