this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
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You win.
This is the entire reason why I put smart lights and smart light switches in my entire house except in the kitchen and bathroom.
It's all about safety. It will be the same reason why I never want to let any range/stove/oven to ever be able to be controlled remotely. It's not just that I don't want to enable it, I don't want it to be possible.
At most, for a "smart" oven, I want to know when it's on and what temp it is, mostly so that I can create automations to text me when it's been on for too long to let me know I'm stupid and left the oven on.... With the fridge, same deal if I forgot to close the fridge, or if the fridge stops keeping things cold.
That's the most I would want. Reporting only. But if the "smart" device can control anything about its operation remotely, fuck that.
With a washer/dryer, I would only want end-of-cycle alerts because I'm frequently too far away from it where I normally hang out at home, to hear the bell. Reporting. That's it.
I can accomplish most of that with an esp32 and a variety of off the shelf sensors, or by tying into existing circuits on the machine to get their status, then send alerts through home assistant. No vendor specific BS required.
Yeah, I agree with you. I have a "dumb" washing machine and dryer. But also wanted to be notified when it finished, because it's in my outhouse, and there's no way I can hear when it finishes...
I already have a Zigbee smart network set up based on a Sonoff controller with zigbee2mqtt, so it was trivial to buy some smart sockets that can monitor power utilisation, and setting up an automation on Home-assistant to send a notification when the power utilisation drops.
Oh. That's a good one. I'm not sure where you got a smart plug that handles the power needs of a dryer.... Unless the dryer isn't an electric dryer.... I guess.
But there's other options. There's both pre-built and DIY power monitoring solutions that use clamps on the hot wires to measure amperage, so that's an option.
I was just thinking to tie a sensor wire into the LED that lights up when "cycle finished" is activated. As soon as it pulls high, send a notification.
Your solution also sounds good tho.
Just goes to show that there's many ways to solve the problem that isn't spending an extra (however much money) to get a fancy smart appliance.
I was thinking of doing the same idea with the stove, run a wire to each light for "hot surface" on my stove, and when that's pulled high for more than, say, an hour, send an alert. Also get an oven-temperature-safe thermal probe, and wire that to a sensor line on an esp32 or similar and read the value. I'd need to calibrate the electrical signal to temperature, but after that, it would be able to report the internal temp of the oven with a decent amount of accuracy. Just run that thermal probe into the oven next to the built in one that regulates the temp when the oven is on.
Ideally, I want both energy usage and temp monitored for the stove.
I live in the EU, so electricity is 230 Volt.
A regular electric dryer just plugs into a bog standard wall socket. My dryer is a one that utilises a heatpump, and only draws up to 1000 Watts
Ikea sells these, which handle up to 16 Amps, which is 3680 Watts:
https://applink.ikea.com/tY8M9r9M4w--00569836--dk--da
Aqara also makes these, which handles 2300 Watts:
https://www.aqara.com/eu/product/smart-plug-eu/
My washing machine is very basic and simple and I only ever use one specific wash cycle for everything ... and the other ones are very similar any way. They all run on average about 30 minutes.
So I just put on a timer on my phone ... 30 minutes - and label it 'washing machine' ... I can go about other things in my house, 30 minute timer goes off, I know my washing is done and I start another load.
I do the same with my dryer ... depending on the load and type, the cycle runs about 40 minutes ... so I just create a timer for that and that's it.
If I get to the basement too early and the cycle is still running, I know that I just have to wait a few minutes for it to finish ... and usually, I'll busy myself with other things while I wait anyway.
I used to do that too, but my washing machine often has trouble draining due to the filter being blocked, and it also often stops because the soap apparently foamed too much...
The programs take anywhere from 55 minutes to 2 hours and 30 minutes depending on choice... So one times isn't really an option. But the randomness of when the machine decides to make the program longer caused me to seek better solutions.