About a year ago, I decided I wanted to monitor the status of my dryer and washer. Some people have suggested to just use a remote to indicate when the cycle starts, and then just play an announcement after a previously timed amount of minutes. Since this solution doesn't work well when using different program settings, I wanted something which could actually detect when the machines are running.
/archive/j/tutorials/2005/2/P2220251.JPGThe dryer was actually pretty easy. I simply installed a magnet on the drum, then the other part of the magnetic reed switch was mounted on one of the sides inside the dryer, so when the drum makes 1 revolution, it will pass right by the switch, triggering the contact. I hooked this switch up to my SECU-16, and use this method to successfully announce when the dryer started, and when the cycle has completed. This setup will also work with other I/O interfaces such as the gameport, you just need to add some logic to detect when the drum stopped spinning.
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/archive/j/tutorials/2005/2/P2220251.JPGThe dryer was actually pretty easy. I simply installed a magnet on the drum, then the other part of the magnetic reed switch was mounted on one of the sides inside the dryer, so when the drum makes 1 revolution, it will pass right by the switch, triggering the contact. I hooked this switch up to my SECU-16, and use this method to successfully announce when the dryer started, and when the cycle has completed. This setup will also work with other I/O interfaces such as the gameport, you just need to add some logic to detect when the drum stopped spinning.
Click here to view the article
