Using Wyzecam motion sensing to turn a smartplug ON, and OFF five minutes later

Power & Lighting
1

I have a couple of TP-Link Smart Wi-Fi plugs (HS105) and I’d like to be able to turn them ON for about five minutes, based on a motion event from my Wyzecams. After the five-minute interval I’d like them to automatically turn OFF without further intervention. Essentially, I’d like to mimic a common “dumb” motion-sensing security light which can easily turn on a light when motion is detected and then turn it off five minutes later. Currently, when my Wyzecams detect motion I use IFTTT to turn the plugs either ON or OFF, but can NOT have them automatically toggled after a fixed interval. Is there a way to do this? I also have an Amazon Echo and Google Home if either of these could play a role in solving this problem.

I’m not interested in purchasing a smarthome hub and different smartplugs to accomplish this but I would gladly use IFTTT or Stringify or another similar service if it could help me solve this problem.

It seems odd that a common “dumb” motion light is “smarter” than my Smart Plugs and Wyzecams, or maybe I’m just not smart enough to figure this out.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

2

I think you can probably do this with IFTTT Maker, but you will need to be able to write some JavaScript for the delay piece.

 

https://platform.ifttt.com/maker/guide#the-filter-code-api

 

 

3

I’m not a JavaScript expert. Would need lots of help to do this, if it’s even possible. Thx!

 

 

4

Do some googling of “IFTTT delay”. There are ways to use an intermediary service, eg IFTTT triggers when the switch goes on, a calendar event. When the calendar event happens, it triggers the switch to go off. Would take a total three applets and there’d be some slop due to IFTTT’s 15-minute checking interval, but it might be acceptable.

5

It took some experimenting but I got it working with a combination of Stringify and IFTTT. Since Wyze doesn’t support Stringify you’re forced to use an IFTTT applet to kick off the action and then initiate a Stringify flow. Stringify has support for timers and Stringify flows can have many steps instead of only two like IFTTT. So my Stringify flow was something like this: IFTTT motion event > turn ON light > Set timer for delay > turn OFF light. Pretty simple, except for having to learn how to use Stringify and link my IFTTT and Stringify accounts so each of them could work with the other.

It would be even easier if Wyze offered support for Stringify, so I’d like to suggest that for future consideration.

And thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

 

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