Hi, I’m seeking advice on the toolset I should use to solve a problem… I’m new to Blynk, but have several pretty complex Arduino Uno projects under my belt.
Here’s the deal: I have a patio cover with motorized louvers. I can tilt them to let in more or less sunshine during the day, or shut them altogether to keep out rain. The control to operate the lovers is trivial. The challenge is to get a notification from a weather app about rain at my location, and act upon it to automatically close the louvers. I hope to use my shiny new Sparkfun Blynk board to solve the problem!
I can easily find a couple applets on IFTTT that would seem to send a notification if rain is imminent - but I cannot find any current documentation for how to get that information to Blynk (or how to get a widget to act on it). Webhooks also seem designed to do what I’m asking, but the code seems pretty challenging.
Any suggestions for me? Maybe a pointer to current documentation for doing something similar?
Thanks in advance!
Personally, I wouldn’t use IFTTT. Instead I’d use an API call to a free weather service to get the data.
But either way, once you receive the rain alert trigger from IFTTT or do an API call that tells you that rain is imminent, you would trigger a routine to close your louvres.
They would stay closed until you either receive an “all clear” alert from IFTTT or do an API call that returns a short term forecast of something other than rain, snow, hail etc If you were using a free weather service then you’d probably have a timed event that checked the forecast every 10 minutes or so (taking care not to exceed the maximum number of free API queries in a 24 hour period).
I guess you may have some other criteria that you want to use, such as data from a temperature sensor on your patio that closes the louvres if it’s daylight and the temperature is over a certain limit, and rain isn’t forecast.
Edited to add…
Personally, I’d stick with a standard NodeMCU or ESP32 board. Much cheaper and much more straightforward.
Pete.
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