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ConnectedLife's 'SmartDry' Discontinuation

From Consumer Rights Wiki

Company ConnectedLife (formerly Connected Life Labs) released a product on 2019-06-18 to measure and transmit information from within your clothes dryer to a remote endpoint, so that you can know when your clothes are truly dry. This company emailed users on 2022-06-17 that all devices would no longer work after 2022-09-30. The community would later be able to create a alternative method to use the sensor's data using ESP32 to allow use with Home Assistant.

Background

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SmartDry was an iOT device originally sold by Connected Life Labs. It was a sensor you would insert into your laundry clothes dryer and magnetically attach to the side of the drum. While the device was in the dryer, it would transmit data to a USB dongle receiver. This sensor data included information such as local temperature, humidity, motion, and battery.

Discontinuation of SmartDry Products

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2022-06-17

Email to users about EOL. Secured AWS until 2022-09-30 when all devices will stop working.

ConnectedLife's response

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June 17th, 2022

Notice:

It is with sadness and disappointment that we are announcing the closure of Connected Life Labs and discontinuing our SmartDry products.  Effective immediately, Connected Life Labs will no longer be selling or supporting the SmartDry devices.  We have secured cloud operations for all existing units to remain active until September 30th 2022, at which point the cloud services will cease operations and the product apps will no longer be supported.

We thank all our customers and those who supported our mission to create innovative and energy-saving smart home devices along the way.

Best,

The SmartDry Team

Consumer response

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Many users took to forums and threads to complain about their devices becoming useless. Some users discusses that the sensors would most likely be using BLE to communicate with the OEM WiFi adapter, which originally transmit the data over the internet to AWS servers**. A few users who were able to create a new receiver controller using a ESP32 SoC, created guides for others to reconnect this sensor using Home Assistant.

**this used to also connect to Samsung SmartThings, so Home Assistant could use this sensor using a local bridge.

References

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https://www.reviewed.com/accessibility/features/smartdry-gen-2-review-sensor-makes-your-dryer-smart

https://connectedlife.io/index.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20220628125113/https://www.connectedlifelabs.com/meetsmartdry

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/smart-dry-by-connected-life-labs-end-of-life/432068

https://robpickering.com/keeping-your-smartdry-dryer-sensor-operational/

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/smartdrys-useful-laundry-sensor-to-be-cloud-bricked-next-month/

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/clothes-dryer-automations/149017/83

https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/veof86/smartdry_is_shutting_down_ugh/