[Mellow Labs] wanted a smart washer and built a simple controller. However, he found out after a few weeks it wasn’t working how he wanted. The detergent quit flowing, and he washed clothes with no soap for a week! So, a redesign was in order. You can follow the process and the result in the video below.
A bit of 3D printing, a larger pump, and proper voltage made a big difference. We didn’t see the print files, but unless you have the exact same setup, you’d probably have to customize it anyway. There is a real-time hand-drawn schematic, and the software is probably not hard to pull off the video screen (it is only 18 lines).
Washing machines are what’s known in the industry as “white goods,” and we are always surprised how often commercial implementations don’t seem particularly well thought out. For example, we’ve seen washers that have a remote control implementation that requires you to push a physical button to enable the phone app, and that disables the manual controls. It is good to know that you could just build your own smart appliances; it is quite feasible.
Internet-connected washers are all the rage. Even if your machine doesn’t have the requisite sensors, you can usually figure out something to monitor the progress.
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