Burglary prevention with TaHoma + IFTTT
More Smart Home with TaHoma + IFTTT
The smart home is a great easy living solution for your everyday life. It helps out making things simpler, automates different tasks you do everyday in your home, takes care of your lighting, heating and so much more. It also keeps you and your family safe, day and night and even when you’re not at home. Of course, there are lots of other advantages with having a smart home and you can tailor make this to suit your own desires and wishes.
The smart home solution from Somfy, called TaHoma is a functional and competent product and the central hub of your smart home. Once you have installed a TaHoma you are able to connect and control this from anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection. Use the TaHoma app and control your shades, lighting, electric appliances, garage doors and more. Somfy TaHoma has been around since 2012 and gets regular updates for free which makes it up to date when it comes to functions and integrations such as IFTTT (www.ifttt.com). IFTTT is a unique solution that helps you to connect services and gadgets from different companies. Using this in the right way can have a great improvement on your daily life.
IFTTT triggers and actions:
The use of IFTTT can help enhance your smart home. It allows you to link connected products of compatible brands to your Somfy smart home. IFTTT stands for If This Then That and basically you are giving an instruction that “if this happens then that should happen”. Setting up an account with IFTTT is free of charge and opens up the possibility to access thousands of free applets to get started. When you get used to the IFTTT methodology you can create your own tailor made applets, it’s really easy.
One very useful applet for example is that if an IFTTT compatible indoor motion sensor in your house detects movement while you are sleeping, or not home, then all your Philips Hue light bulbs can flash in the color red. Imagine how this will scare the burglar, which might just make him run away. Considering that most criminals like to work in the dark this is an effective and easy way of making it harder for them.
The fact that Somfy TaHoma supports IFTTT makes it possible to combine the solution with many other products. Let’s focus on interesting solutions that you can setup on your own.
TaHoma burglary prevention products:
Let us help you on how to build your own safety security system using the Somfy TaHoma. First, start with an IFTTT applet in order to be able to trigger actions. TaHoma can only be used as a That, not an If inside the IFTTT applet. For example you setup the time based trigger with a Google calendar event at 8pm (If) to simulate that you are home by turning on the lights and closing the curtains with a TaHoma scenario (That). Burglars that are scouting the neighborhood will most likely assume that your are home and do not see your house as a potential target. Prevention is better than cure.
Step 1: Make sure that you setup your Google calendar event, this will be the trigger.
Step 2: Setup a TaHoma scenario with your Somfy light receivers, roller shutter receivers, Philips Hue lamps and electric roller blinds.
Step 3: Create the IFTTT applet (link)
TaHoma + IFTTT + Google Assistant:
If you are a fan of voice assistants it is also possible to use either Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant in combination with IFTTT to launch scenarios on your TaHoma. For the moment it is only possible to use the English language with TaHoma and voice assistants. Just tell your voice assistant to launch a TaHoma scenario which turns on the lighting in your garden, roll down your blinds, all before you go to bed at night.
