MQTT Laundry Monitor

This was a pretty rudimentary setup for monitoring a laundry machine and a dryer for run status. I wrote an article for The Tech Report about this setup.

The INO file is for an ESP8266 microcontroller and a pair of LIS3DH gyroscopic sensors. The sensors report "tap" events to the MCU. The MCU counts the number of taps from each sensor in a 10-second period and sends that information over MQTT.

The py file monitors the specified MQTT topic and fires off emails when the start and end of a cycle are detected.

I have abandoned this approach and now use a smart plug with power monitoring to detect laundry machine cycles and a DS18B20 temperature probe strapped to my dryer vent tube to detect when the dryer is running. The smart plug and the ESP8266 with the temperature probe both run Tasmota. Their data is sent over MQTT. A group of Home Assistant automations monitor this incoming data and sent phone notifications at the start and end of machine cycles.