First Post - Using IFTTT with SmartThings lights such as CREE or Hue

I recently received a " Samsung SmartThings WiFi [AC1300] Mesh Router Range Extender" as a “Vine” reviewer on Amazon. I didn’t expect to like the Wifi performance as much as I do, so now I’m diving into the home automation side of things but running into a few obstacles.

So far I have found IFTTT to be indispensable, and have integrated my Ring Doorbell, Arlo cameras, and some other goodies. Now that I have SmartThings hubs in my house I decided to add some lighting automation and was hoping to automate with IFTTT, since nothing else I have is SmartThings compatible.

One example I want to figure out is “Turn on Porch Light when Ring detects motion AND after sunset”. It seems simple, but IFTTT does have support for the “after sunset” part, and the CREE bulbs I have connected to my ST hub don’t show up in the ST service in IFTTT.

In the ST app, there are settings for lighting that allow automation for turning on/off at sunset - I’m hoping that can be utilized somehow, but is a “scene” or other ST automation accessible in IFTTT?

So far I’ve set up a couple of recipes that do things like arm/disarm my cameras when my Honeywell Lyric alarm system is armed/disarmed, record video from an Arlo camera (different angle) when someone pushes the Ring doorbell, etc. but this lighting one has me stumped…

Any thing that can point me in the right direction would be immensely appreciated. Thanks!

check out these 2 apps…



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Now that you have a ST Hub, you really don’t need to rely on IFTTT nearly as much. You can directly integrate the Ring doorbell with SmartThings, and then use ST’s Smart Lighting Application to perform automations. IFTTT is actually pretty slow when using a Ring doorbell as a motion sensor. The direct integration is nearly instantaneous.

Most ST users only use IFTTT to perform integrations with systems that are not natively supported by ST.

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Welcome!

As others have said, you will find that there is IFTTT – like functionality built into SmartThings itself which can actually do more than IFTTT, so most people only use IFTTT if they absolutely need an outside integration not available in the native smartthings options. :sunglasses:

The following FAQ should help get you started (this is a clickable link)

Also the older scheduling FAQ might also be of interest:

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Thanks all! I didn’t realize there were other ST apps besides the Samsung app i use to control the WiFi hubs. I’ll check those out. Thanks for your patient answers to my questions!

This ST ecosystem may be better/more complete than i’d originally thought. :smiley:

I’ve already got the porch light lighting up when it senses motion from an Arlo camera, but it seems buggy and inconsistent.

Does it take a certain amount of time for a new automation to “propagate”, or should things work immediately?