Text Message Laundry Alert System

Doing laundry is one of the necessary evils of living in a clean and ordered society. Though not that hard in itself, it does require you…

Jeremy Cook
7 years ago

Doing laundry is one of the necessary evils of living in a clean and ordered society. Though not that hard in itself, it does require you to handle dirty clothing to put them in the washing machine, then remember to take these wet clothes out before they start to dry out, then put them in the dryer. After all of that, clothes need to be taken out and folded before they wrinkle. Actually, that sounds fairly exhausting, made all the more so by having listen for and respond to device’s audio cue to tell you it’s finished.

In order to make it easier to respond to this equipment appropriately, hacker Cabe Atwell has come up with a system that texts when the washer or dryer has finished its cycle. The device is, literally, a black box that sticks to either type of unit via a pair or rare earth magnets, then monitors movement using an accelerometer hooked up to a Raspberry Pi. When it detects a pause of one minute — allowing time for cycle changes — the Raspberry Pi texts him to let him know that the laundry is done.

Given the portable nature of this project, one could even use it at a public laundry facility if Wi-Fi is available. Perhaps it could even be expanded with a camera to discourage potential clothing thieves in your dorm!

Jeremy Cook
Engineer, maker of random contraptions, love learning about tech. Write for various publications, including Hackster!
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