Automating home with 2 people (Part 1)

At this point you have an IFTTT account and you have your Maker Channel Key handy. You probably read the first episode of the story.

Steps

  • Your light automation would be working fine if you lived alone, but that’s not the case and if you setup like we did before, it’s not perfect when you and your significant other are at home and not leaving together. To fix this we will need your spouse to get another IFTTT account and Maker Key. Fortunately ImSmart can manage several Maker Keys. When done, enter the new key in ImSmart settings.
  • Now, go to your variables and define a Boolean named SO_At_Home and set its value to True.
  • Go to IFTTT and define 2 Maker events.
    • Define a new applet using Location as the THIS part, setting it as an exit geofence around your home. Then on the THAT part, connect to Maker and use the “set False” operation (as you can see from the Operations panel from the Variables page). Copy the URL value for operation “set variable False” (from ImSmart) into Maker URL (in IFTTT Maker).
    • Do the same (using Location as the THIS part) with an enter geofence and use the URL for “set True” operation of variable SO_At_Home.
    • Define a Maker Webhook: create a new applet where THIS is a Maker Webhook and the Event Name will be TurnOffLights.

      Set the appropriate action to turn off lights on the THAT part of your IFTTT applet.
  • Go to your triggers and define or update the trigger named LeavingHome like this:

    Then as soon as both of you leave home, IFTTT Maker sets your variable At_Home to False and triggers the execution of the Maker event TurnOffLights. Note that you don’t need to leave at the same time. The second one leaving will have the lights turn off.
  • Inversely you can now also add another to turn off the lights when arriving home.
    Note that the condition checks if either one arrives home. As soon as one arrives home (or both) lights will turn on (assuming you configured TurnOnLights event on IFTTT).