One of the more irritating things about my washing machine in my house here (and the dryer) is that I don’t hear them finish. Perhaps I do, but I ignore it. I have seen all sorts of home-brew devices for monitoring the LED on the front and generating an IFTTT message when the light turns off. The latter can then send a message to your phone, or whatever. The problem is that my washing machine doesn’t turn off its’ LED, and my dryer doesn’t even have an LED. The other thing about these devices is that they require a PSU, and have to be stuck on the front of the appliance.
I have been thinking about all sorts of ways to harvest power recently. One brain-fart II had was to use a .Non-invasive current sensor and couple it to that Ultra Low Power Boost Converter with Battery Management for Energy Harvester. I expect there is some fundamental reason why this can’t work? What do you think?
I just thought it would be cool to have some device that a consumer can simply clip over the cord to their appliance, and whenever there is enough power, it boots up a processor, and sends out an IFTTT message “appliance X started”. When the power subsides, the processor uses it’s accumulated power to send a an matching “Appliance X stopped” message. When combined with an IMU to detect vibration, a clock to measure delays, and a microphone to measure noise I think one could cover a whole range of washing machines, and dryers.
https://learn.openenergymonitor.org/electricity-monitoring/ct-sensors/interface-with-arduino