> ...turning the lights on and off, controlling the fan in my bedroom, turning the lights off in the house when I go out and turning them back on again when I come home amongst loads of other things.
Do you have some sort of smart-home controller that controls these devices (e.g. a Wink or SmartThings hub) and IFTTT integrates with said controller? If so, what about the hub is insufficient and requires you to use IFTTT?
I ask because as someone who thinks IFTTT is neat, every time I look at any recipes especially regarding home automation, I don't see anything that I couldn't do with home-assistant or even with my Wink hub or Veralite controller when I used those. Instead, it looks like I'd just be offloading functionality onto a remote service that adds yet another failure point to the system.
No, I try to avoid any kind of hub because I don't want to be locked into one particular way of doing things. That's why I chose LIFX over Philips Hue, LIFX bulbs are just plugged in, connected to Wi-Fi and controlled from an app on your iPhone, iPad or laptop and away you go. I didn't want a cupboard full of hubs controlling lots of discrete bits of the house, a hubbard if you will.
So if there is any centre to my system then it is my iPhone and iPad, and I make sure that whichever piece of home automation I buy it has some ability to connect to If This Then That. This has been made infinitely easier with the new Make channel, which means I can just send a POST request from any old bash script to trigger any number of actions.
I've never heard of any of the three things you mentioned, but unless they were all capable of being controlled from the one device, in this case my iPhone then it would be virtually impossible for me to use them. You see the iPhone has world-class access for disabled people, I can do everything with one switch on my wheelchair that an able-bodied person can do with their two hands. Normally disabled access to devices is some terrible and crippled subset of functionality that we've been stuck with, that's when those of us with motor skill difficulties are even thought of at all, for most people disabled means blind and deaf and that's doubly true in technology circles. There is no other group of devices that a quadriplegic and just take out of the box and start using within five minutes then the iPhone, iPhone and any of the computers running OS X, believe me I've searched!
At the moment I have one iPhone with a series of apps, I also have DragonDictate for Mac on my laptop and iMac which allows me to pair up voice commands with AppleScript's and bash scripts. Which means that the number of things I can do is literally endless as long as the piece of hardware I bought has some ability to be controlled via the network.
That's what interests me so much about this project, I would love to bring something that can do what IFTTT can do in-house and maybe run it on a Raspberry Pi so that I'm only reliable on my local network and not the Internet. That would be awesome.
Anyway, I'm going to stop rambling and hope that I've answered some of your questions! I'm happy to answer any you might have, I'm also open to any new idea that would help me control bits of my house more easily.
I have a couple of websites where I detail this sort of stuff, robotsandcake.org is my not-for-profit stuff where I give talks at places like Google and for the UK foreign office in Mexico discussing how technology impacts the disabled, and I also have inventability.net which is basically a collection of hacks and tricks that my partner and I have learned over the past 10 years of my being quadriplegic. That's only been going a few months, so it's still a little light on content but if there's anything you see missing and you'd like me to explain I'd be happy to make a post about it!
Anyway, the people at IFTTT are lovely and I don't want to hurt their feelings by cheating on them behind their back with this young upstart! :-)
Do you have some sort of smart-home controller that controls these devices (e.g. a Wink or SmartThings hub) and IFTTT integrates with said controller? If so, what about the hub is insufficient and requires you to use IFTTT?
I ask because as someone who thinks IFTTT is neat, every time I look at any recipes especially regarding home automation, I don't see anything that I couldn't do with home-assistant or even with my Wink hub or Veralite controller when I used those. Instead, it looks like I'd just be offloading functionality onto a remote service that adds yet another failure point to the system.