# Forum Home Renovation Television, Computers & Phones  IFTTT Time of day filters

## METRIX

Hi All, 
Bit of a Home Automation question. 
I'm trying to get time of day restrictions working with IFTTT compatible devices. 
I have programed a number of devices that control internal lights so the lights come on when I get to the end of my street, they also work fine when I leave and get to the end of my street by turning anything off that was left on. 
Problem I'm having is trying to work out how to get IFTTT protocol to only be active on these devices between dusk and dawn, at the moment the devices turn on if I come home during the day which for a light is pointless. 
I believe Triggi and Stringify support filters to allow these extra parameters, problem is these protocols are not mainstream at the moment, and the devices I have don't support this.
Anyone out there played with this stuff and come across the same problem possibly with a solution ?

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## Armers

I thought you could do it with IFTTT in general, but then again i could be wrong its been a while since i've played with that one...  
I use Crestron at home so i can't help you out with these new fandangled HA systems  :Biggrin:

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## Uncle Bob

Never heard of it. But if your device can read a photoresistor (easy with a ESP8266 type device) then you should be able to fabracobble something together.
There's also Cumulus based weather stations that can give you sun up/down webtag value (Y/N). Not sure how this would work with whatever the thing is you have there but just throwing some ideas down.

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## METRIX

> I thought you could do it with IFTTT in general, but then again i could be wrong its been a while since i've played with that one...  
> I use Crestron at home so i can't help you out with these new fandangled HA systems

  I would have thought you could as it's really a basic rule you would think with HA, looks like they have overlooked it.

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## METRIX

> Never heard of it. But if your device can read a photoresistor (easy with a ESP8266 type device) then you should be able to fabracobble something together.
> There's also Cumulus based weather stations that can give you sun up/down webtag value (Y/N). Not sure how this would work with whatever the thing is you have there but just throwing some ideas down.

  Thought of that, but the lights are in the middle of the house and don't want frankenstein wires etc running from the device, would prefer a software fix to it  :Smilie:   :Smilie:   :Smilie: 
The devices are a bit smarter as they do many different things all tied into the web, so it really just needs a trigger to get the sunrise / sunset codes that halt the activation.

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## Armers

I bit of time googley and all that has come up it as you said, Triggi and Stringify. So many extra little apps, programs, bits and pieces just to get something working it beyond me sometimes  :Frown:  gone of the days of everything under one roof (program)

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## METRIX

That's why IFTTT is so good, it's becoming the standard now everyone is starting to jump on board, you can make your own scripts really easily, or use the thousands of free ones others have made. 
Had a good one that notified you in real time when the ISS was going to pass over you, so you could go outside and see it fly by, only problem it goes around the earth 16 times a day so you got quite a few notifications, again would be good if it was set up to only notify you between ?? :Confused: ? and ?? :Confused: ?

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## Uncle Bob

> Had a good one that notified you in real time when the ISS was going to pass over you, so you could go outside and see it fly by?

  I used to follow the manned space program closely back in the days when the US of A actually had a real manned program that we can speak of.
Watching the ISS go overhead was a regular thing and whenever there was visitors I'd drag them out to watch for the short time while it shot across the sky.
I used to use some website that predicted what and when satellites would be visible.  
In Canberra, we have a fireworks display called Skyfire. The family and I watched (maybe the last, can't remember) the Shuttle chase the ISS through the fireworks. It was pretty cool. The people who I pointed it out to thought it was pretty good too.

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## Uncle Bob

> Thought of that, but the lights are in the middle of the house and don't want frankenstein wires etc running from the device, would prefer a software fix to it   
> The devices are a bit smarter as they do many different things all tied into the web, so it really just needs a trigger to get the sunrise / sunset codes that halt the activation.

  You better check out the ESP8266 or ESP32 more closely. It's totally wireless  :Wink:

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## Ozcar

I have an Arduino that uses calculated sunrise and sunset times to operate blinds. 
 I know nothing at all about IFTTT, but Uncle Google suggests that sunrise/sunset recipes exist.

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## METRIX

Yes The Arduino stuff looks interesting, some of the products I have are SONOFF there is an Aussie engineer on YouTube who shows how to program everything using Arduino and SONOFF gear.

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## Armers

Looks like i need to look back into this stuff... I would love to get some more automation happening in this house... In saying that 've got to many projects on the go. Lol 
As much as crestron is awesome and i really enjoy programming it, its bloody expensive.  :Frown:

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## Ozcar

> The Arduino stuff looks interesting

  I wasn't really suggesting that you need to throw an Arduino into the mix - rather I was thinking that if an Arduino can work out the time of sunrise and sunset, by doing a fairly simple calculation, then perhaps IFTTT could do the same.  
But then it seems that you can't even include a fixed time-of-day override into what you are doing?

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## METRIX

> I wasn't really suggesting that you need to throw an Arduino into the mix - rather I was thinking that if an Arduino can work out the time of sunrise and sunset, by doing a fairly simple calculation, then perhaps IFTTT could do the same.  
> But then it seems that you can't even include a fixed time-of-day override into what you are doing?

  Correct. IFTTT interface does not allow for time of day input on a script, looking into it, this is a common complaint end users requesting IFTTT to implement these options.
I could look at going down to programming level to implement it, but I don;t have the time to learn to do that. 
IFTTT recently changed their scripting to applet based, this allows for complicated scripts to be combines into one, it seems they overlooked time of day implementation, hopefully they will add this functionality.

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## Uncle Bob

Just a sort of related side note.
The fabulous WeatherDuino PRO2+ has spare GPIO ports that can do a lot of different things such as water your garden if it hasn't rained for x days, but this could also be used to turn you lights on once the solar sensor detects x W/m2

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