I keep getting, "⚠ The message contains invalid characters" so editing to add one line at a time...
FINISHED! It didn't like the word, "m a r r i a g e"?! What the... ? WOW! 😠
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I had installed iOS 13 beta a few weeks ago but have since reverted back to 12. I seem to recall asking about this somewhere, but not sure if it was in this forum or not. Since most people use their iPhones to schedule morning alarms, not just notifications, and Homekit knows all about our devices, it seems having more hooks between the iPhone Clock and Homekit would be advantageous.
Some of the things I'd like to be able to do with iPhone alarms and Homekit follow:
iPhone alarm triggers a Homekit event or sets a Homekit device state:
I go to sleep at a different time almost every night, between say, 10pm & 5am. I try to sleep at least 6 hours and set my iPhone alarm when I get into bed, usually by saying, "Hey Siri, wake me up in 6 hours". I would like to have the alarm going off as well as tapping the Snooze button or the Stop button trigger events in Homekit. For example:
- Alarm goes off: If this alarm was named, "Morning Wake up", when it went off, it could start raising the brightness of certain lights or start a looping sound like an environmental bird chirping or play a song from iTunes or a radio station or Spotify on my media center that increases in volume over time, start the coffee maker, etc. Could also set a virtual device to true that the alarm went off so other events have something to check because that time will change every day. I realize some of this is already under the Bedtime tab in the Clock app, but since it does not communicate with Homekit, none of the lighting, or media center or coffee maker events are possible, so it is rather limiting. By looking at my calendar virtual devices, I can see if today is a workday, paid time off, holiday or weekend... which would dictate if lights/audio come on or not. ie.If on the weekend, I may want to simply hit the Stop button and have nothing happen at all vs. a work day where it is very important I wake up on time, so trigger other events to assist me.
- Snooze button: Delay any or all of the above-mentioned possible events. Set a virtual device in Homekit to true that I hit the snooze button. Also keep track of how many times I hit it. Could have a set number of Snooze presses trigger louder music or brighter lights to help me wake up.
- Stop button: I am now officially awake, turn on lights/music/open blinds, I have other Home Automation software that can announce information via Text To Speech but I have to manually trigger it to happen. Would be perfect to have it automatically happen because I hit the Stop button for the alarm. I have the Withings Sleep Pad configured to start my morning routing via IFTTT, but that can take 5 - 10 minutes AFTER I get out of bed to trigger. Triggering these types of events by interacting with the Clock app is a perfect flow that doesn't require waiting 10 minutes or remembering to say, "Hey Siri, Good morning"
Having Homekit events trigger when named iPhone alarms go off would give the Homekit user maximum flexibility in scheduling their devices to operate. I may not want to have my lawn sprinklers go off at the same time every day or I may want to skip a day because i'm having a barbecue in the back yard. I may want to take a 20 min nap in the afternoon and have different events fire off from the "Nap Wake Up" alarm than my "Morning Wake up" alarm.
Homekit events or device state change trigger the setting of an Alarm on the iPhone:
- As I mentioned, I tend to go to sleep at different times but I like to sleep for 6 hours once I do go to bed. It would be great if by saying, "Hey Siri, Good night" or the "He went to bed" trigger from the Withings Sleep Pad could automatically trigger a Homekit event that creates an iPhone alarm named, "Morning Wake Up" set to go off 6 hours from now. Allowing Siri to announce that the alarm was set as confirmation would be a nice touch. I already have events that turn off my media center and all lights when I say that to Siri, but I still have to remember to set my morning alarm separately and that seems silly.
- I live in a 2nd floor apartment. The laundry room is in the basement of the building. Let's say I have an NFC Tag stuck to the wall of the laundry room. By touching my iPhone to the tag, I want a Shortcut to auto-set an iPhone alarm to go off 30 or 60 min from now when the washer or dryer are done. iPhone notifications never catch my attention but the alarm rings always do.
- NOTE: I rememeber seeing the Clock available when setting up a Shortcut under iOS 13 beta, but it only allowed me to pick a time. It did not have the option to set the alarm's time to "x hours from now", which is the key to this sort of event trigger. "Domino's should be here in 30 min, set an alarm '30 min from now' to remind me". "Hey Siri, I'm taking a quick nap" = set an alarm 20 min from now. etc.
So my current routine when going to bed is, "Hey Siri, Wake me up in 6 hours" - Siri sets an alarm, then, "Hey Siri, Good night" or wait a few minutes to see if the Withings Sleep Pad IFTTT trigger fires off and tells Homekit I'm now asleep. And when waking up, "Hey Siri, Good morning" or wait to see if the Sleep Pad triggers my morning routine.
Would be much nicer to simply say, "Hey Siri, good night" and know the alarm is set automatically and all I have to do in the morning is turn off that alarm and events are triggered.
Another thought re:waking up. If my alarm named, "Morning Wake Up" is set for 7am and I get up at 2:45am to ***, the Sleep Pad will think I'm awake and trigger a device or event. Not good. Instead, If Homekit could check my iPhone alarms or had virtual devices that tracked my phone alarm states, then if the, "Morning Wake Up" alarm is set to go off in another 3 hours, it knows that I'm not "awake" for the day, I'm just up on my own to have a ***... turn up the floor lights a little bit so I don't stub my toe on the way to the bathroom. When I get back into bed, it's not "good night" for the night, it's just finishing the night time ***... so turn off the floor lights and nothing else.
Being able to instantly trigger these sorts of events via direct alarm interaction would be an ideal part of the natural flow of interacting with the alarm and it makes for a smarter home with less voice commands (or none at all). The "smart" part of a smart home is in the details. The storing of information in virtual devices for better conditional logic and better interaction with the iPhone.
