Make that smart appliance dream a bit more affordable.
A Cycle of Automation
After much nagging about my desire need for home automation, I was granted a basic proof of concept to validate what I already knew. My boss Wife wanted me to make the first automation a memorable and useful one, without spending much money, ideally none at all. So I got to work on one of the most mundane and taxing chores - Laundry.
Now, Laundry by itself is not a challenge as it was years ago. Most of the newer laundry machines are energy efficent and save on water and use less detergent too. But if you have spent a large amount on a still-functional washer/dryer set, the prospect of buying a newer set just to have that alexa/google home tie-in seems almost pointless. This was my thought as well, but seeing as my laundry room is in the basement, and our house having the Bedrooms on the 2nd floor, you want to be sure the current wash cycle is complete before making the trek down to the basement.
But tlet’s get into the details of this automation.
The Plan
If you aren’t familiar with what Home-Assistant is, I will try to write out a deep dive into exactly what it is capable of as I, too, learn these facts, but think of it as an automation ecosystem similar to Alexa. It can integrate with hundreds of other services and use that to tailor automations through a self-hosted solution. It takes the internet/cloud aspect out, and lets you have much more controll over your data.
Now to the Washer - The idea was simple enough, While a wash cycle is on, the washer would be using much more power than if it was just on, self cleaning, or in standby. So an obvious choice here was to make use of another automation ecosystem I have used for a few other purposes - TP-Link owned Kasa smart plugs. These plus would act as a pass-through for the washer’s typcial 120Vac plug, and allow me to read the current being used.
Then it would just be a matter of figuring out how to setup a toggle for this sensor to indicate if the washer was in one of 3 states
OFF > RUNNING > ON
That, at least, was the idea.
Home Assistant Configuration
Now Since the Kasa Plugs also had a self service integration with Home-Assistant, it made this part easy enough. Once the login was complete, I had my aptly named washer plug added and ready to be used. I ran the washer through a single cycle to make sure I was getting some good information.
Picking the sesonr that was just right
I Figured the Easiest way to Figure out what I should use was to take a look at all the availble sensor outputs from the Kasa plug. This gave me the few following results after scoping the time to before, during and after the cycle completed.
First was the Washer Current Sensor:
Then the Washer Current Consumption Sensor:
Next the Voltage (not sure what you could really expect)
And finally the Total usage sensor
The obvious 2 choices were for the Current or Consumption sensors. However, the Current Had a much smaller room for deviation errors, Idle was at 0.03A and in cycle had periods of 0.17A down to just 0.1A, with an max of ~9.55A. This was also only one wash cycle and I couldn’t be sure this wouldn’t be a problem in my determination of state.
With the Current Consumption, however, Idle was sitting right at 0.4W, but during cycle never actually dropping below 5W, and a max of almost 750W. Just in terms of number calculations, this made more sense and so I selected the sensor.washer_current_consumption As the winner.
Making this sensor do some work
Now since I had absolutely no idea how to make this work as expected, I thought just jamming the details into an Automation would work. And at first it seemed to work just fine:
alias: Washer Automation
description: "Notify me on Washer complete!"
mode: single
trigger:
- type: power
platform: device
entity_id: sensor.washer_current_consumption
domain: sensor
below: 5
condition: []
action:
- service: notify.alexa_echo_show
data:
message: Washer Done!
data:
type: tts
A quick run down on what this automation is actually doing:
trigger:
- type: power
platform: device
entity_id: sensor.washer_current_consumption
domain: sensor
below: 5
The trigger is what causes the automation to fire, so in this example, the automation will fire whenever the washer plug consumption sensor drops below 5W.
action:
- service: notify.alexa_echo_show
data:
message: Washer Done!
data:
type: tts
And the action is to send a TTS message over the Alexa HACS integration to tell me that the washer is done. It’s as simple as that!
Or so I thought…
There’s a bug in the programming
Now the first few runs of this automation actually went great, but it didn’t allow for much in terms of additional automation. So I did a bit of research and found another type of sensor that you can use. Ones that you can assign a value to with templates.
- platform: template
sensors:
washer_status:
friendly_name: 'Washer Status'
value_template: >
{% set washing_state = states("sensor.washer_current_consumption") | float %}
{% if washing_state > 3 %}
Running
{% elif 3 > washing_state > 0 %}
On
{% else %}
Off
{% endif %}
Since these are not self service in the UI, they need to be added directly to your home-assistant configuration.yaml as a sensor block.
The above simply reads in the washer current and sets it as a float, and then uses this value to set the washer to Running if above 3, On if less than 3 and more than 0, or Off. The numbers here associated as Watts.
Now I had a sensor with meaningful state that I could also read for transition state without adding integers to any automations I had for the washer.
Although it is not the cleanest Automation, here is the current Automation for My Washer complete cycle:
alias: Washer Finished
description: "Run automation if Washer status transisitons from Running"
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id:
- sensor.washer_status
from: Running
for:
hours: 0
minutes: 2
seconds: 0
condition: []
action:
- repeat:
count: 2
sequence:
- if:
- condition: device
type: is_on
entity_id: light.living_room
domain: light
then:
- type: turn_off
entity_id: light.living_room
domain: light
- delay:
hours: 0
minutes: 0
seconds: 1
milliseconds: 0
- type: turn_on
entity_id: light.living_room
domain: light
- delay:
hours: 0
minutes: 0
seconds: 1
milliseconds: 0
else:
- type: turn_on
entity_id: light.living_room
domain: light
- delay:
hours: 0
minutes: 0
seconds: 1
milliseconds: 0
- type: turn_off
entity_id: light.living_room
domain: light
- delay:
hours: 0
minutes: 0
seconds: 1
milliseconds: 0
- service: notify.alexa_echo_show
data:
data:
type: tts
message: The washing machine is done.
mode: single
A few new toggles here, to make the automation a bit more noticable:
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id:
- sensor.washer_status
from: Running
for:
hours: 0
minutes: 2
seconds: 0
Rather than the automation determining the washer state, the sensor now just is assigned the value that it should be, so if the sensor switches FROM the Running state, that should indicate the washer is complete. It otherwise will ignore a switch TO the Running state.
- if:
- condition: device
type: is_on
entity_id: light.living_room
domain: light
then:
- type: turn_off
entity_id: light.living_room
domain: light
- delay:
hours: 0
minutes: 0
seconds: 1
milliseconds: 0
- type: turn_on
entity_id: light.living_room
domain: light
- delay:
hours: 0
minutes: 0
seconds: 1
milliseconds: 0
else:
- type: turn_on
entity_id: light.living_room
domain: light
- delay:
hours: 0
minutes: 0
seconds: 1
milliseconds: 0
- type: turn_off
entity_id: light.living_room
domain: light
- delay:
hours: 0
minutes: 0
seconds: 1
milliseconds: 0
If the Living Room is On, flicker the Lights off/on to indicate an automation action, or if they are off, flicker lights on/off. This makes sure the state is in the original condition and not flickering to an off state when they were on. I will look into making this cleaner, as the if/else and repeat command does make scream for refactoring.
But at the end of this Weekend Home Assistant Crash Course, I have a Slightly Smarter Washer.
The next goal is to make my Dryer smarter, using Vibration Sensors from Aqara
Reference
home-assistant configuration.yaml