iPhone and Home Automation
Apple makes amazingly intuitive products. It also restricts the capability of them to limit the ‘options’ users have to make it easy for just about everyone to pick it up and use it. When using your iPhone with Home Automation you’re limited in what you can do without opening that up.
Step 1: Jailbreak and then keep reading
Don’t want to? You’re going to need to link Siri to an Android device.
Home Automation on an iPhone without a jailbreak (learn how) is pretty painful as there is far more interesting things you can do with your device that you need to unleash.
Activator
The master automator for iOS is discussed with ways to integrate with your automation hub. You can edit your triggers based on applications that open, schedules, events or settings on your phone. Read More
Top 10 Automation Tweaks
Just having activator is a good start but you also need to get some tweaks to make your system more integrated. There are a few MUST haves and we break them down for you.
Custom Remote
Having a remote on the wall is very cconvenient It can allow you to have custom scripts to run all over your house and beyond.
IFTTT and iOS
IFTTT is great to integrate a lot of functionality of the web into your system without a jailbreak. It also allows a ‘no coding’ option to do some complicated tasks. Keep reading to read some interesting recipes.
Link Android and iOS Together
Since iOS and Android are different ecosystems they don’t work well together. We show you a way you can still use an iPhone but take advantage of all the open source work done on the other side.
Best Products for iOS
iOS has a lot of accessories and we breakdown the best accessories for automation that will improve your iPads functionality and make your iPhone double as a wallet/key etc.
Home Automation with the Iphone Basic Checklist
- Find out your hubs API for launching GET requests to your devices
- Create custom commands to launch them via Launch Center Pro
- Jailbreak if possible and create ‘Menus’ in Activator
iPhone Discussion
[bbp-single-topic id=3958]
- Published in Apple iPhone, Phone
EventGhost Help Guide and Review | A Must HAVE!
What is it?
EventGhost is software to automate your Windows PC based on triggers (if this than that). Once you follow a few guides on how to add triggers and actions it’s extremely powerful. Download Eventghost here.
Example Trigger
EventGhost triggers are events that happen on your computer and are logged by EventGhost. These can be used to create a ‘Macro’. In the image above there are several ‘triggers’ that can be used by dragging the lightning bolt across to a new macros section on the right.
Example Macros
Do you notice the lightning bolt there? That is a trigger that has been dragged to the ‘unnamed macro’. It can include any type of trigger and then can have any action(s) after that.
Adding Parameters
Lets say you want to add what was said from the AutoRemote message into a custom script that you made. The first step is to add the line {eg.event.payload.arcomm} into the command line options section and then you can send it to something that happens on your PC. In the example above I sent it to a food log.
Sample Useful Recipes
- Create a good morning scene which controls your lights. You can integrate it with any home automation system by launching GET requests.
- Have an aquarium movie-loop pop up when you aren’t doing anything for a while.
- Send an AutoRemote notification when a new download is finished.
Other Youtube Videos
Here are some good youtube videos with regardes to EventGhost which you should try.
EventGhost Recipe Forums
- Home Automation Remotes | PS3 VS Harmony VS Z-Wave Ones
- EventGhost Help Guide and Review | A Must HAVE!
Our Review
- Published in EventGhost, Home
Top 10 Best Automation Apps for Android
AutoRemote is another one of those apps that is absolutely esstential to glue all your devices, apps and systems together. It can be read by EventGhost, Chrome and Zapier to do just about anything you want. There are several ways to start programming with AutoRemote and we will show you how.
AutoVoice is another important app that you can’t live without if you want to get into Home Automation. It allows for custom commands and actions all through your voice. It also lets you search Google and integrates easily with Tasker. That’s why the logo lookos so much like Tasker because all these “Auto” apps are plugins for Tasker.
Most of these automation apps are free with a paid option to open up more features. All of these apps integrate with the ‘master’ one (Tasker). They either integrate with them through ‘intents’ or through the ‘state’ and ‘plugin’ profile section in Tasker.
Retune is an app which allows you to control your iTunes PC. I personally use it on my home screen as a widget for easy access when I walk by it loads up the home screen I use to control it. There are a few features I would add to it but it does do a good job for what it does.
Xposed Framework Installer and Bridge help your device reach it’s full potential. This has a lot of features that you are looking for in a true open source product. Some of the features include long clicking the home button and assinging it to a Tasker task. Maybe you want to triple click the headphones button to launch your RunKeeper app. There are a lot of possibilities.
Movement Detector will let you change your phones settings or launch Tasker tasks based on how the device is moving. It’s a very useful task for as a ‘confirmation’ type profile. I would use it more to let my device know im in the car or I’m walking fast (I’m usually going somewhere with directions). Running may open the running app.
Motion detector is an app that allows you to turn your android into a tasker acting motion detector. It can turn the screen on as you and take you to a custom ‘scene’; It could also turn it on to your screen saving app which shows your latest photos of the family from a rss feed made from ‘Yahoo Pipes’. There really are many opportunities.
