I'm just posting this here for three reasons:
1. While searching for an answer I found many, many other people asking the same question
2. It took me a very long time to find an answer and I found it through sheer luck
3. I'd like to know if anyone else is currently using this or has any better/easier solutions
I started off using a Life360 trigger in IFTTT to turn on my house lights when I got home. The obvious problem is this would happen regardless of the time of day.
You can add time range filters to IFTTT triggers at https://platform.ifttt.com/p/<your username>/applets/templates but that was also tough to find and the coding aspect introduces frustrations.
Today I discovered Apilio. It's essentially a partner service to use with IFTTT. It's a mission to set up initially but there is sooo much you can do with it.
To give you an idea, here's my setup to solve my initial problem case:
Create Apilio boolean variable called "DayTime"
IFTTT sunrise trigger tells Apilio to set DatTime to True
IFTTT sunset trigger tells Apilio to set DatTime to False
IFTTT "When I come home" trigger runs the "ComeHomeLights" logicblock in Apilio
ComeHomeLights checks the current state of the DayTime variable.
If it's False, it triggers an IFTTT trigger called "TurnOnLights"
If it's True, it does nothing.
So that's all a LOT more effort than a simple "When I come Home, turn on the lights" in IFTTT, but I can add as many conditions as I like to Apilio's ComeHomeLights logicblock, and being able to store the states of things in variables is a huge win. For example if I work late I go to work late the next day. I can store the time I get home from work and use that to decide when to turn on the coffee machine the next morning...
As I add more smart stuff to my home this is going to become very useful.
1. While searching for an answer I found many, many other people asking the same question
2. It took me a very long time to find an answer and I found it through sheer luck
3. I'd like to know if anyone else is currently using this or has any better/easier solutions
I started off using a Life360 trigger in IFTTT to turn on my house lights when I got home. The obvious problem is this would happen regardless of the time of day.
You can add time range filters to IFTTT triggers at https://platform.ifttt.com/p/<your username>/applets/templates but that was also tough to find and the coding aspect introduces frustrations.
Today I discovered Apilio. It's essentially a partner service to use with IFTTT. It's a mission to set up initially but there is sooo much you can do with it.
To give you an idea, here's my setup to solve my initial problem case:
Create Apilio boolean variable called "DayTime"
IFTTT sunrise trigger tells Apilio to set DatTime to True
IFTTT sunset trigger tells Apilio to set DatTime to False
IFTTT "When I come home" trigger runs the "ComeHomeLights" logicblock in Apilio
ComeHomeLights checks the current state of the DayTime variable.
If it's False, it triggers an IFTTT trigger called "TurnOnLights"
If it's True, it does nothing.
So that's all a LOT more effort than a simple "When I come Home, turn on the lights" in IFTTT, but I can add as many conditions as I like to Apilio's ComeHomeLights logicblock, and being able to store the states of things in variables is a huge win. For example if I work late I go to work late the next day. I can store the time I get home from work and use that to decide when to turn on the coffee machine the next morning...
As I add more smart stuff to my home this is going to become very useful.
