Well, the primary platorm I’m using here isn’t Smart Things, it’s IFTTT and IFTTT’s ability to connect other services. Anyone can do all of these, and a lot of those recipes are already on IFTTT’s website. Some things require hardware and that’s easy enough to get. I’d be happy to write a few blog posts and see what folks think. I think what my specialty is, is being able to make something connected to IFTTT (and therefore all of IFTTT’s services) which doesn’t have a direct connection to IFTTT itself.
Great tips! I like the Car dongle idea.
Some things I’ve been really enjoying are the door knock notification since I live in an apartment. I have a multi sensor on my door that will send me a text when someone knocks on my door. The only downside is that I don;t know who it is so what I have planned is getting a wifi camera or old smart phone and hack it as a peephole camera so I can see in real time who is outside my door or get it to take a picture and upload it to drop box. This also adds a bit of security to your home.
I moved in with a buddy of mine and he had a coupe of those Wax Melt heating elements for fragrance. What I plan on doing is setting 3 of them up, all loaded with different scents and be able to control them with the Smart Tiles app so all you have to do is go to your dashboard and select a fragrance you want to use. This would also work with those Glade Plug ins. I think this is a must have for bachelors because you can turn on a fragrance from your smart home if you’re bringing a girl home haha.
Lastly, instead of spending a fortune on multiple Hue led strips, a person on youtube explains how he modified the hue light strip and added a much large and brighter led strip to his home. Here’s the link to the youtube video
You can get all the equipment for this modification at https://www.superbrightleds.com/
I’m going to take his idea one step further and buy weather proof RGB strip and line my balcony with it!
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That’s the “freshest” idea I have read in this community ever! 
Fragrances, girls and SmartThings! Nice buddy! Let us know if it works!
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I will definitely keep you guys posted
Man, I have become a total nerd for this stuff…
Basic background:
Software setup:
I have IFTTT working, and integrated to a dedicated gmail account, plus have it installed on my wife’s phone. This is crucial.
Have CoRE running on SmartThings, with two different users (me and my wife). Also, couldn’t do 90% of this stuff without CoRE.
Integrated to IFTTT, I have: Android Device, Android SMS, Button Widget, Date & Time, Gmail, Google Assistant, Google Calendar, Harmony, Location, Maker, Next, Hue, Phone Call, SkyBell, SmartThings, SMS and Weather Underground.
SmartApps in SmartThings: IFTTT, CoRE, Logitech Harmony, SkyBell and Google Assistant.
Harmony is setup to control all my home electronics. Onkyo receiver, LG TV, Dish Network Hopper receiver, etc., etc.
Hardware:
Google Home in living room, both Android phones are Pixels (which also have Google Assistant), a Logitech Harmony Hub, SmartThings v2, Cox Homelife with a Kwikset 914 Zigbee door lock (on the Cox Homelife net, NOT on the SmartThings Zigbee net), Centralite Pearl thermostat (came with the Cox Homelife, but removed from that network and put on the SmartThings Zigbee net), Hue lights throughout most of the house (almost the entire first floor and the nightstands in the bedroom and up and down the stairwell) and a SkyBell HD on the front door.
So, what have I done?
A. Setup a schedule on the calendar that flips virtual “mode” switches on SmartThings associated with certain temperatures. Then, using a combination of logic from presence sensors (wife’s phone and my phone), it sets the temperatures we like for sleeping vs. being awake, and lets the house get warmer or cooler when we’re gone during the day (or at night), but if we’re scheduled to come home soon, gets it warmer or cooler in time to come home. This also allows me to use the relatively “dumb” but connected to a network thermostat to act like a Honeywell or Nest that can auto-changeover my system from heat to AC. This is crucial because I live in eastern Virginia where a 50° F swing from one day to the next is not only not that uncommon, but has already happened twice this month. There were some issues with this; CoRE command optimized pistons can’t set modes on the Pearl Centralite, but pistons that DON’T have command optimization can’t set temperature settings, so each command to heat or cool takes two pistons, but that wasn’t really a problem. This took me days of trial and error to make work perfectly in a way to conserve energy but keep the house comfortable. Now that my “logic” works (again, HUGE pain. 13 CoRE pistons total, combination of Else-If, Simple and Basic ones; also requires six virtual switches. I’m sure there’s a way easier way to configure it, but this is what ultimately worked for me), the next step will be extracting all the hard-set temperatures into variables, and then making a piston that extracts the variables from the description of the thermostat events in the Google Calendar. Then I won’t have to touch the Pistons again if my wife or I decide to modify the temperatures, but instead just change the Google Calendar.
B. Have voice control for almost everything. Used virtual switches and CoRE logic to alleviate the Harmony issue of not being able to issue the same command over and over, so telling the Google Home any number of “volume” commands over and over will increase or decrease the volume on my home stereo appropriately. Otherwise, most of the switches are directly between Google Assistant and the Harmony by way of IFTTT.
C. Have the Cox Homelife app send emails based on internal rules (which is easily done), and then have these correspond to a Gmail label rule. Then use IFTTT Gmail channel to trigger SmartThings virtual switches. So, when I set the alarm at night, it can trigger lights, or when the alarm goes off, make all the lights in the house flash, etc. For example, down below in “E” where I have the lights come on or off automatically? That’s only done if the alarm is on.
D. IFTTT directly makes my living room lights flash when someone rings the SkyBell.
E. Automatically turn on and off lights in the house at night using a pseudo-random time around the same time frames nightly, HOWEVER, this runs if presence detection is off for both the wife and I; on the other hand, the presence detection also turns off all the lights if we forget one on during the day when we leave to save electricity.
F. Bedtime automator; I tell Google Home “bedtime” and my Onkyo is muted, TV turned off, Dish Network turned off, lights in bedroom turned down low, stairwell lights turned up bright, and every light in the first floor turned off (with a 30 second delay for the living room). A nifty use of Google Assistant + IFTTT + SmartThings (CoRE) + Harmony…
G. A phone muting/volume tool. Uses IFTTT, geo-fencing and schedules to adjust volume throughout the day. Turns volume up in the morning, but down at night; turns volume down when you come home from work, but up while driving.
H. A phone finder. Because I like having my volume muted when home to keep from annoying my wife (or dealing with telemarketers), I often have the volume low. But this is an issue if I’m doing something and forget where I put my phone (not a problem in my small current house, but a constant problem in the last two places I lived). This is one of my favorite uses of CoRE. Google Assistant + IFTTT to invoke a SmartThings switch (find my phone or find my wife’s phone) which then has CoRE first send the text message “lostphone” to my cell phone, which turns the muted ringer off (IFTTT recipe using Android SMS) and sets volume to 100%, then, one minute later, CoRE sets the state of a different virtual switch, IFTTT gets that notification, and that invokes a phone call to the lost phone automatically. When you answer, a rather creepy robot says “Hooray! You found your phone.” Makes it handy to find your phone.
I. Saying “Okay Google, watch Netflix” or “Okay Google, watch Amazon” even work. Invoke Harmony Recipes that are pretty sweet. Even “Okay Google, play [pandora station] on living room stereo” (or “whole house” to use all my chromecast audio’s simultaneously, so, like when cleaning the house on the weekends, the same song is playing in every room) also works. Trying to figure out how to pass an argument to a Harmony Activity, but so far that doesn’t work. That’s my next experiment now that I got the complex rules for the thermostat to work.
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