Sometimes it is really useful to monitor appliances in the smart home as well as control them and it can be really useful to know when an appliance has completed its function or finished its cycle. One such appliance in our contextual smart home is our LG Washing Machine.
Note that LG do actually make "smart" washing machines.
Our Home Control System uses models for all the connected appliances. Our technology abstraction means that any appliance added to our smart home inherits all of its capabilities. Essentially, every connected appliance becomes instantly very smart and they can all be monitored and controlled by any of the many user interfaces available, providing a great user experience. Our Home Control System is tracking things like on time, off time, power usage, etc. Appliances can also generate voice announcements and notifications if needed.
Appliances like our washing machine can report three states back to our Home Control System using our unified communications protocol: On, Finished and Off. There are also various attributes that can be included in the generated events, such as power usage, measured voltage, measured current, etc. By default, our contextual smart home is monitoring how long devices and appliances are on and off and it is very easy to set limits, which when crossed will result in a notification and generate a voice announcement.
Occasionally, our @smartest_home will tweet when the washing machine has finished its washing cycle.
As part of the personalised user experience, our contextual smart home sends notifications when the washing machine has completed its washing cycle.
