Am old, don't get any of this. 4-5 hour dry times? Did I read that wrong? Mine does a load in 50 minutes, tops. The end of the cycle is fairly easy to figure, since you set the minutes yourself.
this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2025
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TIL washers now have WiFi connectivity. Inching ever closer to the dystopic cyberpunk era where you really can hack everything in sight.
Cory Doctorow's 'Unauthorized Bread' is about exactly that scenario.
That sounds like a great read, thanks for the information
I saw this when I had to get new machines 7-8 years ago. However they were an extra like $300 for each machine. wtf.
I would kill for some sort of audio out or usb, but even better would be Zigbee/z-wave/thread, and you can do it for less than $20 in parts.
Now that Matter/Thread has standard profiles for laundry machines and has a chance of building interoperability, I hope my next machines will, for a reasonable cost and no cloud requirement
Only a few more years until I can overclock my couch!
You can get smart couches right now.
Yes, but a couch doesn't stop functioning as a couch if the smart functions stop working.
A lot of the response I've seen to this post has been "this was unnecessarily complicated".
This makes me incredibly sad.
Who the hell is reading a tinkerer blog and complaining about an elaborate hack?
It's like going to a book club and complaining the story isn't boring enough.
I love this kind of explorative reverse engineering bodge job stuff the best of any kind of engineering tbh
I've seen a comment complaining about too much oil on the recipe for... chilli crisp oil. Idiots are everywhere.
I was bracing myself for some level of absurdity after this disclaimer.
Instead it seemed to be pretty reasonably complicated. They didn't flash some custom firmware or even mess with the hardware at all.
Sure, it is complicated, but in terms of hacks it seems to be par for the course.
If you just want to know when the clothes are dry, there's an easier way that keeps you in full control: put a ct clamp on the power cord. Doubles as energy monitoring. You can then block that crappy wifi spying system off altogether.
Personally, I use the very technical method of listening for the buzzer to go off…
I hate that everything has WiFi for no reason…
I was thinking a vibration sensor connected to home assistant, but that would work too.
Or just a smart outlet that can track power consumption. Plenty of options that work locally with HA.
But I'd definitely fire up the 3D printer and grab an ESP chip if I was doing this at home.
Thats a bad idea because of power draw overload during motor startups.
You just have to use an outlet rated for the max load.
As far as the esp chip goes, I was meaning more along the lines of using a sensor of some sort.
You have to use an outlet capable of handling the max instantaneous load. That way you don't end up welding the relay in the on position.
As an example, my window air conditioner takes 600 watts to run, which is perfectly fine. But during startup, it takes 1800 watts. The plug i have can handle that quick spike, but its really not designed for it.
Just listen for the moaning to stop