10 Ways IFTTT Can Help Manage Your House

By Yoav Avidor, CEO of Agan Aroma and Founder of Moodo

IFTTT is short for “If, This, Then That.” It is an open programming platform that allows consumers to create or access simple IFTTT recipes for the smart home devices to follow. For example, “If it is raining out, then stop the sprinkler system temporarily.”

Really, you don’t even need to be a programmer to utilize IFTTT, as more than 54 million applets are available on the IFTTT website for consumers to access for free. With this many applets easily accessible, you can bet that there is a way to automate just about anything in your house. You can also find applets that tie IFTTT services from a variety of different service providers—your favorite pizza joint, car repair shop, grocery store, etc. Here are 10 IFTTT capabilities that are slightly unusual but showcase the remarkable versatility of applying IFTTT to your everyday life.

 

A Breath of “Fresh” Air

Connect a smart fragrance diffuser, like Moodo, to IFTTT to enable it to activate automatically when you “wake up in the morning” or “when you go to bed.” You can find an IFTTT applet for the Moodo fragrance dispenser, as well as use a companion mobile app, Alexa, and Wi-Fi to connect and control the device. You can automate when the dispenser turns on and off as well as the intensity of the fragrance and fan speed.

 

Don’t Get Caught in the Rain

Thanks to a service like commercial Weather Underground and its IFTTT support, you can “get an email if there will be rain in your area tomorrow,” reminding you to grab your umbrella.

 

Time to Walk the Dog

Your boss calls a meeting at 5 p.m., the traffic isn’t moving on the interstate … common occurrences that make it tough to get home on time to walk the dog. With a device like Whistle attached to your dog’s collar, you can track your furry friend’s level of activity and location. That’s great, with an IFTTT app, you can do something about the situation, by having Whistle “send a text to your roommate automatically asking him to walk the dog” if Rover hasn’t met his “fitness” goal by 6 p.m.

 

Special Delivery

Domino’s is one pizza joint that can link to your home devices via IFTTT. So why would you want to do that? You can get a better idea of when your pizza will be delivered—maybe you have time to take a shower before the doorbell rings—when you can “have the color of your Philips Hue lights change when your order is in the oven.”

 

Instant Car Care

Automatic makes a device that plugs into your car’s data port to help you keep on top of your car troubles. For example, if the Check Engine Light comes on, the Automatic app will help diagnose what’s wrong. That’s great, but with IFTTT, you can have it ““send a text message to your mechanic when the check engine light comes on.”

 

Get in the Mood

Soft, subtle lighting looks and feels good after a long, hard day at work, school, or traveling. WeMo Lighting through IFTTT lets you ““Turn on your WeMo bulbs when you arrive home.”

 

With the Flick of a Wrist

The Jawbone Up24 wristband monitors how you sleep, eat and even move. Through an IFTTT applet, you can set it up to “turn on the lights as you wake up” or “log your sleep patterns” into certain apps.

 

Get Cooking

If you own a GE Appliance that is connected to Wi-Fi, you can automate it using the company’s IFTTT channel – “Flash your Phillips Hue lights when your oven turns on.”

 

Expand Your Energy Saving Potential

The Nest Thermostat is a proven energy saver through its ability to adjust your home’s heating and cooling system according to your daily schedule, but you can use an IFTTT recipe to save even more: “Turn off your lights when your Nest is set to away mode.”

 

Water Works

The weather is a finicky thing, especially when you’re trying to maintain a garden and lawn. The GreenIQ Smart Garden Hub is able to control irrigation based on current weather conditions: For example, “When the wind gets too strong, stop watering the garden.”