If This Then That

The past few days I have been racking my brain on how I was going to accomplish some of the things I am working on.  It is no secret that I want to automate my home.  However this is nothing new and lots of people have done this.  In fact more and more people are beginning to do this as technology makes it more accessible.  So what was I looking to do?  Was I looking to do the same ol’ home automation that everyone else seems to be doing or do I want to do something unique?  Being who I am, unique was the only way to roll for me.

 

After some thinking, I realized this just basically boiled down to the computer programming phrase of “If This Then That”.  If THIS happens, then THAT will happen.  In laymen’s terms, you can make something happen IF a certain condition is met.  For example IF my home detected motion while I am away, THEN a text message will be sent to my phone. (This is a feature that will be set up in my home)

In my situation, it comes down to what I want and what I can pull off with the resources at my disposal.  I have been researching this sort of thing for weeks and I was extremely surprised by just how many options that are out there. The problem is, choosing one that is right for me.

I admit that I have been overwhelmed by how many options I have when it comes to IF THIS THEN THAT- so much in fact that I have been having trouble what will and what will not work for my situation.  The original idea was to have my artificial intelligent program to be the central hub of my home.  I wanted to have my home as close to a Jarvis as I could get it.  Since that initial idea, I have learned a lot when it comes to home automation.  Now, I know of programs, apps, and methods that allow me to completely omit using Denise at all.  While using Denise as my homes brain was the whole point of automating my home, there are so many methods that it is not necessary. 

Aside from everything, I recently learned of IFTTT.  IFTTT is a web site/service that was created in 2012 that allows you to automate all sorts of things using the IF.T.T.T. situation.  For example, IF you post a photo to FaceBook THEN you can have it also upload to Instagram or Twitter.  Granted this would be extremely limited in a home (unless I used a Belkin Wemo Home Automation setup) automation but still shows huge promise.

This is very cool but it just adds yet another option for me to consider.  Hopefully, in the next few weeks I will start to make decisions on what I want and what I want to do and all this won’t come off so scatterbrained.  This is going to happen however it is no where near as simple or easy as I thought.