I wish there were integrations with appliances for HomeKit, but there aren't and, anyway, we have quite old appliances that we are hoping will die and then we'll replace with something more modern.
This, then, means what to do about knowing that your washing or drying cycle have finished?
I must admit, not entirely my idea. I can't remember where I got this from, but Aqara Vibration sensors are HomeKit compatible. They show up as motion sensors, but that's good enough.
Now, you do need an Aqara Bridge, or an Aqara G2H Camera which has a bridge built into it. This does make it rather an expensive solution for just two appliances. However, this is the Laundry I'm worried about so I also bought some Aqara Water Leak Sensors for the Laundry, Kitchen and Bathrooms. Thus the price of the bridge, per sensor, was reduced.
The bridge itself has some nice capabilities, it has a light and a siren. So you can use it for a number of things, such as a night light or the centre of an alarm system. The Speaker can also be used by Google or Amazon Alexa. I wish it supported Airplay 2. Mainly, though, I use it as just a bridge.
To add to HomeKit, it's the bridge that is the integration point. It uses Zigbee to communicate with its sensors. As you add sensors they appear in HomeKit, so it is all quite easy.
Sensor set up
The set up of the Vibration sensors is really easy.
Idealy you'd place the sensor where you want it and then pair. I found it much better to have the sensor near the hub, pair, and then put the sensor where you want it.
Here you can see the one stuck on the side of the washing machine.
Once paired with the hub, the device appears inside the Aqara app. I found that to make it useful for this use case I had to set the Sensitivity to High. This is accessed as "More Settings" on the device. Personally, I think it's pretty dumb to have a line that you select that only lets you modify a single option. One step too many. Still, it is set and forget.
If you wish, you can also set up the sensor so it is visible in Shortcuts.
The water leak detectors are even easier to set up. Literally just pair, and place them where you want.
One of the things I do like about the Aqara app is that it tells you how good the signal is. This really helps with troubleshooting.
Integration with HomeKit.
The Aqara bridge appears in HomeKit. Here it can be seen in the main part of my Kitchen.
When you select the device in HomeKit, it immediately shows the light and the alarm system. There are, in this case, 7 accessories which consist of the security system, water sensors and vibration sensors, showing as motion sensors.
Automation.
The desire for automation, here, is to notify when cycles on the washing machine and/or the dryer are complete.
The problem is how to notify as, in HomeKit, you get notified when something positive happens, not the negative. By that, I mean that a Motion Sensors will indicate when motion has been detected. HomeKit does not notify when motion ceases to be detected. Although you can perform an action on either or both states.
It is possible to do this with shortcuts. However, shortcuts are personal, and what is needed here is a household notification.
This plugin provides the capability to use various notification capabilities such as:
Why, for the life of me, Apple does not enable the ability to send a notification as an action defeats me. It seems more than obvious to me that this should be a capability.
Fortunately, installation and setup of the Messenger plugin seems relatively simple. I elected to use the email functionality.
There are some limitations with the email capability. The recipient is defined at the over all system level. You can define a comma separated list, although when you do that the UI suggests that it is an error. It does work. This means that you cannot define different recipients for different messages.
I must admit, I also do not like filling in my username and password in plain text and that that username and password are not encrypted when sending emails. This has necessitated me setting up an email account specifically for these messages.
When we get to the Message itself. The Name is the name of the stateless switch that will be created, and then you have some text you can send. Turning on the switch sends the email. Because the switch is stateless, the switch is immediately switched off.
For effect, in the above diagram I have shown the 3 switches created. The first is called "Messenger". If this is switched off, no messages will be sent at all. The other 2 are the messages for the Dryer and the Washing Machine. Normally these are shown as a single tile. This also means that all Messenger switches have to be in the same room and cannot really be associated with the room(s) required.
Still it works.
The logic is very simple:
IF
sensor detects no motion
THEN
switch on appropriate message
ENDIF
It's crude, but it works.
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