What do you use IFTTT for with SmartThings? (Examples and Ideas) 😎

I am bumping up this thread, as the use of IFTTT has literally exploded in recent weeks since SmartThings channel has been ROCK SOLID for a month now. Great work SmartThings team. @slagle , please share with your team. The recent efforts are paying off. Please keep up the good work!

So, I am making use of IFTTT to integrate the following non ST devices.

Automatic for various driving related activities
Abode for arming/disarming and 433mhz sensors
Nest Cam for motion and sound detection
Arlo cam for motion detection
Life 360 for various locations within my circle
Rachio for some sprinklers control
Alexa for texting shopping lists
Wemo Coffee for brewing my morning coffee

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Just got an Automatic for my wife’s car this week and love it. My Sonos will tell me when she made it to work & tell me when she’s leaving work with the help of IFTTT. (That helps me to figure out when to start the grill for dinner.)

I was hoping to have the ability to ask Alexa how much gas was in her car, but her cars computer doesn’t have that capability.

Yeah, my Alexa integration lacks substance. We both have the same make and model, so is pointless to ask Alexa anything, because I don’t know which car she’s talking about. Luckily, I can ask Alexa via ‘my home’ skill and she’ll tell me which car is in the garage.

Are routines still not working? Or are they just not working for me?

Found this recipe but none of my routines show up.

I don’t know about that recipe, but routines work fine as long as you have associated them to a virtual switch.

There is a smart app in the marketplace which is specifically for that purpose. It’s very popular and has been around for a long time so that it uses the older terminology “home phrase” instead of “routine” but it’s the same thing.

To use it, first create a virtual switch.

Authorize its use in IFTTT.

Then do the following:

One) open the mobile app and go to the marketplace section.

  1. choose smart apps, then lights and switches, and scroll down until you see the following.

  1. install that smart APP and just follow its directions.

Once you have the virtual switch associated to a routine, you can then use it in an IFTTT recipe.

My new uses are all about getting ST sensors to report to my much, much better but not Zigbee compatible Indigo home automation system. Plus controlling a few non-Hue compatible lights: a Sengeld, a Sylvania IQlight, two OSRAM Gardenlights.

So Indigo can natively send a URL request to the Maker Channel of IFTTT, which then tells ST to do something. That last part works most of the time–IFTTT says it did its stuff, but sometimes my hub ignores it. Typical!

Gotta use the Maker channel because IFTTT has never responded to Indigodomo’s request for info on how to develop an Indigo channel.

Also, I use IFTTT’s ST channel to Gmail to Indigo’s Better Email Plugin to receive state changes from the Iris contact sensors I already owned from when I used ST but that aren’t compatible with Indigo. Surprisingly fast response there, but that’s because the Better Email Plugin supports IDLE SMTP connections.

It has been a week or less, and it is working pretty well, to the point I’ll start really incorporating both sides of it into more automation routines now.

Coming up I expect to start using Automatic to tell Indigo I’m home, and iOS Location too.

SkyBell HD video doorbell is now ready for SmartThings! Here’s the blog post with more details: http://blog.skybell.com/smartthings-iot-announcement/3

We are absolutely thrilled to bring the SmartThings community the first video doorbell connected to SmartThings! You now have the ability to receive triggers from SkyBell HD’s button and motion sensor AND send commands to SkyBell HD!

SkyBell HD was named “Best Video Doorbell” by CNET and WireCutter - and is the same version partnered with Honeywell, Alarm.com and Nest. We’ve helped customers prevent break-ins while the burglar was on their doorstep - even when they’re not home.

We’re thrilled to join the SmartThings platform and continue to help make safer homes and neighborhoods.

Only the SkyBell HD is compatible with SmartThings.

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I use it for 4 things. Lock and unlock deadbolts as you can’t through just Alexia like bulbs and switches. And I have one to trigger all sirens and turn off all. I just say trigger panic and it sounds. Or trigger back door lock or trigger back door unlock. It tells me its sending that to IF and few seconds later it does what I ask!!!

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9 posts were merged into an existing topic: [RELEASE] Ask Alexa

Since this post was split, and some were moved to another unrelated topic - I will post this again here, just for documentation in the case that it could give someone else an idea


“So, my use of IFTTT is pretty simple. We use a fan for white noise when we sleep, which is connected to a Z-Wave outlet. We also have an Aria scale (Fitbit has an IFTTT channel). So, since my wife is usually the last one our of bed in the morning, when she steps on the scale to weigh herself (every morning), the fan turns off when a new weight is logged.”

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What kind of delays do you experience with ifttt? I’ve always had huge ones that just made it unacceptable for use.

I use it for deadbolts and my hybird GE water heater. Delays have never been more then 30 sec. usually around 10.

I use IFTTT all the time since that’s how I do voice control of my home entertainment devices. At my house it’s a pretty consistent eight second delay, sometimes a little less. But I know it varies a lot from house to house.

Also, channels which rely on certain kinds of polling have much longer delays. I have found that anything that relies on the SmartThings channel reporting a switch going on/off as the “if” definitely can have a longer delay than if SmartThings is the “that.”

Also a text as the “if” processes much faster than an email as the “if.”

So I use SmartThings as the “that” in IFTTT recipes. But if I use it as the “if” I expect a much longer delay.

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So, my use of IFTTT is pretty simple. We use a fan for white noise when we sleep, which is connected to a Z-Wave outlet. We also have an Aria scale (Fitbit has an IFTTT channel). So, since my wife is usually the last one our of bed in the morning, when she steps on the scale to weigh herself (every morning), the fan turns off when a new weight is logged.

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Have you thought about setting up a speaker and when a new weight is registered it starts screaming? ? I’ve got to do that!

I am not sure exactly how high the WAF would be on that integration
 although I have used my Sonos Connect Amp (with outside speakers) to tell our dog “NO” when I saw him rolling around in plants (watching from our outside cameras). I just push a button


He was really confused to hear his name and a command in a very loud, very nice female voice :smiley:

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My wife threatened to get one of those hotel honor bar weight sensors to put in my beer fridge. Thank God she’s technology illiterate! If she could figure it out, every time I got a beer, my sonos would announce. Murray got a beer!

This came up in another thread, but I just wanted to mention that in my experience using SmartThings as the “that” in an IFTTT recipe works much more quickly than using ST as the “if.”

Lag varies for different people, but at my house ST as a “that” is a pretty typical 8 seconds, but ST as an “if” might be 10 minutes.

So it depends on the exact use case. :sunglasses:

So I’m no programmer, but how the hell do you use/integrate the maker channel into ST.

Ive been looking for a dummies guide and cant seem to find anything on HOW to integrate it for usefullness.

Any links?

The maker channel is just one of many channel/services on IFTTT. Its purpose is to let you contact IFTTT via the Internet. The maker channel can be accessed by either a get or a put.

In this sense, it serves the same purpose as the phone channel or the text channel – – it’s a way to let you “call-in” to IFTTT as a trigger for another event. Only you’re doing it from the Internet.

This is most useful when there is a device that is capable of making or receiving these kinds of web requests that does not have its own IFTTT service/channel. Or when you’re building your own device but you don’t want to pay for a special IFTTT channel for it.

SmartThings as the That (Having an outside service contact SmartThings via the IFTTT maker channel)

If you have something that already does these kinds of web requests, such as an IBeacon app, then you just set that up to send the code to the IFTTT maker channel as the “if” and use the regular SmartThings IFTTT channel as the “that.” For example, that’s how I use Ibeacons to trigger SmartThings events.

The BeaconSandwich website explains how to do this with their app:

This is how you use IFTTT to connect a device that doesn’t have its own IFTTT channel/service with SmartThings.

BeaconSandwich doesn’t have its own IFTTT channel/service, but it doesn’t need one, because it can communicate via the maker channel. :sunglasses:

SmartThings as the IF ( having an outside service receive a put via the IFTTT maker channel )

If you want to have a SmartThings event like a virtual switch coming on then trigger a put to an outside service you can use the SmartThings IFTTT channel as the IF and the maker channel as the that.

SmartThings sending to the IFTTT make a channel as the If

It’s possible by setting up a service manager smartapp to send an outgoing message to the IFTTT maker channel which would become an if in an IFTTT recipe/applet , but presumably that’s obvious if you already know how to write a service manager. And there’s not really much point, because you could accomplish exactly the same thing by flipping a virtual switch in the smartthings channel instead, unless you’re trying to also send some additional parameters, in which case most of the time you wouldn’t be using IFTTT.

The first two methods above would be more likely to be used by non-coders. They’re just using IFTTT as the glue between two disparate systems, for example between the beaconplus app and SmartThings.

More information

In almost all cases if the maker channel is going to be useful for non-coders, the device manufacturer will have included instructions, as in the beacon sandwich example above, for how to use it. It’s not something you typically just use on your own unless you’re building your own devices.

Most often you see it referenced with something like

Q. Does your device have an IFTTT service/channel?

A. No, but you can use the IFTTT Maker Channel to achieve integration. { and then instructions for how to do that.}

If you’re not a programmer and you’re not trying to use a device which is telling you to use the maker channel, you’re not likely to need it.

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