I use it for 4 things. Lock and unlock deadbolts as you canât 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!!!
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 ideaâŠ
âSo, 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.â
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What kind of delays do you experience with ifttt? Iâve 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 thatâs how I do voice control of my home entertainment devices. At my house itâs 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 âifâ definitely can have a longer delay than if SmartThings is the âthat.â
Also a text as the âifâ processes much faster than an email as the âif.â
So I use SmartThings as the âthatâ in IFTTT recipes. But if I use it as the âifâ 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? ? Iâve 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 âNOâ when I saw him rolling around in plants (watching from our outside cameras). I just push a buttonâŠ
He was really confused to hear his name and a command in a very loud, very nice female voice 
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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 sheâs 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 âthatâ in an IFTTT recipe works much more quickly than using ST as the âif.â
Lag varies for different people, but at my house ST as a âthatâ is a pretty typical 8 seconds, but ST as an âifâ might be 10 minutes.
So it depends on the exact use case. 
So Iâm 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 â â itâs a way to let you âcall-inâ to IFTTT as a trigger for another event. Only youâre 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 youâre building your own device but you donât 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 âifâ and use the regular SmartThings IFTTT channel as the âthat.â For example, thatâs 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 doesnât have its own IFTTT channel/service with SmartThings.
BeaconSandwich doesnât have its own IFTTT channel/service, but it doesnât need one, because it can communicate via the maker channel. 
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
Itâs 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 thatâs obvious if you already know how to write a service manager. And thereâs not really much point, because you could accomplish exactly the same thing by flipping a virtual switch in the smartthings channel instead, unless youâre trying to also send some additional parameters, in which case most of the time you wouldnât be using IFTTT.
The first two methods above would be more likely to be used by non-coders. Theyâre 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. Itâs not something you typically just use on your own unless youâre 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 youâre not a programmer and youâre not trying to use a device which is telling you to use the maker channel, youâre not likely to need it.
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