Build a Pomodoro timer with smart lights
The Pomodoro technique is a method to balance focus time and breaks to keep concentration high. There are intervals of focus of around 25 minutes followed by a 5 minute break and all repeated 4 times. Then you get a longer break and restart the timer.
Let’s build one with just two routines. I will use the colour of a smart light to indicate if it’s focus time (blue) or break time (red). You can add notifications, announcements in smart speakers, etc. Will start the timer with a button but you can start it with anything else, like a voice assistant command triggering a virtual switch.
Here goes a tip. The scene switcher cannot have different delays between steps, unless they are random, and we need steps of 25 minutes for focus time and 5 minutes for short breaks. The workaround is creating “ticks” of 5 minutes. Focus time will span 5 ticks, short breaks 1. That’s 6 ticks, usually repeated 4 times.
Switcher settings:
- Create a new Switcher using instructions in first post
- Number of scenes to cycle: 6
- Starting scene: “Initial”
- Circular behaviour if not stopped: “Ends right before starting scene”
- Circular max loops: 4
- Inside Long spanning auto-cycle: Switching delay: 5 minutes
The scenes / routines:
- If Active scene matches 1 Then set your light blue.
- If Active scene matches 6 Then set your light red.
To start the Pomodo timer use the action Auto-cycle [ > ] that you can assign to a button or routine. To stop, use the Auto-cycle [ STOP ], you can even create an automation so when the light turns off, the STOP action runs.
(Edit: the virtual button in dashboard introduced later can control the timer too, in Dashboard button action choose Smart Auto-cycle [ > / Stop ].)
You can test that everything works by setting 0 minutes, that will make focus intervals last 5 seconds and break intervals last 1 second so the whole run will take you 24 seconds.