Haven’t set this up yet, wondering if it would work. I can’t really go through the multiple apps solution, especially considering the phone would need to be here at all times and I don’t have a dedicated tablet.
If I plug the Google Home (or Alexa) into a smart home switch (I’ve got a few Wemo’s lying around) and set the laundry app to “flash” this switch along with some other lights, it would turn the switch on and off, correct? In turn, the Home/Alexa loses power, and it’ll reboot and MAKE THE STARTUP NOISE. In essence, this turns into my audible alert.
Obviously not a solution for everyone, but works for me since I’m usually in the same room waiting for laundry. Guess you could technically do this with every Home/Alexa in the house if you wanted, but that gets expensive. I said “maybe Alexa” in the title because mine needs me to setup the wifi again whenever she loses power and that’s annoying (I don’t think that’s normal, right?). Do you think this will work the way I think it might? I’m still troubleshooting my sensor so can’t actually test myself quite yet. Thanks!
I think you’re on the right track here, but I wouldn’t do it exactly this way. Your Google Home is too sensitive a device to treat to this kind of frequent power cutting and there just really isn’t any reason to do that.
(I Originally thought you might be able to use one of the voice smart apps for this, but the developers of both of those have posted below in this thread that it probably wouldn’t be worth it for this effort.)
If you’d like to see what other community members have done for alerts, You can use the quick browse lists on the community – created wiki in the project report section and look on the “alerts” list.
But as far as a simple solution, I think your two choices are either to use some kind of smart bulb, or to stick with your original idea, but just use a different kind of device to make the noise.
If you have any smart bulbs, including a $15 Sylvania smart bulb, you could have it blink when the laundry is done. At our house, we use a hue bridge and we have a color light strip which we have change to different colors for different kinds of notifications, like the laundry being done or the mail arriving.
Or if you prefer an audible alert, There are also power outage audible alert Devices that you can buy, quite inexpensive, and then you just plug one of those into the WeMo. Then you would have that work just the way you were imagining, except instead of cutting the power to your voice assistant, you just cut the power to your power outage alarm.
If you want something fancier, the $60 Aeotec doorbell is popular in the community and can play up to 99 different custom sounds. So you could have one notification for the laundry being done, one for the mail arriving, one for a severe weather alert, etc. it’s about as loud as a regular doorbell, so you could probably hear it from several rooms.
Agreed…unfortunately, Alexa or Google Home can’t wake up on their own to alert you to events. Think of Alexa as a reaction to your voice, but in reality what you are looking for is a reaction to you laundry being done. As such, many apps can send a text message to you. Or, to make it more fun, if you know how long a cycle is you could create an Ask Alexa macro that you simply say “Alexa, tell Smartthings to run laundry timer” (where "laundry timer is a macro) and it can be made to do an action (flash a light, text you, send a message to the Ask Alexa Message queue) to alert you when it counts down.
Many ways to do what you are looking for.
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bamarayne
(Jason "The Enabler" as deemed so by @Smart)
#5
What I would do, if you’re looking for an alert while you’re in the same room…and you already have the Wemo’s… plug a lamp, or a colored light into it. Have that flashing as your alert.
I can’t recommend either EchoSistant or AskAlexa for something like this, the result really isn’t worth the install process… for now…
This would work with the laundry app.
Also, you can use CoRE or WebCoRE to create an automation that will do everything you want. The setup of those apps is a lot easier than the others. There is an entire community dedicated just to WebCoRE.
Thanks for all of the solutions! Here’s the reason I was heading in that direction:
The room I’m usually in is my "man"cave/garage, which has those long fluorescent bulbs. Didn’t want to have to buy a lamp and other bulbs just to flash at me. There’s also not a very good place for a lamp. The lights in the house are set to flash if I’m in there.
I could do a counter (we do this for cooking), but until our landlord actually fixes the problem, it’s been cutting out at random times – hence why I need an actual alert vs a counter. We’re sick of heading down there to realize it stopped mid-cycle who knows how long ago and have to start it all over again.
Might do the power outage device, but the doorbell idea sounds awesome. Willing to spend more money if I can get it to do different things.
I’m going to have to look into Echosistant, WebCoRE and others, I keep seeing them as possible solutions to other searches I’ve made as well. I’m just intimidated by it I guess, and don’t really know where to start to learn about how to use them and what they can really do.
