I’ve written about my smart home before. I’ve got all kinds of cool gadgets, wild automation, and sometimes just technical nerdery for the sake of it. But after using the smart home for a while, I’ve found that it’s the small things that make the real difference.
I’d like to highlight one of those features today: getting information from the washing machine, dryer, and other appliances that actually matters.
We have a collection of V-Zug devices, and they all have smart home integration1. You get all kinds of statistics, you can remotely update the washing machine’s settings, and you can see what’s currently running from anywhere in the house.
Now, I live in an apartment in Switzerland. Perhaps a bit unusually, we have the washing machine inside the apartment, and it’s shared between all the flatmates2. But since our apartment spans three levels, sometimes you simply don’t notice when the washing machine has finished its cycle.
This is where such a simple and beautiful solution comes in: I have a Home Assistant card that tracks how much time is left and displays it prominently in the upstairs bathroom where the washing machine lives.
Screenshot showing the washing machine and dryer running with time remaining.
So I can always check the current status of the washing machine from literally anywhere—whether it’s empty, or if it’s running, how much longer it’ll take. I also get a notification pushed to my phone when it’s finished, so I can immediately start doing my favourite household task: hanging the washing on the drying rack3.
For me, this really captures the essence of what smart home technology should be about. It’s so simple, not really spectacular at all, but it provides a genuine quality-of-life improvement. And that’s what smart home automation should focus on: making daily life just a little bit easier, one small convenience at a time.
The beauty isn’t in the complexity of the system or how many different protocols you can integrate—it’s in solving those tiny, everyday frustrations that you didn’t even realise were bothering you until they’re gone.
V-Zug uses Wi-Fi to connect their devices and has a proprietary app, which makes me a bit sad since this would be an awesome use case for open standards. But maybe that’ll still come with a future update or something—one can hope. ↩︎
You’d be surprised how often two people (we’re three in total) want to do washing at exactly the same time. It’s like some sort of Murphy’s Law for laundry. ↩︎
This is, of course, complete sarcasm. Nobody’s favourite task is hanging washing, but at least now I know exactly when to do it. ↩︎