That was an awesome project using pretty much the same tech! For those who haven't seen it:

http://makezine.com/2014/12/15/laundry-text-message-alerts-w...

That's a pretty decent idea for a project, but I would have instead hooked into the buzzer signal.

The author over-complicated his solution, but that doesn't make it invalid.

My landlord wouldn't love me very much if I started taking apart my dryer to hook a mysterious wired object to the buzzer...

i thought the same thing until i read the actual instructions:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Washer-Dryer-Laundry-Alarm-u...

it uses an accelerometer to detect the motion of the washer. no need to dissect your large home applicances!

Didn't even know about this when I wrote the comment. Now I'm a little more inspired to look into hardware hacking. Thanks!