I was thinking something like if the door is open more than 60% for more than 30 seconds the dishwasher is empty and thus any dishes inside from now on are dirty.
You said earlier:
So which is it?
60% or 90%?
Unless it’s a tiny dishwasher I can’t imagine being able to empty it with the door anything less than 100% open since you need to roll out the trays to get what’s in the back of the machine.
Either way… your last post is very much in line with what I said before.
With open meaning 100% open using a tilt sensor or just a door sensor mounted below or where ever makes it read a fully open state.
I don’t know your dishwasher. I can empty the upper tray of mine with the door only partly open. I also can put dirty dishes into the machine without taking anything out before with the door partly open.
If you need to be stringent, then opening the door more than 50% or 60% or so after a run certainly would make it uncertain whether the contents of the washer were still to be considered clean.
I don’t think you can presume that the machine will always be completely emptied before new (used) dishes are put in.
Ok… but why would you just empty the upper tray?
If we are going to list all these cases then nobody can ever be sure of anything.
Sure but:
The machine should be full if it’s clean dishes so there shouldn’t be any space to put things unless of course you only take some things out when you “empty it”.
Are you just trying your hardest to create problems or do you really only empty the upper tray?
It all comes down to discipline.
Do what you are supposed to do and don’t make a mess for everyone else in the house.
Only emptying the upper tray is causing issues in the home for sure.
What about a sensor on the soap dispenser? Is there a waterproof sensor that could tell when the dispenser is closed (ie - soap added, dishes must be dirty), and open (ie - cycle in progress, so wait 1 hour and set status to clean)?
I was about to suggest the Aqara leak sensor inside the washer, but I’m not sure how it would hold up over time through the different heat and water cycles 
I am not trying to make things difficult. Rather, life can und will be unpredictable at times.
The scenarios I outlined above actually happened to myself and my wife. I got up earlier than the wife. All cups either dirty and waiting to be placed in the washer or clean and sitting in the washer, waiting to be put into the cupboard. I take out a couple of cups and things to start breakfast, take out several other things and start stowing them where they belong. The phone rings and I’m off to answer. The wife enters the kitchen, spots the dirty cups for which there had been no room in the washer the evening before. She puts the cups in the washer.
Or, very similar scenario - the wife starts emptying the dishwasher while waiting for her coffee to be ready. When the coffee is ready she shuts the dishwasher, half emptied, and starts breakfeast. After breakfast I put the things from the breakfast into the dishwasher.
Actually, I think this is the kind of thing your wife wants to avoid, and that’s the very reason she asked you to do that automation we’re discussing here.
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@georgefokianos I changed the battery in my Aqara vibriation sensor today, and tested out the angle reporting. It was pretty spot on, reported change of angles within a second delay when I turned it around.
Right. Inside a metal box.
I haven’t seen a solution yet that doesn’t have many opportunities for false positives.
Yes, a metal box that opens. Why don’t you come up with the solution then?
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Ok, so after a lot of thinking this is the way I am going to follow.
I need an entity that will have 2 different states “clean state” and “dirty state”. That could be a simple toggle switch.
Since I already have a power sensor I know for sure when a washing cycle has finished. So I have a sensor that can give me the “clean state”.
The only way to tell for sure if dishes have gone in or out of the dishwasher is a weight sensor.
Combining those 2 sensors I think I can have both clean and dirty states with the following automations:
I will create a input_boolean.dishwasher_state helper. When the toggle is On the dishes are clean and when it’s Off the dishes are dirty
Now for the automations, let’s assume that the dishwasher weight when it’s empty is 35Kg.
Automation for clean state: When the washing cycle finishes and the weight is over 35Kg turn the toggle On
Automation for dirty state: When the weight of the dishwasher drops to 35Kg turn the toggle Off
In that way even if I open the door fully for over a minute and take out only one clean plate the state will not change to dirty, it will still state clean since the weight won’t drop.
What do you think about this? Can you find any flaws or situations where the above won’t work?
I have only come up with one issue really and that is the “empty” weight might be a bit in flux, since the dishwasher might have water in its pump and pipes when washing have just finished and that might evaporate over the following time period.
This should be possible to counter by setting a higher empty weight trigger and should someone leave a few things in, but still hit the trigger limit, then it should be only a very few things that gets an extra washing.
Hhmmm interesting, Ihaven’t thought about water in the pipes. Evaporating is not really an issue cause we use the dishwasher almost every day but still…
So what do you think about this:
I empty the dishwasher right after it finishes once and measure the weight i.e. 37Kg
Then I change the automation to:
Automation for dirty state: When the weight of the dishwasher drops below 37Kg turn the toggle Off
This way even if the water evaporates before we empty the dishes (very unlikely) the state will still not change since the weight of the water left in the pump has significantly less weight than the dishes
inside the dishwasher.
What do you think?
That was my idea or maybe just add 1 or 2kg more.
That is like a couple of dishes or or glasses and if the dishwasher is being emptied to that point then I would predict that it would be emptied completely.
There is none.
No electronic solution is going to be 100% accurate. Every one of them can easily be, or worse inadvertently fooled.
Interesting read.
Forgive me if I glossed over it but once you get the sensors working to your satisfaction, how is the status being relayed to you and your wife?
Status light?
Looking it up on a device wouldn’t be much better than opening the door itself and no one will want a recurring notification.
Like the magnetic sticker, to me at least, if it isn’t something that lets me know when I glance in the direction of the dishwasher than it wouldn’t be practical enough.
I applaud the concept and sensor ideas just curious on the human interaction part.
Yeah it seems to me that if you are in the kitchen, looking inside the thing is efficient.
If you are in another part of the house (or at work) then fair enough looking at HA. Or if you are wanting to send very persistent notifications to your teenagers to empty/reload it.
Then again I can usually tell if it is raining by looking out the window…
How about a repeated push notification after a washing cycle has finished and only to those at home with an action that disables an input boolean to indicate it has been emptied? This only requires power monitoring and the edge case of when nobody’s home can be fixed with an additional automation that triggers on a zone change.
EDIT: I went back to read the original requirement again: Is it as much about knowing the state of the dishes as it is about getting someone to unpack it?
That’s what I said too.
It’s not hard to see if the dishes is clean or dirty.
But sure there are those edge cases posted where someone would empty only half of the machine. Never happened to us but sure it could happen I guess.
Then again I can see cases where the scale gets fooled also.
I don’t know. Maybe this is just one of those things you are better of using your eyes than devices as Nick says.