IftttRecipes
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Using IFTTT with the Jawbone UP
The Jawbone UP fitness tracker is a lot more useful now that Jawbone has opened the API to third-party developers. One of the most exciting companies tapping into the UP platform is online automation tool, IFTTT. In the article below, I will talk a little bit about connecting your UP to IFTTT and then list some of my favorite recipes. IFTTT is an automation tool that allows you to setup tasks that happen at a certain time or in response to a certain event. It uses a trigger event ("If this happens") to initiate an action ("then do that"). Within the IFTTT framework, you create what are called recipes to select the trigger event and its resulting action. For example, you can create a recipe that uses a date/time trigger to send you an email at the same time each day. IFTTT is extremely useful because it ties into services, called channels, like Dropbox, Google Calendar and, of course, the topic of this post, the Jawbone UP. With IFTTT and an UP, you can do a myriad things like update your UP mood to exhausted when you get less than 6 hours of sleep, automatically add your morning coffee to your UP food list and log the daily weather. Configuring the UP within IFTTT is extremely easy. Just login to the IFTTT dashboard and click on the UP channel to activate your Jawbone account. You have to login to your Jawbone account and authorize Jawbone to share info with IFTTT. You can share your moods, moves, meals, events, sleep info, weight and more between IFTTT and UP. It's a bi-directional connection so you can pull down info from UP and send new information back to the fitness tracker. As you can imagine, there are a lot of ways to interact with the Jawbone fitness tracker using IFTTT. Below are some of my favorite IFTTT recipes for the UP. See the big picture of how you sleep. Track your Zzz's with a spreadsheet! If I get more than X hours of sleep, set my mood to 'energized' in my Jawbone UP feed Share Foursquare gym check-ins to your Jawbone UP feed Log my UP meals and their nutritional content into a Google spreadsheet Send your spouse a friendly email when you get below 7 hours of sleep Tweet when I walk more than 10,000 steps Remind me if I don't work out for 3 days If I get less than 5 hours of sleep, put on a pot o' coffee with WeMo #sunshine brings better #mood Tag an Instagram photo with #UP to share it with your team There are now 110 recipes on IFTTT for the UP and this number is climbing. If you have an UP, let us know in the comments if you use it with IFTTT.
IFTTT Recipes: Using Siri to turn on the Christmas lights
IFTTT Recipes is a new recurring column featuring recipes developed using IFTTT.com and their favorite IFTTT channels. Come see what TUAW bloggers cook up in the IFTTT labs! In this latest installment of IFTTT Recipes, I'll show you how to use Siri to turn on your Christmas lights -- and amaze the little ones at the same time. To perform this magic trick, you'll need a free IFTTT account, a Belkin WeMo Switch (US$49.95 from the Apple Store), the ability to send SMS text messages and a Siri-capable iPhone. First, log into IFTTT and enable the SMS channel. When you do this, IFTTT will set you up with a special SMS phone number. If you send a text message to that number from your iPhone, that can trigger an action. Next, set up a contact on your iPhone. To add fun to the effect, I set up a contact for Santa Claus, entering in his mobile number as the SMS phone number from IFTTT. Now make sure that your WeMo switch is plugged in and ready to go, and that you've enabled the WeMo channel on IFTTT. The WeMo switch is designed to handle a maximum of 15 Amps at 110 Volts. My vague recollection of a university electrical circuits class reminds me that P=I*V, where P=power, I=current and V=Voltage, so you'll want to make sure that all of your bulbs (indoor or out) don't require more than 1.65 kilowatts of power. Otherwise, you may need to set up multiple WeMo switches... In IFTTT, it's time to set up a recipe. I've blurred out the phone numbers, but you'll see it's as easy as this: if IFTTT's SMS account receives an SMS from your chosen iPhone, then it will turn on the WeMo Switch. In this case, my device's name is Living Room Lamp, but it's actually hooked up to the Christmas tree. Finally, gather kith and kin around you while drinking wassail and singing carols, and invoke Siri. Say "Send a message to Santa Claus saying turn on the Christmas lights", acknowledge that Siri understood the message, and let the recipe work its magic. Within about 10 to 15 seconds, the tree or your outside lights will pop on.
IFTTT Recipes: Post to App.net
IFTTT Recipes is a new recurring column featuring recipes developed using IFTTT.com and their favorite IFTTT channels. Come see what TUAW bloggers cook up in the IFTTT labs! Wouldn't you like to post (tweet?) to App.net from the Twitter client you already love with no extra effort? IFTTT works that magic for you. App.net is a young, Twitter-like service. It's funded entirely by annual memberships, which is appealing to many who dislike intrusive advertising like sponsored tweets or Twitter's newly restrictive rules for developers. Since it's still in active development (alpha access is being slowly rolled out to early adopters), there's not much support by way of fully formed apps for iOS and OS X. I dislike posting from a browser, so I've been ignoring App.net for the time being. However, IFTTT's recently-added App.net support lets me contribute with the Twitter apps I already use. Here's how to build this recipe. First, enable both the Twitter channel and the App.net channel (provided that you're in on the alpha). Then follow these steps: Choose "New tweets by you" as the trigger. Optionally include mentions and retweets. Choose App.net as the action, then "Post an update." Fiddle with the ingredients to you liking (I accepted the default). Click "Create action," give it a name and finally click "Create recipe." You're done! Now tweets composed and shared with your favorite Twitter client will appear in your App.net stream. You'll have to go over there to monitor replies, etc., but this takes care of the posting. Enjoy!
IFTTT Recipes: Cool me off!
IFTTT Recipes is a new recurring column featuring recipes developed using IFTTT.com and their favorite IFTTT channels. Come see what TUAW bloggers cook up in the IFTTT labs! We don't have air conditioning in our house, but the low humidity in Colorado usually means that a fan is sufficient to stay comfortable. I thought it would be fun to have IFTTT turn on a fan near my desk whenever the temperature outside goes above 90°F. The IFTTT channels I used were Weather and WeMo Switch. One of the weather triggers is "Current Temperature Rises Above," so I set it up to fire when the current temperature at my location rises above 90°F. For the action, I set up the WeMo switch (see my review of WeMo here) channel to turn on when it received the trigger from Weather. The fan is a simple little desk fan that sits near my desk, so I plugged it into the WeMo. Sure enough, on those days when it gets hot outside, the fan automatically turns on. To ensure that the fan doesn't run longer than necessary, I've also created another recipe that turns the fan off when the outside temperature gets lower than 85°F. It's working really well! However, since the Weather channel uses outside temperature at a weather station near my home, the temperature reading isn't always accurate. I sent off an email to the makers of the Netatmo personal weather station to see if they'd consider creating a Netatmo channel on IFTTT -- that would be perfect, since I could use the Netatmo inside temperature reading to trigger the fan. It's an Internet-based thermostat!
