Siri Commands to Eventghost with the Apple Watch
The Apple watch is an amazing piece of hardware but out of the box with no modifications it and limited technology knowledge, it’s way overpriced. Most users use it as a notification device. Let’s talk about:
The best parts about it:
- It’s semi waterproof (they don’t just want people to swim in chlorine and the sea with it)
- it has great apps already (with the exception of facebook)
- Definitely lasts a day of heavy use (I’ve confirmed this)
- The screen is beautiful
- The microphone is great. It’s not perfect as it does make more mistakes than my iPhone.
The downsides are:
- The price
- The battery doesn’t come close to the pebble
- There are some quirks that I want to see fixed which I will list at the bottom in case any Apple employees are looking at this article.
How to connect the Apple Watch Siri to EventGhost or Tasker to control everything
Siri on your watch has tremendous power to control your life. Once you can get your text from the watch to your PC you can do just about anything. Until Assistant+ for the iPhone the ability to control what happened with Siri was our of our control. Since Apple has made the Apple Watch Siri separate from the iPhone Siri we can’t take advantage of the tweak. Until now…
Warning
This tutorial isn’t for everyone as it’s complex, requires a ton of patience and some determination. That said, once you do it you don’t need an Amazon Echo, tablets all over the house talking to you, etc. All of it can be controlled for your watch.
Why should you do it?
The Apple Watch Siri restricts you from sending email, querying websites, and requires the dreaded ‘handoff’. I want my watch to do everything while leaving my phone in my pocket. I currently control my iTunes Windows PC by searching with my voice for music but you can literally DO ANYTHING. You could combine it with scraping software like kimono labs, vera for home automation etc. You could get an image from your webcams and email it to yourself (the Watch Mail app lets you view images).
Two Versions of this solution:
A. For those Canadians with no international texting:
- A separate jailbroken iCloud iOS device running iOS 7-8 (I’m using an iPad)
- A gmail account (free)
- Zapier (free)
- Slight php knowledge (priceless) with access to a server
- An always on (or when you want the commands) home PC with EventGhost and Autoremote installed. You could also send messages to an Android device with Tasker and Autoremote installed instead.
*For more detailed instructions see below
B. If you have a US Texting Plan
- Setup a new user called Jarvis and with the phone number of IFTTT when you setup the SMS channel
- Setup ifttt.com with the SMS trigger and then to a Maker Web request which will be your EventGhost URL with AutoRemote installed. This is a way cleaner solution.
* Basic Canadian Number Workaround Outline
- Create a new contact in your contacts called whatever. I used ‘Jarvis‘. This mobile number is your own.
- Install iForward onto your always on iCloud device (I used an iPad) to forward messages to your gmail account.
- Go to your Zapier account and set up a new zap from an Zapier email to a WebHook (Post). The webhook will go to a webserver that will parse the command for the actual Siri command and then forward the resulting command to your Android device or Eventghost PC.
- Your webserver will look something like:[reveal title=”Webserver Script PHP To Parse The Command” open=”false,true” color=”grey-lite”]<?
//get message
function get_string_between($string, $start, $end){
$string = ” “.$string;
$ini = strpos($string,$start);
if ($ini == 0) return “”;
$ini += strlen($start);
$len = strpos($string,$end,$ini) – $ini;
return substr($string,$ini,$len);
}
$message= $_POST[‘message’];
$fullstring = $message;
$fullstring= str_replace(array(“\r\n”, “\r”, “\n”), “”, $fullstring);
$parsed = get_string_between($fullstring, “5555555555): “, ” New SMS at “);
$parsed = urldecode((string)$parsed);
switch ($parsed){
case $parsed==”Play music”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=Play’ ) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Play some music”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=Play’ ) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Pause music”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=Play’ ) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Pause the music”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=Play’ ) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Next song”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=Next’) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Play next song”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=Next’) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Play next song”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=Next’) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Play slideshow”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=CPUs%20slideshow’) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Start slideshow”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=CPUs%20slideshow’ ) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Start a slideshow”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=CPUs%20slideshow’ ) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Play dance music”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=dance’) ;
break;
case $parsed== “Play kids music”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=Kids%20Music’ ) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Play radio”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=radio’ ) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Play the radio”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=radio’ ) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Turn on sound bar”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=powersoundbar’ ) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Turn on the sound bar”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=powersoundbar’ ) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Turn on the TV”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=powertv’ ) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Turn on TV”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=powertv’ ) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Turn on the amp”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=Power%20Amp’ ) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Turn on amp”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=Power%20Amp’ ) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Play top 40″:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=uktop40’ ) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Play the top 40″:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=uktop40’ ) ;
break;
case $parsed==”Play the top 40 music”:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/touchcontrol/json/executebutton?device=Macros&button=uktop40’ ) ;
break;
default:
header( ‘Location: http://myurl:33/?message=’.$parsed ) ;
break;
}?>[/reveal] - Setup the Gmail account with a custom filter to forward that message to your new Zapier email account trigger (you’ll need to setup a new forwarder email address). I set it up to delete all the other “New Incoming SMS’ Message to the trash. That way you only keep the commands said from Siri, but I also don’t want to see them so I set them to ‘archive it’ in the filter.
For those of you that can do this already without further instruction, get to it. Otherwise, follow AutomationDude.com on Facebook and I’ll give you more instructions with the code I used.
- Published in Apple Watch, Siri
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.
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.
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
Mobile Phone Automation | iPhones and Androids
Automating your home and phone can be a tedious task. Depending on how you do it, it can be a waste of time or if you backup you can have your ‘profiles’ and info forever.
There are two major brands which we will discuss:
The single most common question I get asked is:
Question: Which is the better platform for home automation?
Answer: Before iOS 8 and without jailbreaking the iOS 7 device it’s hands down the Android ecosystem. There is EVERYTHING you could want with android 4.2 and above. The only thing that Android is missing is a good iBeacon native code to interact with.
Now that iOS 8 has arrived with ‘intent’ style accessibility between applications, HomeKit, HealthKit, iBeacons etc. there shouldn’t be that big of a difference if all the same tweaks are developed from iOS 7 to iOS 8 for jailbreaking. A jailbroken device in the iOS ecosystem is a must if you want to take advantage of the full potential to what is possible. Click on your ecosystem below to find out how to optimize your system.
Join the discussion on which platform is better below
[bbp-single-topic id=3955]
Custom Remote for iPhone and Home Automation | TouchControl!
What is it?
This is perhaps the most awesome custom remote software for iOS devices. I have to admit, I couldn’t find many others when I did my original search but after playing with this there is only a few one time fees and you’re set.
Gallery
[rev_slider TouchControl]Notice that it has two parts. One ‘TouchControl Server’ and then you need to download the app.
Possible Improvements
I would like to see some voice control integration with this. Now with HomeKit released we wont quite need this but I have a feeling there is no option for an always listening solution like an app could provide using a third party service. I could like to see a custom command to trigger a GET or POST.
Website Address
Download the Home Server for GET Control
What does it look like?
This is the remote you could have for all your devices on your iPhone or iPad
Sample Youtube Video Using Touch Control
- Published in Apple iPhone, Apps, Phone, Touch Control