r/homeassistant • u/vinny0015 • 16h ago

Dryer notification idea

I'm looking for a small light up button or something I can use so my wife can see when the dryer is done. I'm going to use a vibration sensor. And was thinking of a small led sign but looking for other ideas also

19 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

62 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

4

u/Adventurous_Grape279 16h ago

I have never found a dryer plug smart outlet. If you have a gas dryer with a standard plug this works though

9

u/biblicalrain 16h ago

I use CT clamps to monitor current of the wires in my main panel. Look at something like the Emporia Vue or similar. One benefit is that if you go this route, you can get a lot of different power info at once.

3

u/yorb 14h ago

I just started doing this with the Vue, works great except my washer and dryer are on the same circuit so I haven't figured out a good way to distinguish them yet. My notification just says "Laundry is finished" and you can figure out which it is when you get there 🤪

1

u/TheBlueKingLP 14h ago

Maybe current difference?

1

u/yorb 10h ago

Good idea, except they don't have consistent currents. Both have a really random-seeming sawtooth-like pattern, so even though the dryer is like 10x power draw, it's really difficult to tell them apart when they're overlapping (which is most of the time, we usually run multiple loads back to back)

1

u/TheBlueKingLP 6h ago

Maybe multiple thresholds?
For example,

3, < 10 = washing machine 10 < 12 = dryer 13 = both, etc