I’ve been using the Eve energy on my washers with HA for a few weeks now. I have mine set to notify when with power usage drops below 3 watts for 3 minutes.
As a guy who always forget the laundry in the machine, which smells if it stays in for too long, using a zigbee power plug changed my life ! My laundry machine is old, it’s not smart, and now, when it’s finished, Alexa notifies me into the whole house, game changer ! But if we’re not home when it finishes, I should add a light color thing to let us know when we go back home… I’m gonna think about that !
I’ve had hue for years, but since I installed home assistant, à sonoff zigbee key, a hole new world opened for me :D thanks to Aqara cheap sensors, and some nous A1Z smart plugs, my house is more efficient than ever :D Thx for your vids, you’re one of my favorite content creators on RUclips, you are precise, your voice sounds good (sometime music is too loud for my liking, but it’s getting better), and your projects don’t follow the usual home assistant/smart home lines as the others creators, it’s freshening ! Thx ;)
You could swap the door sensor for a mmwave presence sensor then set a duration to turn the light off if presence is not detected within a certain timeframe. I clicked on this video because I just got a couple plugs and vibration sensors in the mail and are looking for ways to use them. My use for the plugs was the same as you turn my dumb washer into a "smart" washer. I was looking at the real time power usage of my washer as I watched the video. Have fun! Learning about home assistant and the devices you can use with it is fun!
Im glad you enjoyed! This could be a full Aqara Only setup or you could do use Eve which has light switches, power monitor and door/window sensors too. The only thing missing would be vibration sensor🤔
Awesome content… thank you for sharing. I use a Sonoff S31 to monitor power usage. To get there I flashed with TASMOTA which is automatically added to home assistant.
Same experience with the vibration sensor. Hadn't thought about using the temp sensor. Will give this a try. Thanks for explaining your experience with the sensor.
Subbed! I tried and gave up on this for now, settled for Switchbots that press the on/off button of the washer and drier via Alexa voice command and then created Routines for each cycle type/duration, so that i say the cycle type to Alexa and then she turns the washer on and auto sets a timer and or notifies you after the standard duration length of that cycle, it's a very primitive system but the best i can think of for now I enjoyed the journey, even if the end result wasn't wife win over lol
I have the vibration sensor and have had mixed results. The vibration doesn't always work, but when used with a Conbee stick and Home Assistant, the device shows temperature. So, automation based on temp works. I hadn't thought about a light alert.
Thank you for the detailed explanations. Even though I haven't tried myself, I agree that the vibration sensor being triggered constantly on the dryer during a full cycle might drain its battery. If I had to set this up, I think I would go with 2 smart plugs to watch the energy consumption on both the washing machine (like you did) and the dryer.
I put the Aqara door sensors on my washer and dryer door so that I know that they have been opened, if not a reminder is sent to rooms that have presence in them or just to my daughters rooms if they are home.
I thought about putting sensors on the doors but I’m not a big fan on hoe they look. However I don’t see another way to signal if the clothes were taken 🤔
This is a great video. Looks like a professional advertisement. I'm also working on automating our laundry room. Right now I have zigbee plug that monitors the output of the washing machine and sends a message to Google to let us know when the washing cycle is complete. My wife loves it so far. The next 2 issues I'm working to fix is (1) An alert for when the dryer is finished and (2) An alert for when clothes are left in the washing machine after the washing cycle is complete. The dryer has its own line in the fuse box so I'm thinking of getting something that can monitor the power consumption from there. As for the washing machine I wanted to put a door sensor on the washing machine door itself. So once the automation detects that the washing cycle is finished it will keep alerting every hour until the washing machine door is open. But the way the doors are on the washing machine I think the sensors will accidentally get knocked off. Plus I don't want to have to deal with changing batteries. So I think maybe I'll just try using a motion sensor for the whole laundry room.
Thanks, i appreciate the compliment. I also think your setup is pretty solid. I would love to use an energy monitor for the dryer but since they use a different type of outlet, finding a zigbee energy monitoring device for it has been dismal. The temperature monitor has been helpful about 75% of the time but it think the 25% where it fails is due to my quick guestimates on what the temperature would do. If you do manage to reliably monitor the dry for when it starts and stops you shouldn't need a door sensor for the washer. For 99% of cases your dryer can only start if the washer finishes so you can create an automation that alerts you about the clothes in the washer until the dryer starts. What do you think?
My washer has no buzzer or beep or anything to notify us that it is complete (which is insane). I made it smart with the Aeotec Multipurpose Sensor on Zigbee2MQTT (home assistant). It detects vibration and open/close. If no vibration for 3 minutes, cycle complete, and led turns red. Basically the same setup on the dryer. Throwing the idea out there.
Regarding higher voltage power lines, I'd suggest looking into current monitoring clamps instead of an energy monitoring plug. This should give you the ability to more accurately see whether the machine is on or not, and since they can be wall powered it doesn't have to worry about battery. That said, it's a good set of automations! Since we have gas dryers at home I was able to slap some energy monitoring plugs (both ThirdReality Zigbee energy monitoring plugs) on both the washer and dryer, then using current sensing determine when each machine was turned on. Since we have multiple people using the machines who might not want to always receive notifications about when they turn on and off, I added some NFC tags to the front of the machine using blutack and set up automations in iOS to change person-specific helper variables. Then, when the machines turn on and off, an automation checks each set of variables and determines whether it should send one of three notifications to the given person's phone (washer off, dryer off, or both off). It's entirely unobtrusive if you don't use it, but if you do it's useful for knowing when you can start the next load.
I would use a motion sensor in the hallway and a light strip on the ceiling in front of the door. So that when the motion detector picks up motion, the light will be turned on and set to green. Once the light is on and green, it stays on until the contact sensor is triggered, which is how you acknowledge to the system that you got the message. This way the light strip doesn't actually come on until a person walks near the closet. Saving the life of the strip and energy costs
Definitely good ideas for improvements. I may set something similar for the light strip in the bedroom but it uses adaptive lights so it might be a bit tricky 🤔
Notifications on smartphones is also a nice addition to let someone know about an event. In case you missed both the lightstrip and the smart speaker announcements ^^
Nice work bruh! Similar to how I'm setting mine up. Love the voice announcements. Here's a couple of ideas: 1. The matter plug should work directly with the homekit integration as long as you dont do the matter setup (e.g. on your phone). YMMV, i dont know about that plug but I've had success doing that with the tplink matter plugs. 2. The light strip could fit on the door track, somewhere between the door and the frame, and then you could adjust brightness to keep them from making the hall look like christmas every time your laundry is done. Even cleaner is if theres some kind of wifi-connected battery powered single LED box you could stick on the wall next to the laundry room (I can make one but not everybody wants to be 3d printing and soldering). Maybe replace one hall bulb with a smart bulb? 3. Use a smart plug for both the washer and dryer (you might need a heavy duty plug if you have an electric dryer). Run cycles on both, and then in HA check the metrics for the first significant (>5 or 10w so you dont trigger if the display is turned on) jump in power (Pj), and then the minimum usage through the cycle until it hits zero when the cycle is done (Pm). These are your paramters for start (power above Pj means it started), and power below Pm means it ended. 4. If yall tend to forget clothes in the wash, add a door sensor to the washer itself or use the door sensor already on the closet as another gate so you have washer running (power spike) > washer done (power drop) > washer emptied and ready to go (door opened and closed). I guess you could also use the dryer state for this, although there's some edge cases.
Great video and a great way to solve a problem. I did this and have been using the TP Link TP 110 and they work really good, just sometimes they seem to drop out and need to be turned off and back on again but this is a wifi issue I think. I even have it so the washer node checks the weather and see if it can be put on the line. i have just have it notify to Telegram that its all done as its just me so easy to be told.
@@technithusiast I have a unifi dream machine that I use to split my IOT devices on to its own networks. I have some issues with some smartlife/Tuya devices that don't like that but TPLink has been fine with it.
Well, it’s amazing that you don’t know anything more about automation but I use the echo and buy Amazon. I have a GE smart washer and a GE smart dryer both work through the apps I can do things like ask it to wash the blouse that has wine spilled on it and it knows what to do, as far as the two devices they’re connected via Bluetooth so they communicate to each other alerts come through my phone that can come through a number of different ways I can run automations. I also have lighting set up so that when I walk into the small little area. The light turns on stays on until I leave and then it turns off moments later, these are simple automations it doesn’t take much to do it all so I don’t know maybe it’s home assistant that you’re working with that’s a pain but there’s a lot of great devices out there. You just need to learn how to use them and which ones are the best Eco system for my money which I’ve spent a lot I would stick with Amazon and their products.
Sounds like you’ve been a fan of smart home technology for a while and more open with your requirements. I started my smart-home journey recently so, it’s not prudent to upgrade just for the smart capabilities when my existing equipment works great. As a result i have to get creative which makes for a much more fun and exciting story 😁 Something else you might already know from working closely with technology is considering privacy and security. The off-the-shelf consumer equipment is VERY easy because companies abstract all the hard inconvenient parts away from the consumer by connecting your home to their servers. What these means is your daily habits are now their data. Additionally, if that company goes under, your smart device becomes a potato. Home assistant puts all the power in your hands and let’s you create your own smart-home ecosystem that lives and dies with you. Using home assistant you can create automations more fantastic and fine-tuned to your habits and lifestyle without waiting for a company to make it possible. The trade off of course is that you’re now responsible for all the hard inconvenient parts. But I don’t mind it. It’s far more fun to create a system like this for yourself than to simply adopt whatever a company thinks I need and I think many people like yourself feel the same!
Our laundry room is in the basement and this gives us a bigger bang for the automation. I use two Zigbee smart plugs from Aliexpress for the washer and dryer. Home Assistant then notifies us on our phones and Apple Watches when a cycle is finished. We haven’t automated the light. Where I do so, I use cheap motion sensors.
@@technithusiast For both the washer and dryer, I am using Aubess 100-240V 20A Max Load Zigbee 3.0 Smart Plugs. Since I live in Europe, they have the European plug. I bought a pack of 5 of them for 33 EUR including shipping. About 36 USD.
This was a great video. It makes me want to try it at my house. I have to admit I don’t use home assistant, due to the complexity. Do you ever have videos on using Alexa routines for us novice.
I’m glad you enjoyed it! I don’t have Alexa devices so I don’t create those types of videos but you do bring up an interesting aspect I could explore 🤔
I use to power plugs with power monitoring, one per device. I also have door sensors on the appliances to know when someone's opened the doors of the appliances. I then have automations that will mention when the washer and/or dryer are done and will "nag" every few minutes/hours telling me when it was actually done and that someone needs to move the clothes or fold them and put them away. I may put a door sensor on the laundry room door and have it turn on the light automatically - and since they're in the laundry room, if after 2-3 minutes they don't do something with the wash, they should get a "since you're in the laundry room, how about taking care of the clothes?" message.
Great job - and a great demo/overlay - it almost seems like a professional ad for Aqara! I'm doing pretty much the same thing - though implementing it with two power monitoring plugs instead. Along with that I'm using text-to-speech for notifications instead of changing the colours of the lights.
Nice! The lights are pretty useful for us since the one time verbal reminder isn’t enough. I have a question for u: what kind of smart plug are u using for your dryer?
I'm using plugs from Heiman - @@technithusiast - for the dryer and washing machine. I'm using a different one (Hive) for the dishwasher but they all do pretty much the same thing.
Cool automations! Glad to see I'm not the only one who realizes mid implementation that my plans aren't going to, um well, plan. Work arounds are what makes it fun for me. ThanksTN P.S. I've had really good results with the Sonoff S31 plug with energy consumption data using the eWeLink app which can even be displayed on a PC in a browser. I believe it works with HA dashboards as well
Another very useful video. Thank you so much. I wouldn't use temperature sensors on the dryer as it could take a while to cool down. I've got some plugs that have energy monitoring capabilities so I can see when the current drops to 0+/-. It would work except that I can't get my automations to work. I'm struggling with getting more advanced automations to work due to my lack of knowledge. I really like the idea of Node Red but again, I just can't figure out how to use it
Have you thought about taking time out of the equation for the door sensor? Just keep the light on when the sensor is open and turn the light off when the sensor is closed?
yes! the issue is that the sensor seems to be build for short burst of vibration. If vibrations last more than a minute it will shut off anywhere from 1 - 5 minutes before triggering again. It was too spurradic and inconsistent to do it based on vibrations alone unfortunately 😞
I didn't have a lot of joy with trying to use the Aqara vibration sensor, just not sensitive enough. I ended up using power consumption to determine when the machine was on or finished the cycle.
@@technithusiast Hi I'm using the Athom power monitoring smart plug I believe it is available in the US for about $14.. What is good about it for UK users is the UK version has a 16A rating and is fused. It can be used within Homeassistant using the Tasmota Integration..
Great video. Right now all I have for the laundry room is a door sensor to turn on the light. Wife hated the motion sensor. I have the aqara products all over the house, what I was wondering about is your zigbee dongle does it interfer with the aqara hub and which dongle did you use? I just ordered the skyconnect from the home assistant folks.
I like the aqara hub because it’s incredibly simple and provides another way for me to check on the devices but the hub will limit what I see so if I want to do advance automations I integrate it via zigbee. I haven’t had any significant interference besides just having devices too far out of range. I use the deconz dongle.
Don't use Skyconnect with Aqara devices, you're asking for a bad time. I run two Zigbee networks because of this, Aqara devices run on the second one with a Deconz stick.
my dad changed router which required me to re setup some quality of life automations I did for him (like motion sensors in the stairwell for example). I asked him if he actually used them, and if it was worth me going to the effort of setting it all up again. He shrugged and said "well I don't need them, the old fashioned way worked my whole life. but I guess I'd rather have them than not have them?" sounds like your missus and my dad have that in common 😅
Lololol sounds about right. But it makes it all the more satisfying when you get the automation “just right” that when it breaks (like when someone changes the router 😉) they call you asking to fix it. #GiveAComplimentWithoutGivingACompliment
I know getting wife approval is super tough, so getting anything other than the side eye look is a home run in my book. Nice job showing the good and the bad with setting up a new solution, and not just the finished product. Its about the journey not the destination with some of these projects. I noticed that Ke's voice is a bit robotic. Are you using a commercial text to speech engine (amazon, google, etc) or is that the built in home assistant audio? One day I was annoyed with my setup, I ended up configuring a Mimic3 text to speech engine running on docker and the mary tts plugin for my solution. Lastly good job leveling out the audio, no headphone surprises today.
Hahaha definitely got a little better than the side-eye but I know what u mean. For the text to speech I’m using the default google tts voice but I’ll probably update it later once I see where HA year of voice end up!
Great video! Ive been hoping to smarten up our laundry room a while now. Im new to home assistant and thr possibilities ive seen so far are 😳😯😆 what was that screen with the graphical automation layout!? Node red?🤔 That looks super slick to create in. Edit: also thise aquara plugs look great. I wonder if they make z-wave versions.
I don’t think aqara has a zwave version but there should be a brand somewhere that has one. As for the graphical screen - yeah that’s node-red. It is incredible. It has its flaws like every other system but it’s soo useful I wouldn’t do it any differently.
I like the energy monitoring plug idea and may use that in my laundry closet as well. They way I did the doors was to use the contact sensor open event to turn the lights on and the close event to turn them off. We have double doors that obstruct the hallway when left open, so there is an incentive to close them when not in use, hence no timer or presence detection for us. When I first installed this, my wife said it was silly because the light switch is right there on the wall. It's a shallow closet so the switch is never out of reach if you are working in it. Arguably, it was a trivial automation. I took the jokes in stride and pointed out that it may not help but it didn't hurt and *I* like it even if she doesn't so we left it in place. Cut to a year later when the open/close sensor battery died. She walked into my office and announced "The laundry light is broken and I have to use the switch. FIX IT!" Spouse Approval Factor 10 achievement unlocked!
This is a great story! I have a friend staying with us and she loves how you don’t have to think about it how it just works! Sometimes the approval won’t manifest until it’s missing (or broken) 😛
Great video! Can you post your automations? Im trying to accomplish something similar with the alerts when the machines are done but they're not working. My smart plug power usage is showing up in HA, but it just never triggers using the current wattage being consumed. A note on the Aqara temp sensors. I have a few connected directly with Zigbee to HA (not using the Aqara hub or app) and have noticed they can take a while to update, sometimes showing the temperature was last recorded almost 60 minutes ago. Curious how they work out for you in this situation.
Same. The temperature can be very finicky at times. I think something more reliable would be to use an energy monitor as that has been really accurate for me but I haven’t found a good high powered energy monitored smart plug yet. But I’ll put up the automation examples in a few days :)
@@technithusiast Thanks! I'm using a Kasa HS110 plug and it's reporting into HA just fine, so maybe I'm just not using the right options on the automation. I have some more laundry to do this weekend so maybe I'll mess with the automation before the next load. 👍🏼
I can't. Dryers draw a lot of energy and uses a 4-legged plug (220v-240v) outlet. There are no energy monitoring smart plug i know of that works with that type of plug. I've been asking around so if you know one that would work please lemme know!
@@technithusiastevery person I've seen says that even when they get something that can handle the dryer, it's usually slow and inaccurate enough to not really be worth it. Like the Shelly EMs for instance.
I am curious about adding the sensors directly using zigbee, cause the product page said it requires the hub. Did you get it added to HA without using the hub? That’ll be a deciding factor for me since I don’t want to get a hub for it to work…
They say you need a hub but I had the aqara cube, two aqara buttons, and an aqara light switch before I got the hub and they were all able to connect straight into home assistant via the zigbee dongle with zero problems. The downside is that you won’t be able to update the firmware if you go this route.
So I can share some cool insight here as this is something I've been working on for months. I was lucky enough to buy the original Smart Dry and use it before they shut down, it's a SUPER fancy accelerometer, temperature, and humidity sensor. I used the Home Assistant community instructions with an ESP 32 board to consume it's BLE signal and decode it. Either way the humidity is the most important thing here compared to temperature. You can measure deviations on the humidity to figure out when are your clothes actually dry. From here I have a single HA automation with triggers for is the dryness level (Humidity) over 75% for 5 minutes, or did the dryer just stop. And then the logic dicphers if it should alert me to manually restart the dryer or should it stop it for me. I then paired this with and ESP32 board acting as an active Bluetooth proxy which trips a physical switchbot button to manually pause my dryer for me so my clothes don't over dry. This is because my dryer has basic "smart" functions built in for dryness but no IoT and it's built in functions are quite bad IMHO. The Smartdry with logic is leeps and bounds better. I also have this tied in with a geofence automation to turn off the dryer if I leave home, etc. Last night I setup a Bedtime DnD virtual switch for the dryer to not alert me verbally but only via my phone. I also flash some main living area lights, and I have a Z-Wave switch in the laundry room which turns on when the dryer or washer is done. I have a motion sensor next to it since I never close the laundry room door and after sunset it sets the lights to 15% to not blind me, and 100% during the day. For the washer one piece I use a Smartthings original energy monitoring plug with ZHA. My laundry room is so smart now, the only thing left is to put a contact sensor on the washer and dryer to alert me when I'm being lazy and haven't folded the clothes, or moved the clothes over. I think with a bit of logic I could make it to tell me to move the washer clothes over until the dryer is actually done and etc. Happy to talk more on this!
These are some really solid ideas. There was another comment here that talked about house they would decrement the tide pod count every time the washer started and would send messages to the wife when it was lows you viewers have great ideas to learn from
@@technithusiast Thanks! I must say I found your channel when you were doing the ChatGPT integrations, you're clearly a dev in your day job and I love the technical aspect of the channel. That's interesting on the detergent counter. It would be even cooler if they used an API based shopping list to programmatically add them. I really want to measure the dryer power usage and total up all the utility costs.
Yup. Software engineer by day, smart home enthusiast by night 😬. I am working next on the API idea. If it works out it’s gonna introduce something very interesting to the smarthome space 😁
My wife is the same way lol I'm like, look how cool this is 😁. She's like, it was pointless. I can just flip a light switch off while walking out a door lol... 😢
I take the L. at best i may connect it to the aqara hub initially to make everything current but then i would connect it via zigbee. But I only connect it to zigbee if i really need the extra control, otherwise I keep everything paired to the app for dual control.
thanks! I wanted to use a plug but i could find a good plug that could handled High power output (220v - 240v) and have energy monitoring and also use zigbee for me to see it in home assistant. I hear that there are som shelly relay that could possibly do this but i need a plug as i cannot really access the outlet freely to install something like a relay
I wasn't excited about Matter before this. You've definitely made me less excited. It can't do power metering? And therefore can't automate based upon power? I'm using power metering for quite a few automatons right now.
@@technithusiast I think it's just that. I've been doing home automation since 2012 and my dad had X10 units when I was a kid. "Hype" is the only way to get people's money whom already have a working system and traps new entrants into a new ecosystem. If it does exactly what you want and you have no complaints, then why change. "Oooooo new shiny!?" My personal opinion is that Z-wave works and has worked for most of everyone's needs, but because it's a standard it doesn't help trap people into a brand. And then it's more cost effective to just "wifi it" and add an app so you can get even more data and brand entrapment. Anyway, keep up the videos. I like the straight forward honest down to earth style.
My dryer uses the 4leg high power outlets so there are no smart plugs for these which is why I went with the vibration sensor. I wished there was a low-power heat and water resistant gyroscope that would alert me when motion stops. That would be helpful.
I still can't get my vibration sensor to pick up any useful vibrations. I can only get it to read unreasonable shaking. Tried a few places with no success.
Yup I experienced the same. It felt reasonable to think that a vibration sensor would work but it’s inconsistent. Try a temperature sensor and see if that works better for you. The only downside is that it will take a little longer for the states to change since temperature is slower but I do find it more reliable.
The video link below will give you the best context of what Ke is :) GPT TOOK OVER MY HOME - I learned why it's SCARY. ruclips.net/video/4ZxUsLnDjTA/видео.html
I use a shelly EM to monitor dryer. It’s on the heat element phase of the 220. It’s flawless. Pro tip. Use a list of announcement text strings and a randomizer to choose an announcement that changes each time. I also log the start/stop times of both the washer and dryer. I use this to determine if the washer finished it’s load while the dryer was still running. So i don’t needlessly alert when nothing can be actually accomplished. One automation i have that got high wife marks was tracking laundry pod inventory. Just a number helper and a decrement when washer starts. When pods get lower than 5 my wife gets a text each day with the current value. Then she can view and enter new value in her app dashboard. Same for dishwasher pods and dog food when they get low.
Daaammn you got high marks from me!! I gotta try some of that out. I have another automation idea I’m working on that would take your ideas to another level but I definitely wanna try those out first.
Thanks for the heads up. I’ll ask aqara’s technical team if washers fall outside their use cases. This would be great to call out to viewers who watch this so they don’t burn their house down.
Yeah, I find it isn’t the greatest for this situation. It’s mildly passable and can get the job done if u write the automation well enough. The better choice would be a smart plug.
14:50 she's probably used to this so just chalks it up to being part of your charm without realizing you're emotionally and psychologically abusing her. This was an informative video on the intended topic as well, so thank you. As for attempting to prompt your wife to experience your hobby similarly to how you do...grow up. She's giving you room to be yourself but you're only allowing her enough room to validate you (and figuratively conveying to her that she can talk to the hand as soon as she brings any healthy adult validation because you can only be acceptably validated by others (problem number two) who must not separately value their own equal autonomy (problem number one). You already came out ahead with her insofar as she didn't tell you to stop creeping and soliciting praise. And your response to her polite consideration was anything but. So I'm telling you this because you're trying to make something happen that never will (with anyone), and when it doesn't it's not going to be her fault. She will not have "changed" just because you're no longer idealizing her (any fantasy about who someone else is inevitably goes off script despite having only deprived them of joy in their own personhood all along). Footstep-following is how children who have not been encouraged to develop their own interests anyway flatter infantile self-absorbed parents for at least whatever type of pseudoapproval that can get them. Because who would have any initiative left anyway after being only permitted opportunities for which that parent could steal credit upon one's efforts succeeding? Rhetorical. So even though you'll probably destroy any interests and opportunities that bring your daughter favorable attention you'll still be as jealous and fuck her up as unbelievably as you would your wife for daring to enjoy home automation as much as you. Is what it is
@@technithusiast I was wondering if there is any way to pull out error codes and get alerts sent to me. Like if I set this up at a customers house. Since I do appliance repair but I also do building automation. So I was thinking if there was a way I could have automation send me alerts for error codes when customers experience problems
So you are able to make recording (both video and audio) with telegram however when you send it, the data will not come through (home assistant doesn't see it). But i don't think this is Telegram's fault. Even when i send an audio file via Home Assistant's webhook and http nodes it seems to ignore the data. I suspect im missing a detail in how Home assistant works which is blocking me from seeing this data.
With nothing but respect, your wife has such a beautiful, commanding essence!
😎
I’ve been using the Eve energy on my washers with HA for a few weeks now. I have mine set to notify when with power usage drops below 3 watts for 3 minutes.
I’m glad it works! Are you using the eve app for the automation?
@@technithusiast no. I added them to HomeKit first then used the matter beta in HA.
As a guy who always forget the laundry in the machine, which smells if it stays in for too long, using a zigbee power plug changed my life ! My laundry machine is old, it’s not smart, and now, when it’s finished, Alexa notifies me into the whole house, game changer ! But if we’re not home when it finishes, I should add a light color thing to let us know when we go back home… I’m gonna think about that !
I feel you on that. I’m really enjoying the zigbee plugs too!
I’ve had hue for years, but since I installed home assistant, à sonoff zigbee key, a hole new world opened for me :D thanks to Aqara cheap sensors, and some nous A1Z smart plugs, my house is more efficient than ever :D
Thx for your vids, you’re one of my favorite content creators on RUclips, you are precise, your voice sounds good (sometime music is too loud for my liking, but it’s getting better), and your projects don’t follow the usual home assistant/smart home lines as the others creators, it’s freshening !
Thx ;)
I appreciate that and thanks for the feedback! Trying my best to explore different ways to look at smart home tech so I’m glad you enjoy 😬
Using Node RED. nice. I haven't made the leap. But cool to see.
Node red hits different. I talked about it when I first started the channel:
Why I Like Node Red
ruclips.net/video/cDedXPCIWas/видео.html
Love the SDLC references! Nice job whether she's wow'd or not, that's why it's iterative!
Great project. Thanks for sharing. Wife approval factor is important!!
Thanks and you’re so right!
You could swap the door sensor for a mmwave presence sensor then set a duration to turn the light off if presence is not detected within a certain timeframe. I clicked on this video because I just got a couple plugs and vibration sensors in the mail and are looking for ways to use them. My use for the plugs was the same as you turn my dumb washer into a "smart" washer. I was looking at the real time power usage of my washer as I watched the video. Have fun! Learning about home assistant and the devices you can use with it is fun!
It is pretty fun. The idea of being able to use simple data like power usage to run automations or gain useful insights is fascinating!
I loved this video. Now with the new Aqara lightstrip, I feel that this entire thing can be done locally with Aqara automations.
Im glad you enjoyed! This could be a full Aqara Only setup or you could do use Eve which has light switches, power monitor and door/window sensors too. The only thing missing would be vibration sensor🤔
Awesome content… thank you for sharing.
I use a Sonoff S31 to monitor power usage. To get there I flashed with TASMOTA which is automatically added to home assistant.
Thanks for sharing! I’ll look into those!
Same experience with the vibration sensor. Hadn't thought about using the temp sensor. Will give this a try. Thanks for explaining your experience with the sensor.
Glad it helped!
Subbed! I tried and gave up on this for now, settled for Switchbots that press the on/off button of the washer and drier via Alexa voice command and then created Routines for each cycle type/duration, so that i say the cycle type to Alexa and then she turns the washer on and auto sets a timer and or notifies you after the standard duration length of that cycle, it's a very primitive system but the best i can think of for now
I enjoyed the journey, even if the end result wasn't wife win over lol
Thanks for the sub and encouragement. Sometimes we get ideas and they don’t work out and I think that’s what makes this exciting and relatable.
I have the vibration sensor and have had mixed results. The vibration doesn't always work, but when used with a Conbee stick and Home Assistant, the device shows temperature. So, automation based on temp works. I hadn't thought about a light alert.
Yeah I resorted to the temperature sensor on it too! At the time, I really thought the vibration would work 😪
I use the led's on our light switches to say when the garage is open, or there is a package on the porch.
Thank you for the detailed explanations.
Even though I haven't tried myself, I agree that the vibration sensor being triggered constantly on the dryer during a full cycle might drain its battery.
If I had to set this up, I think I would go with 2 smart plugs to watch the energy consumption on both the washing machine (like you did) and the dryer.
I couldn’t find a good energy monitoring plug that fits a higher output socket. But when I do I’ll update the video
Your wife is awesome! I hope we get to see more of her :) It sounds like she gives honest and tough reviews :)
yeah. She's a tough critique so i know if any of my automations receive praise, it has to be gold 😁
I put the Aqara door sensors on my washer and dryer door so that I know that they have been opened, if not a reminder is sent to rooms that have presence in them or just to my daughters rooms if they are home.
I thought about putting sensors on the doors but I’m not a big fan on hoe they look. However I don’t see another way to signal if the clothes were taken 🤔
@@technithusiast on mine I put them where the latch is and the are mostly hidden
This is a great video. Looks like a professional advertisement. I'm also working on automating our laundry room. Right now I have zigbee plug that monitors the output of the washing machine and sends a message to Google to let us know when the washing cycle is complete. My wife loves it so far. The next 2 issues I'm working to fix is (1) An alert for when the dryer is finished and (2) An alert for when clothes are left in the washing machine after the washing cycle is complete.
The dryer has its own line in the fuse box so I'm thinking of getting something that can monitor the power consumption from there. As for the washing machine I wanted to put a door sensor on the washing machine door itself. So once the automation detects that the washing cycle is finished it will keep alerting every hour until the washing machine door is open. But the way the doors are on the washing machine I think the sensors will accidentally get knocked off. Plus I don't want to have to deal with changing batteries. So I think maybe I'll just try using a motion sensor for the whole laundry room.
Thanks, i appreciate the compliment. I also think your setup is pretty solid. I would love to use an energy monitor for the dryer but since they use a different type of outlet, finding a zigbee energy monitoring device for it has been dismal. The temperature monitor has been helpful about 75% of the time but it think the 25% where it fails is due to my quick guestimates on what the temperature would do.
If you do manage to reliably monitor the dry for when it starts and stops you shouldn't need a door sensor for the washer. For 99% of cases your dryer can only start if the washer finishes so you can create an automation that alerts you about the clothes in the washer until the dryer starts. What do you think?
I think this is so awesome!!! I want all of these things in my laundry room!!
Give it a try!
@@technithusiast I am still trying to figure out how to set up home assistant 🤦♀️ maybe one day 🙏
Well done! Subscribed. Very detailed. My wife is also tech averse. Little room for error in deployment.
I really glad you enjoyed. We should probably start a support group for members with tech averse spouses 😛
My washer has no buzzer or beep or anything to notify us that it is complete (which is insane). I made it smart with the Aeotec Multipurpose Sensor on Zigbee2MQTT (home assistant). It detects vibration and open/close. If no vibration for 3 minutes, cycle complete, and led turns red. Basically the same setup on the dryer. Throwing the idea out there.
For the dryer, an energy sensor for a 30amp plug was a no-go because they’re rare and expensive.
i would love to use an energy monitoring plug for the dryer but it'😔s hard to find one
Regarding higher voltage power lines, I'd suggest looking into current monitoring clamps instead of an energy monitoring plug. This should give you the ability to more accurately see whether the machine is on or not, and since they can be wall powered it doesn't have to worry about battery.
That said, it's a good set of automations! Since we have gas dryers at home I was able to slap some energy monitoring plugs (both ThirdReality Zigbee energy monitoring plugs) on both the washer and dryer, then using current sensing determine when each machine was turned on. Since we have multiple people using the machines who might not want to always receive notifications about when they turn on and off, I added some NFC tags to the front of the machine using blutack and set up automations in iOS to change person-specific helper variables. Then, when the machines turn on and off, an automation checks each set of variables and determines whether it should send one of three notifications to the given person's phone (washer off, dryer off, or both off). It's entirely unobtrusive if you don't use it, but if you do it's useful for knowing when you can start the next load.
I would use a motion sensor in the hallway and a light strip on the ceiling in front of the door. So that when the motion detector picks up motion, the light will be turned on and set to green. Once the light is on and green, it stays on until the contact sensor is triggered, which is how you acknowledge to the system that you got the message. This way the light strip doesn't actually come on until a person walks near the closet. Saving the life of the strip and energy costs
Definitely good ideas for improvements. I may set something similar for the light strip in the bedroom but it uses adaptive lights so it might be a bit tricky 🤔
Notifications on smartphones is also a nice addition to let someone know about an event.
In case you missed both the lightstrip and the smart speaker announcements ^^
Nice work bruh! Similar to how I'm setting mine up. Love the voice announcements.
Here's a couple of ideas:
1. The matter plug should work directly with the homekit integration as long as you dont do the matter setup (e.g. on your phone). YMMV, i dont know about that plug but I've had success doing that with the tplink matter plugs.
2. The light strip could fit on the door track, somewhere between the door and the frame, and then you could adjust brightness to keep them from making the hall look like christmas every time your laundry is done. Even cleaner is if theres some kind of wifi-connected battery powered single LED box you could stick on the wall next to the laundry room (I can make one but not everybody wants to be 3d printing and soldering). Maybe replace one hall bulb with a smart bulb?
3. Use a smart plug for both the washer and dryer (you might need a heavy duty plug if you have an electric dryer). Run cycles on both, and then in HA check the metrics for the first significant (>5 or 10w so you dont trigger if the display is turned on) jump in power (Pj), and then the minimum usage through the cycle until it hits zero when the cycle is done (Pm). These are your paramters for start (power above Pj means it started), and power below Pm means it ended.
4. If yall tend to forget clothes in the wash, add a door sensor to the washer itself or use the door sensor already on the closet as another gate so you have washer running (power spike) > washer done (power drop) > washer emptied and ready to go (door opened and closed). I guess you could also use the dryer state for this, although there's some edge cases.
Great video and a great way to solve a problem. I did this and have been using the TP Link TP 110 and they work really good, just sometimes they seem to drop out and need to be turned off and back on again but this is a wifi issue I think. I even have it so the washer node checks the weather and see if it can be put on the line. i have just have it notify to Telegram that its all done as its just me so easy to be told.
I’ve had issues with every Tplink product but I’m not sure if it’s because it’s my Wi-Fi or if it’s just poorly built. 🤷🏾♂️
@@technithusiast I have a unifi dream machine that I use to split my IOT devices on to its own networks. I have some issues with some smartlife/Tuya devices that don't like that but TPLink has been fine with it.
I like that idea of splitting the network for IOT devices. I may look into that for the future.
As a electrician your breaker assumption was funny 😂
lolol I tried my best! it's always a guessing game in there! There's always a surprise with how things are connected
Well, it’s amazing that you don’t know anything more about automation but I use the echo and buy Amazon. I have a GE smart washer and a GE smart dryer both work through the apps I can do things like ask it to wash the blouse that has wine spilled on it and it knows what to do, as far as the two devices they’re connected via Bluetooth so they communicate to each other alerts come through my phone that can come through a number of different ways I can run automations. I also have lighting set up so that when I walk into the small little area. The light turns on stays on until I leave and then it turns off moments later, these are simple automations it doesn’t take much to do it all so I don’t know maybe it’s home assistant that you’re working with that’s a pain but there’s a lot of great devices out there. You just need to learn how to use them and which ones are the best Eco system for my money which I’ve spent a lot I would stick with Amazon and their products.
Sounds like you’ve been a fan of smart home technology for a while and more open with your requirements.
I started my smart-home journey recently so, it’s not prudent to upgrade just for the smart capabilities when my existing equipment works great. As a result i have to get creative which makes for a much more fun and exciting story 😁
Something else you might already know from working closely with technology is considering privacy and security. The off-the-shelf consumer equipment is VERY easy because companies abstract all the hard inconvenient parts away from the consumer by connecting your home to their servers. What these means is your daily habits are now their data. Additionally, if that company goes under, your smart device becomes a potato. Home assistant puts all the power in your hands and let’s you create your own smart-home ecosystem that lives and dies with you. Using home assistant you can create automations more fantastic and fine-tuned to your habits and lifestyle without waiting for a company to make it possible. The trade off of course is that you’re now responsible for all the hard inconvenient parts.
But I don’t mind it. It’s far more fun to create a system like this for yourself than to simply adopt whatever a company thinks I need and I think many people like yourself feel the same!
Hey, this format and style work great for this content. Loving it! Your channel will explode, just keep it up !!
Thanks, I’m glad you enjoyed it! I’ll try to do more like it 👌🏾
Our laundry room is in the basement and this gives us a bigger bang for the automation. I use two Zigbee smart plugs from Aliexpress for the washer and dryer. Home Assistant then notifies us on our phones and Apple Watches when a cycle is finished. We haven’t automated the light. Where I do so, I use cheap motion sensors.
Thanks for sharing! I’m curious… what plug u use for the dryer
@@technithusiast For both the washer and dryer, I am using Aubess 100-240V 20A Max Load Zigbee 3.0 Smart Plugs. Since I live in Europe, they have the European plug. I bought a pack of 5 of them for 33 EUR including shipping. About 36 USD.
Yeah, for some reason we don't have anything like this for the US 😒
This was a great video. It makes me want to try it at my house. I have to admit I don’t use home assistant, due to the complexity. Do you ever have videos on using Alexa routines for us novice.
I’m glad you enjoyed it! I don’t have Alexa devices so I don’t create those types of videos but you do bring up an interesting aspect I could explore 🤔
I use to power plugs with power monitoring, one per device. I also have door sensors on the appliances to know when someone's opened the doors of the appliances. I then have automations that will mention when the washer and/or dryer are done and will "nag" every few minutes/hours telling me when it was actually done and that someone needs to move the clothes or fold them and put them away. I may put a door sensor on the laundry room door and have it turn on the light automatically - and since they're in the laundry room, if after 2-3 minutes they don't do something with the wash, they should get a "since you're in the laundry room, how about taking care of the clothes?" message.
You have a really mature setup! What kind of power monitoring plugs are u using for the dryer?
Great job - and a great demo/overlay - it almost seems like a professional ad for Aqara! I'm doing pretty much the same thing - though implementing it with two power monitoring plugs instead. Along with that I'm using text-to-speech for notifications instead of changing the colours of the lights.
Nice! The lights are pretty useful for us since the one time verbal reminder isn’t enough. I have a question for u: what kind of smart plug are u using for your dryer?
I'm using plugs from Heiman - @@technithusiast - for the dryer and washing machine. I'm using a different one (Hive) for the dishwasher but they all do pretty much the same thing.
Cool automations! Glad to see I'm not the only one who realizes mid implementation that my plans aren't going to, um well, plan. Work arounds are what makes it fun for me. ThanksTN P.S. I've had really good results with the Sonoff S31 plug with energy consumption data using the eWeLink app which can even be displayed on a PC in a browser. I believe it works with HA dashboards as well
I’m glad you like the video and Thanks for the suggestion!!! I’ll check it out.
Another very useful video. Thank you so much.
I wouldn't use temperature sensors on the dryer as it could take a while to cool down.
I've got some plugs that have energy monitoring capabilities so I can see when the current drops to 0+/-.
It would work except that I can't get my automations to work. I'm struggling with getting more advanced automations to work due to my lack of knowledge.
I really like the idea of Node Red but again, I just can't figure out how to use it
I’m finding that viewers outside the US have energy monitoring plugs for their dryers but there’s no good solution here in the US 😞
Have you thought about taking time out of the equation for the door sensor? Just keep the light on when the sensor is open and turn the light off when the sensor is closed?
yes! the issue is that the sensor seems to be build for short burst of vibration. If vibrations last more than a minute it will shut off anywhere from 1 - 5 minutes before triggering again. It was too spurradic and inconsistent to do it based on vibrations alone unfortunately 😞
I didn't have a lot of joy with trying to use the Aqara vibration sensor, just not sensitive enough. I ended up using power consumption to determine when the machine was on or finished the cycle.
A lot of people are saying the same thing about the vibration sensor. What kind of plug are u using for the dryer?
@@technithusiast Hi I'm using the Athom power monitoring smart plug I believe it is available in the US for about $14.. What is good about it for UK users is the UK version has a 16A rating and is fused. It can be used within Homeassistant using the Tasmota Integration..
Great video. Right now all I have for the laundry room is a door sensor to turn on the light. Wife hated the motion sensor. I have the aqara products all over the house, what I was wondering about is your zigbee dongle does it interfer with the aqara hub and which dongle did you use? I just ordered the skyconnect from the home assistant folks.
I like the aqara hub because it’s incredibly simple and provides another way for me to check on the devices but the hub will limit what I see so if I want to do advance automations I integrate it via zigbee. I haven’t had any significant interference besides just having devices too far out of range. I use the deconz dongle.
Don't use Skyconnect with Aqara devices, you're asking for a bad time. I run two Zigbee networks because of this, Aqara devices run on the second one with a Deconz stick.
my dad changed router which required me to re setup some quality of life automations I did for him (like motion sensors in the stairwell for example). I asked him if he actually used them, and if it was worth me going to the effort of setting it all up again. He shrugged and said "well I don't need them, the old fashioned way worked my whole life. but I guess I'd rather have them than not have them?"
sounds like your missus and my dad have that in common 😅
Lololol sounds about right. But it makes it all the more satisfying when you get the automation “just right” that when it breaks (like when someone changes the router 😉) they call you asking to fix it. #GiveAComplimentWithoutGivingACompliment
I know getting wife approval is super tough, so getting anything other than the side eye look is a home run in my book. Nice job showing the good and the bad with setting up a new solution, and not just the finished product. Its about the journey not the destination with some of these projects.
I noticed that Ke's voice is a bit robotic. Are you using a commercial text to speech engine (amazon, google, etc) or is that the built in home assistant audio? One day I was annoyed with my setup, I ended up configuring a Mimic3 text to speech engine running on docker and the mary tts plugin for my solution.
Lastly good job leveling out the audio, no headphone surprises today.
Hahaha definitely got a little better than the side-eye but I know what u mean. For the text to speech I’m using the default google tts voice but I’ll probably update it later once I see where HA year of voice end up!
Great video! Ive been hoping to smarten up our laundry room a while now. Im new to home assistant and thr possibilities ive seen so far are 😳😯😆 what was that screen with the graphical automation layout!? Node red?🤔 That looks super slick to create in.
Edit: also thise aquara plugs look great. I wonder if they make z-wave versions.
I don’t think aqara has a zwave version but there should be a brand somewhere that has one. As for the graphical screen - yeah that’s node-red. It is incredible. It has its flaws like every other system but it’s soo useful I wouldn’t do it any differently.
@@technithusiast awesome thx. I have a few zooz switches. I bet they have smart plugs.
👍 going to look up a vid how to get node red in my HA 😁
I like the energy monitoring plug idea and may use that in my laundry closet as well. They way I did the doors was to use the contact sensor open event to turn the lights on and the close event to turn them off. We have double doors that obstruct the hallway when left open, so there is an incentive to close them when not in use, hence no timer or presence detection for us.
When I first installed this, my wife said it was silly because the light switch is right there on the wall. It's a shallow closet so the switch is never out of reach if you are working in it. Arguably, it was a trivial automation. I took the jokes in stride and pointed out that it may not help but it didn't hurt and *I* like it even if she doesn't so we left it in place.
Cut to a year later when the open/close sensor battery died. She walked into my office and announced "The laundry light is broken and I have to use the switch. FIX IT!" Spouse Approval Factor 10 achievement unlocked!
This is a great story! I have a friend staying with us and she loves how you don’t have to think about it how it just works! Sometimes the approval won’t manifest until it’s missing (or broken) 😛
Great video! Can you post your automations? Im trying to accomplish something similar with the alerts when the machines are done but they're not working. My smart plug power usage is showing up in HA, but it just never triggers using the current wattage being consumed.
A note on the Aqara temp sensors. I have a few connected directly with Zigbee to HA (not using the Aqara hub or app) and have noticed they can take a while to update, sometimes showing the temperature was last recorded almost 60 minutes ago. Curious how they work out for you in this situation.
Same. The temperature can be very finicky at times. I think something more reliable would be to use an energy monitor as that has been really accurate for me but I haven’t found a good high powered energy monitored smart plug yet. But I’ll put up the automation examples in a few days :)
@@technithusiast Thanks! I'm using a Kasa HS110 plug and it's reporting into HA just fine, so maybe I'm just not using the right options on the automation. I have some more laundry to do this weekend so maybe I'll mess with the automation before the next load. 👍🏼
Add another Aqara smart plug for the dryer and use that as an indicator.
I can't. Dryers draw a lot of energy and uses a 4-legged plug (220v-240v) outlet. There are no energy monitoring smart plug i know of that works with that type of plug. I've been asking around so if you know one that would work please lemme know!
@@technithusiastevery person I've seen says that even when they get something that can handle the dryer, it's usually slow and inaccurate enough to not really be worth it. Like the Shelly EMs for instance.
If it's not too late. Put the door sensor on the inside of the doors. That way you don't have them visually exposed to the hall.
that’s a good idea! I never thought about that
I am curious about adding the sensors directly using zigbee, cause the product page said it requires the hub. Did you get it added to HA without using the hub? That’ll be a deciding factor for me since I don’t want to get a hub for it to work…
They say you need a hub but I had the aqara cube, two aqara buttons, and an aqara light switch before I got the hub and they were all able to connect straight into home assistant via the zigbee dongle with zero problems. The downside is that you won’t be able to update the firmware if you go this route.
So I can share some cool insight here as this is something I've been working on for months.
I was lucky enough to buy the original Smart Dry and use it before they shut down, it's a SUPER fancy accelerometer, temperature, and humidity sensor. I used the Home Assistant community instructions with an ESP 32 board to consume it's BLE signal and decode it. Either way the humidity is the most important thing here compared to temperature. You can measure deviations on the humidity to figure out when are your clothes actually dry.
From here I have a single HA automation with triggers for is the dryness level (Humidity) over 75% for 5 minutes, or did the dryer just stop. And then the logic dicphers if it should alert me to manually restart the dryer or should it stop it for me. I then paired this with and ESP32 board acting as an active Bluetooth proxy which trips a physical switchbot button to manually pause my dryer for me so my clothes don't over dry. This is because my dryer has basic "smart" functions built in for dryness but no IoT and it's built in functions are quite bad IMHO. The Smartdry with logic is leeps and bounds better. I also have this tied in with a geofence automation to turn off the dryer if I leave home, etc.
Last night I setup a Bedtime DnD virtual switch for the dryer to not alert me verbally but only via my phone. I also flash some main living area lights, and I have a Z-Wave switch in the laundry room which turns on when the dryer or washer is done. I have a motion sensor next to it since I never close the laundry room door and after sunset it sets the lights to 15% to not blind me, and 100% during the day. For the washer one piece I use a Smartthings original energy monitoring plug with ZHA. My laundry room is so smart now, the only thing left is to put a contact sensor on the washer and dryer to alert me when I'm being lazy and haven't folded the clothes, or moved the clothes over. I think with a bit of logic I could make it to tell me to move the washer clothes over until the dryer is actually done and etc.
Happy to talk more on this!
These are some really solid ideas. There was another comment here that talked about house they would decrement the tide pod count every time the washer started and would send messages to the wife when it was lows you viewers have great ideas to learn from
@@technithusiast Thanks! I must say I found your channel when you were doing the ChatGPT integrations, you're clearly a dev in your day job and I love the technical aspect of the channel.
That's interesting on the detergent counter. It would be even cooler if they used an API based shopping list to programmatically add them. I really want to measure the dryer power usage and total up all the utility costs.
Yup. Software engineer by day, smart home enthusiast by night 😬. I am working next on the API idea. If it works out it’s gonna introduce something very interesting to the smarthome space 😁
My wife is the same way lol
I'm like, look how cool this is 😁. She's like, it was pointless. I can just flip a light switch off while walking out a door lol... 😢
Haha story of my life. After a while they can’t go back to the way things were
If you join the sensor to Homeassistant with Zigbee, how can you update the firmware (normally done through the app)? Really good video BTW.
I take the L. at best i may connect it to the aqara hub initially to make everything current but then i would connect it via zigbee. But I only connect it to zigbee if i really need the extra control, otherwise I keep everything paired to the app for dual control.
Nice just wondering , why you also not using a plug for the dryer
thanks! I wanted to use a plug but i could find a good plug that could handled High power output (220v - 240v) and have energy monitoring and also use zigbee for me to see it in home assistant. I hear that there are som shelly relay that could possibly do this but i need a plug as i cannot really access the outlet freely to install something like a relay
I wasn't excited about Matter before this. You've definitely made me less excited. It can't do power metering? And therefore can't automate based upon power? I'm using power metering for quite a few automatons right now.
Yeah. I’m note really sure about the hype train around matter 🤷🏾♂️
@@technithusiast I think it's just that. I've been doing home automation since 2012 and my dad had X10 units when I was a kid. "Hype" is the only way to get people's money whom already have a working system and traps new entrants into a new ecosystem. If it does exactly what you want and you have no complaints, then why change. "Oooooo new shiny!?"
My personal opinion is that Z-wave works and has worked for most of everyone's needs, but because it's a standard it doesn't help trap people into a brand. And then it's more cost effective to just "wifi it" and add an app so you can get even more data and brand entrapment.
Anyway, keep up the videos. I like the straight forward honest down to earth style.
So what if you had a 240 VAC dryer as most are?
My dryer uses the 4leg high power outlets so there are no smart plugs for these which is why I went with the vibration sensor. I wished there was a low-power heat and water resistant gyroscope that would alert me when motion stops. That would be helpful.
I still can't get my vibration sensor to pick up any useful vibrations. I can only get it to read unreasonable shaking. Tried a few places with no success.
Yup I experienced the same. It felt reasonable to think that a vibration sensor would work but it’s inconsistent. Try a temperature sensor and see if that works better for you. The only downside is that it will take a little longer for the states to change since temperature is slower but I do find it more reliable.
What's this "Kay" (Kaa, K, ??) virtual assistant you mentioned?
The video link below will give you the best context of what Ke is :)
GPT TOOK OVER MY HOME - I learned why it's SCARY.
ruclips.net/video/4ZxUsLnDjTA/видео.html
I use a shelly EM to monitor dryer. It’s on the heat element phase of the 220. It’s flawless.
Pro tip. Use a list of announcement text strings and a randomizer to choose an announcement that changes each time.
I also log the start/stop times of both the washer and dryer. I use this to determine if the washer finished it’s load while the dryer was still running. So i don’t needlessly alert when nothing can be actually accomplished.
One automation i have that got high wife marks was tracking laundry pod inventory. Just a number helper and a decrement when washer starts. When pods get lower than 5 my wife gets a text each day with the current value. Then she can view and enter new value in her app dashboard.
Same for dishwasher pods and dog food when they get low.
Daaammn you got high marks from me!! I gotta try some of that out. I have another automation idea I’m working on that would take your ideas to another level but I definitely wanna try those out first.
That's great! What do you use to send a text?
😂 this is a great video. I think you would have got a 10/10 if you automated the washing, drying and folding 🙂🙂
I would win husband of the century 😂😂
How about sending a notification to her smartwatch!? If she even has a smart watch.
Or you can put the light strip in the laundry room, bottom of the machine so you would see a green glow from under the door!
I would the presense Sensor aqara Released
that aqara plug i wonder if it is enough amps to do a washer, i would certainly check, you might have a fire on your hands
Yeah, im no electrician so i can't say definitively but based on the specs, i may be ok 👌🏾
a washer pulls a ton of amps, and those smartplugs usually are made for stuff like lamps and tvs and stuff like that
@@technithusiast
Thanks for the heads up. I’ll ask aqara’s technical team if washers fall outside their use cases. This would be great to call out to viewers who watch this so they don’t burn their house down.
Any issues with the Aqara vibration sensor? I wasn't able to get it to detect my dryer when running. I guess not enough vibration..
Yeah, I find it isn’t the greatest for this situation. It’s mildly passable and can get the job done if u write the automation well enough. The better choice would be a smart plug.
Next. LED lighting and WLED in HA!! Another rabbit hole. 😂
Are u trying to get me in trouble 😅
All that and no water leak sensor on floor?
Nah. Not sure why I feel meh about the water sensors.
14:50 she's probably used to this so just chalks it up to being part of your charm without realizing you're emotionally and psychologically abusing her. This was an informative video on the intended topic as well, so thank you. As for attempting to prompt your wife to experience your hobby similarly to how you do...grow up. She's giving you room to be yourself but you're only allowing her enough room to validate you (and figuratively conveying to her that she can talk to the hand as soon as she brings any healthy adult validation because you can only be acceptably validated by others (problem number two) who must not separately value their own equal autonomy (problem number one). You already came out ahead with her insofar as she didn't tell you to stop creeping and soliciting praise. And your response to her polite consideration was anything but. So I'm telling you this because you're trying to make something happen that never will (with anyone), and when it doesn't it's not going to be her fault. She will not have "changed" just because you're no longer idealizing her (any fantasy about who someone else is inevitably goes off script despite having only deprived them of joy in their own personhood all along).
Footstep-following is how children who have not been encouraged to develop their own interests anyway flatter infantile self-absorbed parents for at least whatever type of pseudoapproval that can get them. Because who would have any initiative left anyway after being only permitted opportunities for which that parent could steal credit upon one's efforts succeeding? Rhetorical. So even though you'll probably destroy any interests and opportunities that bring your daughter favorable attention you'll still be as jealous and fuck her up as unbelievably as you would your wife for daring to enjoy home automation as much as you. Is what it is
🥱 TL;DR
From a service tech standpoint. Do you know of a way I can use Niagara framework to connect to an appliance to pull in error codes?
Thanks for the question but I’m unfamiliar with the Niagara framework? What is it?
@@technithusiastwe use it for building automation
@@technithusiast I was wondering if there is any way to pull out error codes and get alerts sent to me. Like if I set this up at a customers house. Since I do appliance repair but I also do building automation. So I was thinking if there was a way I could have automation send me alerts for error codes when customers experience problems
I`ve got question aboutnyour KE system. Telegram have feature to record messages. Is it works also for KE?
So you are able to make recording (both video and audio) with telegram however when you send it, the data will not come through (home assistant doesn't see it). But i don't think this is Telegram's fault. Even when i send an audio file via Home Assistant's webhook and http nodes it seems to ignore the data. I suspect im missing a detail in how Home assistant works which is blocking me from seeing this data.
@@technithusiastGotcha.Hopefully soon home assistant will get update or whatever:D
the clothes IS done washing.
Nice / Nooiicee 😂