Use Smart Home Devices to Work From Home
This pair of smart lights in your home, a customizable Flic button on your desk, your voice assistant of choice, and a smart plug in your office all combine to create a smart home you can use before, during and after your workday. Rather than just tell Alexa to turn on your bright white light to boost your productivity, here’s how you can use your internet-connected items to set up your workspace before you start, inform coworkers about your status, and track items that need your attention. immediate attention wherever you are.
Order lunch, fire up Slack, and schedule an afternoon shower. Work from home week! From our sofas and local coffee shops, Lifehacker gives you tips to keep you productive, balanced, and sane, whether you work from home all day or your entire career.
Create BRB Button
Running out the door to take your dog for a quick walk? Using the Flic button and the IFTTT integration , you can create yourself a Check Out button to keep your colleagues informed of your availability. You can link your Flic button to your Slack account using IFTTT and send pre-written responses based on your Flic button clicks . Five minutes away? One click. Going to your lunch break? Double click. You get the idea.
Turn on the BRB button:
- Open the Flic app.
- Select the Flic button.
- Select the + next to the click option.
- Select Slack and enter your message details.
Code Red Email Alerts
You may be sitting in your living room at lunch when someone at work urgently needs your help. If you have smart lights that display multiple colors, you can create a smart home recipe linked to your email account that will flash your light if you receive an email from whoever you choose – be it your boss or the best. friend.
Enable Code Red Emails
- Create a new IFTTT recipe using Gmail .
- Choose who you want to receive email notifications from.
- Choose your smart light bulb and set it to flash, brightness or dim light.
Track Calendar Location
Working from home often means working in a coffee shop or in a shared workplace. Whether they make you a drink as soon as you walk through the door or not, keep track of how much time you actually spend at home away from home.
When you’re done at the location of your choice, you can set up another location-based automation that prepares your office when you walk through the door using the voice assistant or Geofencing feature of your HomeKit device. Ask him to turn on the heater and lights to enter a warm and well-lit office.
Turn on location tracking on your calendar
- Include this IFTTT recipe and link it to your Google Calendar.
End of the day choreography
After work all morning and all day, you might be tempted to use the time saved on the road to get some work done later in the day. You can customize the light and voice assistant to avoid turning into a home workaholic by customizing the end of the day ritual with voice assistant , smart lights, and music streaming service. You can set up your assistant to respond to your own voice command (“Hey Google, I’m out of the game!” – fun to say), play music from our chosen streaming service, and adjust lighting for a specific scene or pattern. to really start the end of the day.
Include your daily routine at the end of the day
- Use this IFTTT recipe to connect an assistant to your smart bulbs with a custom command.
- Select the Flic button.
- Select the + next to the click option.
- Select Spotify and enter your playlist details.