Wi-Fi Laundry Alarm by ReallyBigTeeth

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

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A Wi-Fi connected laundry alarm for Maytag 2000 series laundry machines. The device senses which front panel LED indicator light is turned on and displays the laundry's status on a local network page you can view in a web browser from a PC, smartphone, tablet, etc.
Updates:

2017 Nov 9

Fixed a coding error (funny spelling mistake in the HTML portion of the firmware).




2018 Jan 14

Added separate pages for washer and Dryer.


The machine cycle is now displayed in the window title or tab.




2018 Jan 15

Added simple linked index at address root.


Future Plans:
A Huzzah ESP8266 laundry alarm client with OLED display has been prototyped.
Bill of Materials:

Adafruit Huzzah esp8266 Wi-Fi breakout board ~ $13 CAD
6x Diodes ~ $6 - $12 CAD for pack of 100
6x 100kΩ resistors ~ $1 for pack of 10
6x Photoresistors ~ $5 for pack of 10
2x strong magnets (12mm diametre, 3 mm tall
Perfboard (for building the circuit)
~ 16 Gauge Wire & Shrink Tubing
Tools:
3D Printer
Computer with Arduino IDE (instructions for setup are below)
USB FTDI Cable (for programming the Wi-Fi breakout board)
Soldering Iron and Solder
Electronics Side Cutters
Sharp Knife
Wire Strippers
Sand Paper ~ 150 grit
Waxed Paper
Toothpick
Instructions:

First lets make sure you have a fully working Wi-Fi breakout board. It would be a shame to go to all the trouble of building the laundry alarm only to discover that the board was D.O.A..
Download and install the latest Arduino IDE for your computer's operating system. Next, get the Arduino IDE setup for the Huzza Wi-Fi board by following the Adafruit guide Here.


With the Arduino IDE working, open the source code file downloaded with the 3D printable frame "Laundry_Alarm_Huzzah_ESP8266.ino". You'll need to modify a few lines in that file to get the device connected to your Wi-Fi network. On line 41, you will need to enter your network's SSID between the double quotes. On line 42, enter your networks password between the double quotes. On line 43, give your Wi-Fi board a static ip address within your routers range. Take note that these have comma separated values eg. 192,168,1,100.
You do not need to enter your gateway and subnet. If you wish to use your router to assign a static ip, you can comment out line 43 and 161 by typing "//" without the quotes at the beginning of those lines. Now hit the upload button to program the Huzzah Wi-Fi board.


Use an electronics breadboard to build the circuit and make sure everything is working properly before going ahead with the rest of the build. (schematics can be found in the pictures at the top of the page, in the instructions below, and in the file downloads.


3D print the model and remove any adhesion material with a sharp knife. Sand any surface that will be in contact with your laundry machine and do any regular post processing to clean up the print. Place some wax paper on a flat, magnetically attractive surface. Rough the rear face and sides of the two magnets, mix some epoxy and glue the magnets in the frame. Place the frame magnet side down on the wax paper and place something heavy on top of the frame while the epoxy cures. This will ensure the magnets are flush with the outer surface of the frame, making a strong magnetic bond with your laundry machine while in use.

The microcontroller in the esp8266 Wi-Fi module has only one analogue input, so to take analogue readings from multiple sensors, a small circuit will have to be built which uses 6 digital pins to power each of the sensors. One by one, each sensor will be given power and an analogue reading will be taken. The highest value from those readings will be from the led on the laundry machine that was turned on, giving us the cycle in which the machine is currently engaged.

For testing, I used a wire wrap tool and wire jumpers to assemble the circuit leaving an ugly mess of wires. I originally used 10kΩ resistors which were too low a value for sensing the dim LEDs on my laundry machines. Switching to 100kΩ resistors resulted in much more stable light readings.
For the final build I put together a compact circuit board that fits under the Huzzah Wi-Fi board, serving the secondary purpose of securing the Wi-Fi board to the frame.
Start by drawing an outline of the circuit board, and use a sharp knife to cut a 3 x 6 solder pad grid as shown below.


Bend and trim the leads of the six diodes and and six resistors to for 3/10 inch spacing and lay out the components as below.
Solder the components in place.


Remove two to three millimetres of insulation from the end of six wires and splay the strands of each wire as pictured below. Tin the wires and solder each wire connecting each diode in line with its adjacent resistor.If you haven't already, make a solder bridge to attach the cathode ends of the diodes to the pad where the analogue pin of the Wi-Fi board will go, and another bridge from the resistors to the pad that the Ground pin will go.


Trim the board to size.


Set the circuit board aside for now. Insert the six photoresistors in the frame recesses. make sure they sit flush with the rear wall of the recesses.Mix enough two part epoxy to glue the photoresistors in place. Using a toothpick, pick up some epoxy and place a drop on either side of the photoresistors being careful not to get any on the face of the sensor.


Once the epoxy is cured, trim the photoresistor leads to about three millimetres length. Take the Huzzah Wi-Fi board and place it in the top of the frame.Take the circuit board you built earlier and fit it to the bottom of the Wi-Fi board sandwiching the frame between them, making sure the analogue and ground pins are in the right holes of the circuit board.


Solder both Ground Pins, pins 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 4, and TX to secure the circuit board to the Wi-Fi board. Trim a short amount of insulation off of six wires and tin their ends. There is very little room to solder wires to the rear pins. Place the frame circuit board side up with the magnets pointing toward you. If you solder with your right hand, solder a wire to pin 13 first, then 12, 14, and finally 16. If you are left handed, solder the wires in the reverse order. solder the last two wires to pins 15 and 4. Now is a good time to place shrink tubing over all of the wires connected to the circuit board.


All that's left now is to trim the wires to length slip some shrink tubing on each wire and solder them to the photoresistors. Start with the wire from pin 16 and pair it with any wire between the diodes and resistors on the circuit board. It doesn't matter which one you chose as they all take the same electrical path to the ground and analogue pins. In the photo below, the photoresistor leads from left to right go to pins 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 4; 16 being directly below the loop that the wires go though. Bend the photoresistor leads for pin 16 toward the loop, trim the two wires to length, slip some heat shrink tubing over them and solder the wires to the leads, shrink the tubing, then do the same for photo resistors 4 and 15, then 14, 13, and finally 12.


I'ts time to test it out. The board should magnetically connect to the metal surface at the top of the laundry machine aligning the six sensors with the laundry cycle LEDs on the front display. You can power the board with an FTDI cable and a USB power adapter, or you can cut the end off a spare USB cable and solder some female jumper wires to the ground and 5v wires of the USB cable. Connect the jumper wires to the ground and +5v pins of the FTDI header on the Huzza Wi-Fi board, and the other end of the USB cable to a power adapter and start a load of laundry.


Open a web browser on a computer connected to your home network. In the address field, type in the ip address of the Wi-Fi board and the machine you want to monitor separated by a forward slash (ex 192.168.1.100/washer or 192.168.1.100/dryer) to view the laundry machines current status. The page will automatically refresh every 60 sec to let you know what the machine is doing. Now you'll be alerted with a red/orange/blue flashing page the minute your laundry is done.


If you type "/rawWasher" or "/rawDryer" without the quotes after the ip address (ex
192.168.1.100/rawWasher), you will be shown the the current laundry cycle and the latest readings of all of the sensors refreshed every 5 seconds.