Drying laundry is really a timing problem

Subtropical weather turns without notice. The sun is perfect when you leave in the morning, a thunderstorm arrives at two, and by the time you get home at six the whole line has been soaked again and picked up dust with it.

The opposite failure is just as common: everything dried hours ago but nobody brought it in, so it hangs for another two days while night dew and daytime ultraviolet take turns at it.

Neither is difficult — both just need something to keep watching the forecast and the humidity. Which is exactly what a system is good at: it does not forget, and it does not need to be home.

It speaks twice in a day

1. 08:00

   Does today suit drying?

   Three inputs: today's rain probability, the outdoor humidity, and the air quality. All three have to pass before it says yes. Hanging laundry out on a bad air day is a way of moving particles into your wardrobe.

2. Afternoon

   Rain is coming

   An alert once the probability passes 60%. There is usually still time before it actually rains, so even from the office you can call home and ask someone to bring it in.

3. Evening

   Dry, bring it in

   With balcony humidity back to normal and enough hours elapsed, you get a reminder that the laundry should be ready — so it does not hang out overnight collecting dew.

4. With a powered airer

   It brings it in for you

   Not just a reminder. As the rain probability climbs, the airer retracts under the eave or lifts out of the way. That is the ideal case, but the first three stages work perfectly well without it.

Four things it takes care of

The thresholds are adjustable

What you need to have

How the whole thing works

Use the ready-made blueprints

The hub ships with 22 tested automation blueprints — think of one as a fill-in-the-blanks form. This mostly uses entity_state_trigger_notify, with adascene_single firing the fixed-time morning recommendation.

Just say the word

The WOOWTECH hub ships with HA-MCP, which lets AI connect straight into your system, build the rules, and then check for itself that they really fire. All you have to do is describe the outcome you want.

Prompts you can copy straight across

Every block below can be copied whole with the button on the right. Pick the one closest to what you want — you do not need all five.

Check whether my system has a weather source. If it does not, add a
free built-in one that needs no API key. Then build a single rule:
when today's rain probability goes above 60%, push me a notification
to bring the laundry in, with the current figure in the message.
Just that one rule for now.

Build the balcony laundry reminders properly, as three separate rules
rather than one. First create a switch called "laundry out today" and
have it turn itself off at 11pm every night. Rule one is the morning
advice at 8am: if rain probability, balcony humidity and PM2.5 all
pass, tell me today suits drying; if not, say which one failed.
Rule two is the bring-it-in alert: while the switch is on and rain
probability passes 60%, tell me to fetch the washing, with the current
figure in the message and at most two alerts a day. Rule three says it
should be dry once humidity is back to normal and four hours have
passed. If there is a powered airer, pull it under cover when the
probability climbs. Use the ready-made blueprints on the hub rather
than writing your own. When it is built, test it yourself, confirm it
really fires, and tell me which devices you used.

Our balcony is completely open with no cover, so even light rain
reaches the washing. Keep the thresholds cautious: warn me above 45%
rain probability, and advise against drying at all above 30% in the
morning message. We are on a main road too, so treat PM2.5 above 50
as a bad drying day as well. Leave everything else as it is.

Too many false alarms. Move the bring-it-in threshold from 60% to 70%,
and shift the morning message to 7:30 because I leave early. Do not
touch the dry reminder at all. Tell me the conditions on all three
rules once you have changed them.

I have never once received this bring-it-in reminder. Not a single time.
There are three places it could be breaking, so work down them in order.
Top layer is the weather source: is it reporting a rain number right now
at all? Middle layer is the rule itself: are the conditions written the
way I asked, and is it even switched on? Bottom layer is my phone: push
a plain test message and see whether this handset gets anything.
Stop at whichever layer is broken and tell me there. No guessing below it.

Common questions