If there’s one thing around the house that I hate doing, it’s my laundry. I can program thousand dollar routers, disassemble/reassemble laptops and can manage servers sitting halfway around the world, yet I get scared of a piece of technology as simple as a washer and dryer. For all of my fears of shrinking or discoloring my clothes, I’ve never actually ruined anything in the wash. In fact, the only thing I tend to mess up is remembering to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer when it’s done. What I need is something to remind me when it has finished.

Someone else has obviously had a similar issue, and constructed what they affectionately call the Laundruino. This device uses an arduino to talk to the washer, and then alert you over the LAN when it has finished. He’s actually done most of the hard work by providing full instructions and the necessary code to accomplish the task. All you need to do is acquire the parts and assemble one for yourself.