Sphero's Force Band can now control your home over IFTTT
Use a force push to turn on your coffee machine.
Sphero's motion-tracking Force Band can now control more than a tiny (and utterly adorable) BB-8 droid. The company has teamed up with If This Then That (IFTT) to integrate the "force" with countless apps and smart home devices. IFTTT, if you need a reminder, is a service that lets you automate pretty much anything with "triggers" and "actions." You can use it to turn on your Hue lights as soon as you walk through the front door, or tweet your Instagrams as native photos on Twitter. With the Force Band, you can now activate these same actions with a force push, pull or stop.
Sphero has posted some basic "applet" recipes on the Star Wars Force Band IFTTT page. You can play The Imperial March with a push, or pull to "post your Jedi wisdom to Twitter." They're simple suggestions, admittedly, but ones that should appeal to new and lapsed IFTTT users. As Sphero's video shows, you'll soon be wandering around the house and waving your arms to activate the coffee machine. (Personally, I would love one to flick through playlists or open my front door for friends.) Will this new functionality be actually useful? Debatable, but it creates extra value for what is otherwise an expensive ($79.99) BB-8 remote control.
