I have a Philips Hue Smart Plug connected to my washing machine, and a Hub connected to my WIFI router.
Is there any way to send an alert to my iPhone when the Smart Plug senses that the washing machine has stopped drawing power (i.e. finished its cycle)? Which technologies do I need to employ to make that work?
Thanks, Andrew
P.S. I’ve tried setting a Reminder on my phone based on the washing machine’s LED display, but the washing machines lies. Sometimes "1 minute left” takes 15mins…
P.P.S. Please delete this if this outside the scope of the group.
The first thing to determine is if you can discriminate with any data from that plug between the energy draw states between running, waiting for the final “minute” to unlock the door and cycle complete?
I would imagine the manual for the plug would explain any such feature,but a quick Google revealed this.
It suggests you can only turn it on/off and includes no energy level monitoring. That would suggest the first thing you need to do is to get a different plug that does support monitoring of energy consumption.
You are brilliant. Thank you. That saved me a lot of fruitless hours, and certainly explains why I couldn’t find an automation anywhere on the interwebs. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
The Eve Energy smart plugs work with HomeKit and do monitor how much energy a device is using. They are available direct from Apple. I know it means buying an additional device but it might allow you to setup the alert when your washing machine reaches the end of its wash cycle.
My smart plug does sense energy draw however I was unsuccessful in making this determine if my washing machine was finished. Current often drops to zero for short periods during the cycle, then it continues to draw current after the cycle finishes. The minimum threshold setting also didn’t work because it does this thing where it keeps moving the drum every few seconds. I now just start a manual timer via siri each time I put on a load of washing.
Would it be possible to write a shortcut that repeatedly gets the value of the current draw for a few minutes to consistently identify the “off” state of the washing machine? Monitoring an average current value or prehaps frequence of high/low spikes might solve the problem of inconsistent current draw.
It would be nice, but this particular smart plug, and unfortunately, most smart home devices in Australia are not made for HomeKit. It would be a lot more useful if they simply put some sort of delay in place, eg 0 amps for >2 seconds - because even 0 amps for a very short time (eg between phases of the cycle) triggers the alert.
Wouldn’t the machine often be in cycle during periods where it is not vibrating? Particularly at the end where the drainage occurs before the door can be unlocked?
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