If you have a Wink Hub but still find yourself manually controlling your home, then you aren’t getting the full capabilities out of your smart devices. Introduce If This Then That (IFTTT) to your Wink Hub to automate your home.
The Wink Hub is incredibly versatile thanks to its support for everything from fans to locks. But it can’t talk to everything everywhere and it only has so much intelligence. By taking advantage of IFTTT you can attach new services and devices that bring your home closer to being fully automated. Just remember: Many Wink IFTTT integrations rely on setting up Wink shortcuts.
RELATED: How to Set Up Wink Shortcuts for Quick Smarthome Control on Your Phone
Here are a few IFTTT recipes you should be using. They’re pretty much ready to go; click on a recipe to open it up on the IFTTT site or app, and you’ll be able to customize and enable it.
Prepare Your Home for Your Arrival and Departure
Whether you are on an iPhone or Android, this basic recipe will turn on your lights automatically when you arrive home. You will need to set a shortcut in your Wink app to facilitate turning on the lights. You can use a similar recipe to turn the lights off when you leave. Never leave a light on all day again!
Your phone’s location isn’t always super accurate, though. If you have an Automatic Pro, then you can use this recipe to have the lights turn on as soon as your car arrives home.
Lock Doors and Turn Off Lights When Your Nest Thermostat Switches to Away Mode
With this recipe, your lights turn off, and your doors lock whenever you set your Nest is set to Away Mode.
Even if you don’t have a Nest, you should consider two timed recipes to lock up every night and morning. Many people leave and enter through the garage, so it’s easy to miss an unlocked door.
RELATED: How to Make Your Nest Automatically Detect When You’re Away
Wake up slowly
Sunrise clocks are a great way to wake up. But if you already have smart bulbs you can create the effect on your own. You will need to have multiple copies of the recipe with each set to a greater intensity of light. It won’t be as smooth, but the effect will be similar, and you won’t have to spend more money.
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Take Control of Your Entertainment
Roku has Google Home integration now, and you can control your FireTV with Alexa, but what if you have don’t have a smart TV at all? You can still gain Google Home voice control of your TV with a Logitech Harmony system and this recipe. You’ll need to create different recipes for each command, but the effort will pay off the next time you lose the remote in the folds of your couch.
If you’ve ever played a song on your Echo and later wished it was also part of your Spotify playlist, this recipe is for you. With this recipe any song you ask Alexa to play will automatically be added to the recipe you specified.
These are just a few of the many recipes out there. If you find yourself manually controlling an action with your smart home devices take a closer look at IFTTT and your hub to see if you can automate it.
