iPhone Shortcuts

Shortcuts were introduced in iOS 12. They let you automate specific tasks (or sequences of tasks) on your iPhone or iPad that you can trigger with a single tap or voice command.

Note: With a contextual smart home, you don't have to have a smart home based around the Apple eco-system. You don't even have to have any Apple products, other than the iPhone or iPad you are using to invoke the shortcuts on. You also don't need to use Apple HomeKit.

Based on our research, shortcuts can be used to:

Change the mode or status.
Control a device, changing its state or requesting a state for a defined time period.
Run a scene.
Query the state of any of the sensors connected to our contextual smart home.

Creating Shortcuts

The only way to create a custom shortcut is to use the iOS Shortcuts app.

Actions

Get contents of URL

This action allows the shortcut to invoke an HTTP request. Within the home, this could be a secure request to the local Home Control System and this is the main method we are using.

Speak Out Text

A nice feature of shortcuts is the ability to speak out the response from 'Get contents of URL'. This enables a personalised and context sensitive response back from the request.

Siri Shortcuts

Siri Shortcuts can be used to control any of the device connected to our contextual smart home, run a scene, etc. And all of this can be done using a personalised user experience too, because each iOS device is a personal device and also authenticated.

To run your shortcut, just say "Hey Siri", then the shortcut name. Some examples we use in our contextual smart home are:

"Hey Siri, Drive Light" - to extend the time the drive light is on by 20 minutes.
"Hey Siri, Guests Arriving" - to run a 'Guests Arriving' scene.

Note: You have to be careful how you name shortcuts. We had one called 'Test Scene' and when invoked via Siri, it would would respond with "Is this a test?".

Examples

A few examples that we are testing:

Drive Light - extends the time the drive light is on by 30 minutes, useful if I'm outside working in areas that might not trigger drive occupancy.
Panic - a virtual panic button as part of the alarm.

Turning on the central heating 'manually'.

Summary

The 'get contents of URL' action for a shortcut basically means we can query and control any of the 400+ in our contextual smart home. A secure HTTP request can be made using our unified communications protocol, to enable personalised commands and requests.