IFTTT Integration with Hook

Last Updated 10/1/2017

Hello all,

Thanks for being part of the Hook family. If you have come here looking for ways of integrating the hook with other services or devices, you are at the right place! If this is your first time hearing about IFTTT Read this excellent intro. Continue below if you know what you are looking for 🙂

The WebHooks Applet

So IFTTT doesn’t allow us to build a channel for Hook yet, but they did some excellent work in building a channel which would be able to call any arbitrary URL when a particular event happens. So imagine you want to turn on your lamp connected with the Hook when the Sunset occurs. All you would need to do is to link the Weather Applet and the WebHooks Applet, instructing the WebHooks Applet to call the Hook API designated for Lamp’s On action. Sweet right?

Below is the step by step instructions in achieving just that.

1. Launch the Hook Web App or Android App or iPhone App
2. If you haven’t yet paired the device that you want to control using IFTTT, Pair them first. Check out support videos on YouTube.
3. Click the IFTTT link against the device you want to control using IFTTT
   1. In the Web App: Get to the Devices Page and click on “…” to open the submenu against the device you want to link for IFTTT, click on the IFTTT button and copy the URL’s.
   2. In the Mobile App: Get to the Devices Page and hit the vertical 3 dots against the device you want to link with IFTTT, under the menu that shows up click on IFTTT and press the copy button to copy the URL’s to the clipboard.
4. Link the WebHooks Applet with your IFTTT account

Now starts the fun stuff! We are going to setup a Sunrise and Sunset rule with IFTTT and turn ON Lamp1 when the sun sets and turn it Off when the sun rises.

1. Create a new Applet on IFTTT
2. Click on This and search for the Weather Channel. Click on the Weather Channel (the blue cloud icon)

   

   Add Weather Channel

3. In the Choose a Trigger (Step 2 of 7) click on the Sunset tile
4. Click on Create Trigger button on Step 3 of 7
5. Click on That
6. Search for the WebHooks Applet and select it (highlighted in red box)
7. In Choose an Action, Step 5 of 7, click on Make a Web Request
8. In Complete Action Fields, Step 6 of 7 perform the following steps
   • URL: Copy the url from the dashboard for the ON Action of Lamp2
   • Method: Select GET from the dropdown
   • Content Type: Leave it as is (Please Select)
   • Body: Leave Blank as well

   • 

     Maker Example

9. Click on Create Action button
10. Give the recipe title: Turn on Lamp2 on Sunset
11. Click on Create Recipe
12. Now repeat all above steps and choose Sun Rise and use the Off URL of Lamp2

Voila! You just setup two recipes to control your Hook connected lamp with IFTTT!

If you don’t want to wait for the Sunset/Sunrise but want to test right now, then create a new recipe and instead of Weather Applet, use the WebHooks Applet and trigger a custom event. On the Action repeat the same steps from step 5 onwards.

Sample Applet is located here (click on advanced settings to see full info).

Notes

• We have noticed that the WebHooks Applet is rate limited, thus a request takes about 5-10 minutes to trigger at times. Don’t be worried it does work.
• You could also hit the IFTTT URL in your browser to trigger the action, this is also a good way to test if you copied it right.
• If you are sharing the recipe with other users, make sure to hide the access_token since others could control your hook if the access_token is leaked.

Troubleshooting

You can simple test the IFTTT URL by copy/pasting into a browser. If the action works, the IFTTT applet will trigger correctly. If the action fails, check the value of ‘token=’ in the IFTTT URL. If the token istoet as NULL, the URL was generated incorrectly. Simply log out of the App and log back in to generate the URL with correct token value.

Try the browser trick again. If you continue to have issues, email the URL to support@gethook.io.