Smart Switches with API

We are looking for a smart switch solution. To explain, our firm

manages buildings with temporary housing units. The tenants have

assigned time slots to use the laundry machines. Each tenant has an ID

card with a barcode. I want for them to be able to pass their ID card

through a card reader device, and that device will (via a PC) contact

our server and “ask” if this person has permission to use the machine

at this time, and if so, it will turn on the laundry machine. Seems

this could be achieved by a smart switch that could turn off or on the

electricity to any given machine.

We have Speed Queen Commercial machines which use a 4-prong 240V

Commercial dryer power supply.

The communications part we can handle -- we have a web development

team. What we need is hardware that can do this. Do you have smart

switches with an API that could handle this?

If so, let me know how it would work and please send a link to the

documentation.

Thank you,

David

Midway Living Web Team

New York City

I am a web developer and understand the basics of electronics but I am not an electrician. It would appear your solution is based on a unique circuit breaker for each machine, which also makes sense to me and we thought of that.

The issue is that we don't have that at present. For whatever reasons (or mistakes) each machine does not have a unique circuit -- they share a wire inside the of the wall. I suggested to the boss that we may need to change that, but can you clarify a bit?

Thank you.