Laundry Text Message Alerts With Arduino Yun

The buzzer on a washer or dryer may be OK for most people, but what if you would like something a little more versatile to tell you when your laundry is done? Here’s an interesting solution involving an Arduino Yún that sends a text message when the washer or dryer is done.

Rather than hacking into your equipment, this device simply uses a dual-axis accelerometer to sense when a washer or dryer is no longer vibrating, thus not spinning. It’s powered by a 5 volt DC inverter, but a battery pack can also keep things running. Optionally, you can print a case for the Yún, and the source code for this project is available here.

 

 

 

 

 

To get things running via text message, you’ll also need an account with Temboo for getting your “real world” data online, and Twilio to help with the SMS portion of the communication chain.

This device is envisioned for use with laundry, but I could see something similar being used for many other applications. If you wanted to track whether a car was moving or not, this should be able to be done with no modification. With a little more work, it should even be able to glean something’s acceleration. I suppose the big question would be whether or not there was WiFi available, which could be a problem in a moving car!