The number of homes equipping their abodes with home automation is increasing as people find the act of controlling their homes remotely convenient.  The only downside to this is app fatigue, especially when different brands each have their own separate apps for their respective home automation solutions.  Instead of serving as an added convenience, managing all those apps for different services can become a frustration.

As coding becomes the new literacy, simple code sets are being put to work for the consumer market to make the Internet of Things work more smoothly. IFTTT is at the center of this consumer code revolution, and smart home solutions are leaning on the IFTTT platform to make their apps and services more interoperable.

If This Then That (IFTTT) is a service enhancing organization and facilitating life management.  Users can create code “recipes” to receive alerts for things like flash deals, or recipes to auto-manage social media accounts. There are recipes that save mobile photos directly to selected cloud storage services, and even to automatically turn on the bedroom lights without having to whip out a mobile device.

Here are some of the top recipes for popular home automation solutions available today:

IFTTT recipes for the smart home

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WeMo Switch

WeMo Switch is one of the basic home automation solutions available today.  It’s a smart plug that allows appliances to be controlled with a mobile device.  Using IFTTT, users can create their own recipes to manage it, or they can choose to use one of the recipes shared by other IFTTT users, such as using the Weather Channel to automatically control the WeMo Switch.

To use this weather-driven recipe, activate both the Weather Channel and the WeMo Switch Channel, then use the recipe created by IFTTT user Strong that would turn on the switch at sunset.  Users can plug in their lamp on the WeMo Switch and use this recipe so that lights automatically turn on when the sun sets.  Check out more WeMo recipes here.

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Philips Hue

The color-changing light bulb is one of the coolest smart home solutions that is widely available to consumers today.  With it consumers can set the color of a room’s lights to suit their mood or to remind them of their happy place.  Consumers can use IFTTT to automatically change the lights when it starts to rain, or to turn on at a specific time of the day. There’s even a recipe to turn on a light when tagged in a Facebook photo.

To set up Hue to turn on at a specific time, activate the Date and Time Channel and the Philips Hue Channel to use the recipe by Philips Hue.  Or you activate the Weather Channel so that Hue automatically changes to blue when it rains.

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SmartThings

This home automation solution offers a starter kit that greatly helps anyone get in on all the smart home buzz.  It has a hub, which controls its own network of connected devices and sensors, but it also plays well with other home automation solutions such as Belkin’s WeMo, Philips Hue and even the Camelot Touchscreen Deadbolt.

SmartThings offers IFTTT recipes of their own, such as turning on a WeMo Switch when SmartThings’ motion detector senses movement, or when a WeMo motion sensor detects movement, it turns on a SmartThings Light Switch.  Simply activate the needed channels so the SmartThings devices can perform the appropriate actions.

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Netatmo

IFTTT recently introduced the Netatmo Weather Station Channel, which allows users to create recipes that interact with the environment.  IFTTT user Jordan Beck used the Netatmo Weather Station to create recipes that automatically turn on a space heater plugged into a WeMo Switch when it gets too cold, or turns on the fan when it gets hot. Newly created Netatmo recipes can be shared with others.

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LIFTTT

This is not a home automation system but a location app for the IFTTT.  With the use of a mobile device and the LIFTTT app, users can create recipes that would perform automatic actions when they check into a particular place.  It can be used for social media updates, or to control a smart home. Recipes can be created that would automatically turn on a WeMo Switch or Philips Hue when checking into home, or turn on or off when checking into another location.

photo credit: biblioteekje via photopin cc

photo credit: Philips Communications via photopin cc