What is IFTTT Home Automation? - Guide - Can it Change Your Life?

What IFTTT and IFTTT Home Automation can do for You!

IFTTT Home Automation
How it will make Your Life Easier!
BASICS- Series 1 of 3

What is IFTTT.COM? – IFTTT (short for IFThisThenThat see pic above) – gives you full, creative Control over most of the apps and services you like and use! Therefore, and because it even can control and automate a bunch of SmartHome devices (from over 30 different companies), like our previously reviewed: Philips Hue Lighting, the Wemo-Devices, Nest Thermostat 3rd Generation Review, Ecobee 3 Review, or the Amazon Echo Speaker (Alexa) it is a Source of limitless possibilities, simplifying your all day life – and work! No more wasting time manually updating web apps?

The Basic Idea – IFTTT is made to create powerful, so called Recipes based on: IF – something happens in one ‘service’ (Trigger), Then something should Happen in another ‘service’ That(Action). Sounds so simple – but the effectiveness of this idea is tremendous! If you do not get it by now – don´t worry, the upcoming examples further in this IFTTT Home Automation -Guide will help you easily!

IFTTT-Progress – What once only was a little, nearly unknown app has become one of the most powerful tools in automating things and services in all day Life and an Internet of Things powerhouse. Once only connecting different services like social media, IFTTT has become a real smart solution to ad unlimited possibilities to your home automation grid; actually the support for smart home devices increases faster and faster.

Wasting time manually updating web apps was yesterday? If This, Then That (IFTTT) is the present and the future. IFTTT lets you automate a lot of your daily tasks. Tell IF (app) what you want to be done and what trigger will get this rolling – IF takes care of the rest. Still sounds confusing to you? – Just read on – You will Love It!

What is a IFTTT Home Automation – Recipe?

Recipes are simple connections between different products (like home automation devices), services like facebook, twitter, instagram or calendar, notes, dropbox etc.. The recipes allow you to trigger actions between services or devices, that normally do not work together. There are two types of Recipes: DO Recipes and IF Recipes. To make this a bit more easy and handy look at the following definitions and examples for IFTTT.COM.

DO Recipes – run with just a tap and enable you to create your own personalized Button-, Camera- or Notepad-Action. The DO-App is available for both iOS and Android. You can create an immediate action-button. Press it – and what you have defined is done!

As you can see in the picture these Do-Recipes can be useful for often repeated actions or to combine different Apps or Home Tech gadgets. You find a good overview what you can DO with these recipes here: Do-Recipes-Overview. We will show and describe our ‘Top 5 DO-Recipes’ down below for you – as well as our ‘Top 10 IF-Recipes’.

IF Recipes – will run automatically in the background. They create powerful connections with this one simple statement — IF This Then That.

The things you must not know! But some want!
Background information on IFTTT.COM!
If you do not want to know – just read on at
How to Get Started!

Channels – IFTTT Home Automation Channels are the basic building blocks of Recipes. Each Channel has its own Triggers and Actions. View all 223 Channels. With these blocks you can put together your own personal Recipes – matching your needs most perfectly. What is IFTTT.COM - IFTTT Home Automation Of course you can also use one of the thousands and thousands of already created recipes of users from all over the world.
Triggers – The IF part of an IF Recipe is a Trigger. Some example Triggers are “You’re tagged in a photo on Facebook” or “You check in on Foursquare.”
Actions – The then part of an IF Recipe is an Action. Some example Actions are “send an email” or “create a status message on Facebook.”
Ingredients – Pieces of data from a Trigger are called Ingredients, yes just like a real recipe in your kitchen. For example, the Ingredients of an Email Trigger could be: subject, body, attachment, received date, and the sender’s address.
On / Off – IF Recipes can be turned on and off easily on your account on the page IFTTT.COM or even more easy within the App. Just download the App for your Android or iOS device by typing IFTTT in the search of your favorite App-Store. When turned back on, they pick up as if they were just added.
Polling Period – Most IF Recipes check for new Trigger data every 15 minutes. Some Recipes run even faster.

How to get started with IFTTT Home Automation?

Just 3 easy Steps:
Step One – head over to IFTTT`s Homepage: HERE
Step Two – Register for your 100% Free Account
Step Three – Download the App called IF from your App-Store: iOS for iPhone users or Google Playstore

Tip – Start simplifying your Life by choosing the Recipes you like from the IFTTT.COM Homepage or within the app! First use recipes from the thousands of recipes already done by users. There is a recipe for nearly everything! After experiencing a few of them you can go and create your own recipes … if ever needed! Personally I made my own recipe only once because I wanted to try it, but there is simple no need in doing this – everything is right there!

Okay, okay, enough of all that theoretical stuff – lets jump right into the fun-part…..

How to find the Recipe – that fits your Needs?

There are three possible ways, how you can find awesome recipes. Of course, to be honest there are more ways – but these three are my recommendations.

First way – browse through the IF – recipes – at https://ifttt.com/recipes/if you can look if you find something that you really like. If though – just download and use it. Every recipe you download, activates all the channels that are needed to work automatically. When you now go to your recipe you just fill in the information needed in the blanks and it will work.

For example if you download a IFTTT Home Automation recipe that sends you SMS with your personalized weather forecast, every morning at a specific time. Your Benefit: knowing the weather and temperature outside for the day before choosing cloth – awesome and convenient! Look at my Smartphone-Screenshot. To do this you just have to allow the app to check your location. Or if you want to set it manually, just fill in the blanks. Define the time when you want to get your message and which phone number should be used. Done.
From now on – every morning at the same Time – the Internet gets to work for you! And you get your personal weather forecast. If you want you even can specify the information you want to get. Temperature (High/Low), Humidity, Rain probability aso. or you can say that you only want to get SMS if it freezes outside in the winter, so you know you have to get up earlier. You will find an overview over our Top 10 IF – Recipes and the Top 5 DO – Recipes further below!

Second way – choose a category or channel! Categories like ‘Recipes for Music Lovers’ or ‘Recipes for a Healthy Lifestyle’, are for those of you with a specific interest. Under each category you find thousands of already done recipes for nearly any purpose you can imagine. Choose those you love most and that make your life more convenient. Download – Fill in the Blanks – Done! With every new recipe you set to your IFTTT Home Automation Eco-System you achieve a little bit more freedom of mind and time.

One of the most useful categories from above surely is the Recipes to Streamline Your Social Media! Nearly everyone uses more than one social media network. Often we want to share a picture or quote that we find to Twitter AND Facebook, or you Instagram AND Pinterest account – I think you get what I mean. Here IF gives you such powerful automation. That you can use recipes that automatically post a picture you put on your facebook page to your twitter account, without doing anything! Or any of your Instagrams you post is shared to your facebook. The same can be set up with pinterest or tumblr if you want.

Poweruser-Tip
IFTTT – CASCADING

Just simplify Social Media networks = ‘cascade’ the recipes. Example:
1. You make an Instagram
2. IF-Recipe that automatically posts this to your facebook
3. IF-Recipe that posts your Facebook to Twitter
4. IF-Recipe that posts your Twitter to Pinterest
5. IF-Recipe that posts your Pinterest to tumblr
6. IF-Recipe that posts your tumblr to reddit

From Now On – creating an Instagram will automatically post this to all your social media networks! One Instagram will show up on Instagram, facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, tumblr and reddit. Your Benefit: Especially Fanpages or Companies with high social engagement, can roll out all their ideas to a much faster growing audience, because it will reach every single platform – immediately!

Why Cascading – and not setting up Five IF-Recipes from Instagram to facebook, from Instagram to twitter ….. and so on? Because this gives you with every post the possibility to choose where it will appear. E.g. if you post something directly to Pinterest only the IF-Recipes 4-6 will be triggered and your Post shows afterwards at Pinterest (trigger) ->tumblr (action from 5.) ->reddit (triggered through tumblr) (action from 6.)! Setting up Cascades Mindfully – can give you an fully automated Social – Power – Tool! Something people are paying a lot of money for people doing this for them or software that does the same – With IFTTT you can easily do it on your own and – Save a lot of Money! 🙂