Personal Automation Engines

Some of you may be saying something along the lines of this: Oh no! I could never understand or use a ”personal automation engine” – I don’t even know what it is! Well, it’s just a fancy name for some things that you have undoubtedly used very often in your life. You had one of those old alarm clocks? Set an alarm and it would go off every day at 6 a.m. or whatever? That’s a personal automation engine! Have an automatic watering system that waters your lawn several times every week at set times? That’s a personal automation engine. An example of a more complex one is a washing machine. You set the controls and it goes through multiple steps of wash, spin, rinse all by itself. Have you “programmed” your oven or microwave or air fryer to do something at a particular temperature or power level for a set length of time and then go to a different temperature or power level? That’s an automation engine and you’ve programmed it!

How do they work?

How does an automation engine work? Well, you can think of it as a two (or more) step process: if or when something happens then I want these other things to happen. The first part, the “if this happens,” is called a trigger and the second part is called the action. In the case of an alarm clock, the trigger is “when it’s 6 a.m.” and the action is “ring the alarm.” That is the basic form of all automation engines.

So, what could you do with an app that follows that flow? How about “when I’m near my grocery store” as the trigger and as the action “send a reminder to my phone to check my shopping list.” Or “every day at 7 a.m.” as the trigger and “email me the weather forecast” as the action.

What can you do with them?

Why do I bring this up? You have the power to automate a lot of things in your life with little more effort than those things I’ve discussed above. There are personal automation engines that you can install on your phone or tablet to do things like this plus a lot of other things. While there are quite a few personal automation apps available, most of them restrict what you can do for free. Generally speaking, what you do is allow the app to access or use various services then you go about connecting the various services together to accomplish your objective automation. One app of note is IFTTT, which stands for “If This Then That” (you can read about it at https://ifttt.com). On its free plan, you can create at most two of your own automations, but you can use as many of the already created automations as you want. And the already created ones don’t require any effort on your part beyond connecting the services involved. What are some examples of already available personal automations? How about having it automatically unmute (or mute) your phone when you get home? Or get an email every day with NASA’s image of the day? Or get an email when a stock of your choosing closes above or below a certain price? Or get a new recipe every day from your favorite recipe site?

IFTTT calls their automations “applets’ and there are literally thousands of pre-made ones on their site connecting sites like Bon Appetit, Gmail, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, among others. But beyond that, if you have any smart home devices like lights or switches or a garage door opener, you can cause things to happen to them or because of them. Here are some examples:

If my garage door opens then send a notification to my phone.

If I leave home then close the garage door.

If I come home then turn on the light between the chairs.

If it’s 4 p.m. then turn on my phone charger,

If it’s 10 p.m. then turn off my phone charger.

And once you decide to try your hand at creating your own automation you should find that the personal automation app walks you through the process with you only having to select the service for the trigger, the trigger itself, the service for the action and the action itself. Triggers and actions vary by service but they are usually laid out and explained quite well so you know what you’re doing. And if you can’t figure it out, no worries – learn by trial and error.

Those are just a few of the personal automations available if you have smart devices in your home. Of course, there are many many more. You’re really only limited by your imagination. These capabilities can be a good reason to purchase one or two smart devices to try things out. I’ve discussed smart home devices in a previous column. Smart outlets and smart lights are just the beginning and don’t cost a lot to get you started.

That’s all for this time

I hope this has explained personal automation engines and has given you the information you need to start using them and even maybe creating your own. Don’t hesitate to write to me if you have questions!

As always, my intent is to help you understand the basics and equip you to search for more detailed information.

Please feel free to email me with questions, comments, suggestions, requests for future columns, to sign up for my newsletter, or whatever at [email protected] or just drop me a quick note and say HI!

You can read the original columns in the Hillsboro Times-Gazette at https://go.ttot.link/TG-Column. That will take you to the most recent column in the newspaper and it should be updated shortly after this column appears in the newspaper’s online version. You can read all my columns and sign up for my newsletter to have them delivered to your email when I publish them at https://ttot.link or https://TonysTakeOnTech.beehiiv.com.

Tony Sumrall, a Hillsboro native whose parents ran the former Highland Lanes bowling alley, is a maker with both leadership and technical skills. He’s been in the computing arena since his graduation from Miami University with a bachelor’s degree in systems analysis, working for and with companies ranging in size from five to hundreds of thousands of employees. He holds five patents and lives and thrives in Silicon Valley which feeds his love for all things tech.