this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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Anybody in his right minds wouldn't connect a washing machine to WiFi in the first place.
I dunno about you, but I would love to get a notification on my watch when the machine has finished it's cycle. The stupid high pinched repeated beeping noise sucks... especially when it's the next door neighbour's washing machine and they're not even home, so it goes on and on for fucking hours. And I'd like to see proper error descriptions on my phone, instead of just "UE" on the timer LCD. WTF is a "UE" error?
If we're going to get really fancy... I'd love to be able to load the machine in the morning, but tell it to actually start running several hours later while I'm at work. I obviously don't want clean wet clothes going mouldy in the washing machine all day... but I don't really want to run the washing machine when I'm home either, because it's noisy.
Remote activation would also be better for the environment and also better for my clothes - I'd use the the slow gentle economy cycle every time if I could remotely trigger it at 3pm on a weekday. I'm definitely not going to use that on the evenings (when I'll be asleep in 3 hours) or on weekends (when I don't know if I'll be home in 3 hours time).
A wifi connected washing machine sounds like a great feature to me, and I'd happily pay for it (with dollars, not with an invasion of privacy). I guess that means I won't be buying an LG.
I do something very similar with my connected dishwasher and Home Assistant. It's way over-engineered due various limitations/odd design choices with the API and the machine itself), but I've got it setup to store the selected program when I press a button on a Hue Tap switch, and then it turns on and runs that program when our off-peak energy rate kicks in - which is better than working out how much to set on the delay timer each evening to start it in the right ballpark.
Of course I've also got it setup to announce the selected program, and that the machine is "armed" via Google Home when the button is pressed, and again each time the door is opened/closed to add new dishes. And it sends notifications to my phone when the program starts (mostly for debugging purposes) and ends.
Like I said, massively over-engineered but it was a fun little project.
I don't have a smart washing machine (yet) but I do have it plugged into a smart plug with an energy monitor. When the power usage drops to near zero for more than 2 minutes it sends a notification to tell me that the cycle is done.