The washing machine tells me how long it’s going to take when I start it, but it’s often wrong and takes longer. I’ve been descending into the basement countless times, usually from the first floor, only to notice it’s not done yet.

This is just a small thing but I want to share anyways: I just plugged it in a Zigbee plug with power meter and put an entity icon into the default dashboard. It’s conditional and only shows up when power!=0.0.

No more pointless stairs!

Screenshot from a dashboard, showing some entities like temperature etc

Screenshot from the same dashboard, with an additional yellow icon showing its currently using 53W

I have moved it next to the basement temperature but it’s not running right now and I don’t want to forge the screenshot so it’s showing before the change.

  • 4am@lemmy.zipEnglish
    12·
    3 months ago

    Be careful, I’ve fried a dozen smart plugs because the relays aren’t able to cope with induction motor startups.

  • Godnroc@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    3 months ago

    I’ve been don’t similar and it’s so worth the setup time. I through a few helpers together to track who in the house is doing laundry and getting notifications, and that’s been fantastic. I also made helpers to track the status as running or not, which felt better than displaying the wattage.

    • d_k_bo@feddit.orgEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      This looks really great! I think I will start using this when I rebuild my Home Assistant system for my new apartment.

  • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zipEnglish
    3·
    3 months ago

    I’ve always been concerned about putting a washing machine on a smart plug due to the motor starting and stopping so I’ve considered doing something similar but by using a vibration sensor instead and if the vibration sensor doesn’t detect vibration for say five minutes it would trigger the alert