LaundryPiBot is your convenient one-stop solution to doing your laundry using common washers in hostels, dormitories, etc. The Telegram bot will simply notify you when your laundry is done, so you never need to wait for the washer to finish again!

To operate LaundryPiBot, there are three separate modules that need to be started: laundrypisensor.py, laundrypibot.py, and laundrypiapp.py.

Before running anything, we need to make sure that certain dependencies are installed. We assume everything hereon is running in Python 3.

pip3 install python-telegram-bot
pip3 install pyrebase

To install Kivy, we simply follow what Kivy recommends for installation for development purposes:

git clone https://github.com/kivy/kivy
cd kivy

make
echo "export PYTHONPATH=$(pwd):\$PYTHONPATH" >> ~/.profile
source ~/.profile

Navigate to the directory containing laundrypibot. For demonstration purposes, run the following to help set up the database first. This is for the case when there is one idle washer, and there are some washers that are running and some that are faulty.

cd laundrypibot
python3 laundrypidemo.py 1

Now, ensuring that the Raspberry Pi (RPi) is hooked up to a vibration sensor, activate the sensor module by running:

python3 laundrypisensor.py

Information about washer states should start printing to the terminal screen. Shaking the vibration sensor should register changes. Next, run the module for the Telegram chat bot in a new terminal:

python3 laundrypibot.py

The bot is now live. It should be able to respond to user interactions such as /washers, /notify, and /report. /washers should report that there are four washers: washer 1 is idle, washer 2 and 3 are running for about 20 and 12 minutes respectively, and washer 4 is faulty; and /notify should inform you that washer 1 is currently idle.

Lastly, run the module for the Kivy app in a new terminal:

python3 laundrypiapp.py

This should fire up the Kivy app on the RPi display, which should be able to accept user input immediately.

Bear in mind that there is a bug where interacting with the Kivy app on RPi display sends touch events through to the background of the RPi, where the terminals are probably still visible. There might be a chance that a touch event accidentally closes one of the terminals if the touch happens to be at the exit button of the terminal. To avoid this, move the terminals to the corners of the screen so that any exit button is out of reach of possible touches.

To see the case when there are no idle washers, but only washers that are running with some that are faulty, run the following to set up the database one more time.

python3 laundrypidemo.py 2

In the terminal running laundrypisensor.py, kill the execution and rerun the module once again in order to synchronise it with the newly updated database.

*Execution interrupted with ctrl+c*
python3 laundrypisensor.py

Now, running /washers on the Telegram chat bot should report that there are four washers: washer 1, 2, and 3 are running for about 27, 20, and 12 minutes respectively, while washer 4 is still faulty. /notify should inform you that washer 1 has been running for 27 minutes, and you will be notified when it has stopped running.