How To Automate Your Mornings

How To Automate Your Mornings

If you’ve got a few smart home accessories you can build yourself a real-world playlist to get your day started. Make getting out of bed a more musical (and temperature-controlled) experience, track your runs without a second thought, or even let someone know you’re running late before you head out the door. After all, mornings are supposed to be easy, right?

Wake Up With White Light and a Warm Room

After your blaring alarm wakes you up, you’ll need to hear your favourite tune to start your day on the right foot. You’ll also need to crank up the heat, considering you’re probably dealing with some cold weather. Here’s what you can do.

What You Need:

  • Flic button
  • Smart outlet
  • Smart lights

What it Does:

  • Turns on your space heater using your smart outlet
  • Activates your smart light’s bright white scene to wake up
  • Starts your morning shower playlist

Hit your Flic button to play your morning playlist either on your phone or Sonos speaker.

On your Flic button, select the particular button you want to control, and hit the Plus button next to one of the three preset commands. Add either the Apple Music, Spotify, or Sonos action and select the playlist you want. Then add your smart light action and choose which lights you’d like to turn on, and adjust their colour accordingly (or choose a scene). Lastly, add your smart outlet and toggle on your space heater so you’re not a shivering mess when you step out of the shower.

Reward Yourself For Every Run

Getting up to run, especially in the cold, sucks. If today’s a day you’re heading out for a bit of exercise, you can get the ball rolling with the push of a button (and some monetary motivation) before you head out the door.

What You Need:

  • Flic button

What it Does:

  • Starts automatically tracking your running in Runkeeper or Strava.
  • Starts a stopwatch to track your time outside.
  • Plays your workout playlist.
  • Donates some money to a goal.

You may as well automatically reward yourself on top of whatever you’re doing for the sake of your health. You can use IFTTT recipes to handle that. One IFTTT recipe lets you save toward a goal using the Qapital finance app. To use Flic with IFTTT, you’ll have to build or edit the IFTTT recipe first, and assign it to the proper button and the correct button press command. You can find Flic recipes here, connect your IFTTT and Flic accounts, and edit them either on the web or using the IFTTT app.

In your Flic app, add the IFTTT action that matches the button and preset command you just made. From there, add the Stopwatch action to time how long you’re outside, automatically start tracking your run in Strava or Runkeeper without fiddling with your phone and clunky gloves, and get moving with the songs of your choice using the Apple Music and Spotify actions.

Let Your Team Know You’re Late

So you overslept. It happens. Luckily you can let your coworkers know you’re on the way when you’re out the door without wasting time waiting for Slack to load.

What You Need:

  • Google Home
  • Smart outlet
  • Flic button
  • Smart lights

What it Does:

  • Sends a Slack message to your channel or colleagues.
  • Turns off all your lights.
  • Turns off your smart outlet.

Using IFTTT, you can send custom voice commands to your Google Assistant that exists in your Google Home voice assistant. Setting up an IFTTT recipe and linking it to your Slack account can turn “Hey Google, I’m late!” into a message sent to a channel or person while you’re putting on your coat. From there you can walk out the door, hit your Flic button, and ensure that space heater and your lights are all off for the day (or just tell your voice assistant to shut it all down for you).


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