Stringify is a must use app to give you the most out of your smart home appliances. It connects a whole host of different products which can work seamlessly together, creating bespoke routines.

Having devices from different brands and having multiple apps to control them could create confusion. Stringify helps bring them all into one app so you can take control of your stuff.

Things that can work together include weather, home automation systems, lighting, social media accounts, heating, sound, health and notifications.

How it works

After creating an account, you need to add your ‘things’ these can include lightbulbs such as LIFX, home automation hubs such as SmartThings, social media accounts such as twitter and fitness apps such as fitbit.

Once you’ve added your ‘things’ visit the flows tab where you can view your existing flows and create new ones. Click on the create tab in the top right corner to name your flow. Now before adding anything you need to think about what you want to happen and how you want it to happen. These are known within the app as ‘triggers’ and ‘actions’.

Let’s say you wish to turn the lights off when you leave the house. Firstly you need to add a trigger, you can do this by selecting the location ‘Thing’. Once it appears across the bottom you can drag it onto your flow area. It should stick in one of the circles and should have a cog symbol of the right hand corner. Click on the cog to bring up the options. Here we can select under the triggers ‘I leave an area’ and set your boundary to 1000ft based on your location.

After setting your ‘trigger’ you now need to add an ‘action’. To do this select your light bulb by pressing the plus button on the flow area and choosing your relevant bulb. Push it up on the right hand side of your ‘trigger’ to keep it neat. Click on the light bulb icon and it should bring up actions, select ‘turn off the light’.

Now you have a ‘trigger’ and an ‘action’ set you need to connect them together. Simply drag the location circle on top of the light bulb circle (it should show a yellow outline). Then a link appears, showing the two joined together. Finally you need to click on Enable flow down the bottom to save the settings.

Example flows

Compared to using my home automation app, it has a much wider choice of options therefore allowing me to add more creative flows. Examples include setting the heating to come on based on the weather, sending me notifications to take out the bins and turning everything off when I leave the house.

Bin Notification

A simple flow to get started uses some of the ‘Things’ already on the app. If you’re anything like me, you’re forgetful and sometimes miss the weekly bin collection. Here you can set up a simple reminder to notify you at the same time each week to take the bins out. To do this you need the date and time and notification ‘things’.

To do this you need to create a new flow and name it Bin Day. Choose the date and time ‘thing’ and drag it on to your flow. From the settings choose your start date, time and how often you want it to repeat. So my settings would be the nearest Sunday as the start date, 19:00pm and repeat every week. You also want to set the ‘end repeat’ as never so it carries on reminding you until you state otherwise.

You then need to add a notification ‘thing’ by dragging it onto the flow. Configure the notification to remind you with a message such as, “Hey Kevin, don’t forget to take the bins out today!”

Electric Fire

A more complex flow would be setting multiple triggers for an action. In this example I use the ‘things’ date and time, weather and my smart plug connected via Samsung SmartThings.

First of all I add all the ‘things’ to my flow with ‘triggers’ on the left and ‘actions’ on the right.

I configure the date and time by clicking on it and setting the following:

Start date: Today

Time: 18:15 (15 mins before I get home from work)

Repeat: Every weekday (Monday-Friday)

End Repeat: Never

After configuring the date and time, we need to select the weather settings. Click on the app and scroll down to the ‘Only If’ section. The app doesn’t connect to when ‘triggers’ so this step is important. Next select ‘temperature is below’ and set the required settings based on how cold you want it to be before warming your house up. Click save and the weather will be set.

You then need to configure your smart plug to turn on. Click on the ‘on/off switch’ and select the actions tab and choose turn on.

Finally, we need to connect them all together. Drag the date and time over to the switch and the link connects as usual. Then drag the weather thing, this time however, drag it to the yellow link circle in the middle of the connection. This creates a connection between both the triggers.

Stringify is an excellent addition to your home automation set up, with advanced setups and being able to interact with many different things. It is a great companion to making a smarter home.

Get in touch to tell us about your recipes and advanced flows.