Been playing around with NFC automations recently, alongside siri shortcuts(+homebridge-> hubitat) on the iPhone e.g. I have an NFC sticker underneath my alarm panel enclosure that means I can tap my phone against it to disarm my garage alarm (built around hubitat) and I have one in the car for the same purpose…. but other use cases come to mind e.g. one outdoors to toggle the garden speakers ..
Curious if anyone is making use of NFC and for what automations?
Yes I use NFC stickers.... I have one on the outside of my doors. Once scanned, a Siri shortcut kicks off and uses HomeKit, which uses homebridge, to tell Hubitat to unlock the door. Works great. 2-3 second delay. I am playing with some other uses... they are good and cheap and seem to be fairly reliable. I can't wait until they allow Siri Shortcuts on the Apple Watch, then I can use the watch to scan and kick them off.
Was thinking the same thing with the apple watch .. that would be great!
Maybe I’m misunderstanding but you can currently have Siri Shortcuts on your watch. Just put them in the watch folder in the shortcuts app.
I have one by the garage door for the kids (and me, but I mainly use a shortcut on my phone), that opens/shuts the garage door, and disarms the alarm if it's alarmed. I also have one in the car.
My tip if it's opening doors/disarming alarms is this: make sure it calls local and not cloud end points, so the kids cant trigger the automation from school when they start playing around with it. It just means they have to connect to the home wifi before they trigger the NFC tag. (In tasker there is an option to play automation, meaning they could trigger HE to open doors at school. And I dont want them doing that).
The trigger for outside sonos speakers is a good one. I might steal that one. Keep them coming!
Unfortunately you can’t yet scan NFC tags on an Apple Watch
Can't say I have a need for this, but maybe it will spark an idea for someone else...
Maybe use an nfc tag to identify the person who started some automation and therefore would be the person to notify, e.g. who put the washing on.
I put them in to run 'Im Back' and 'Goodbye' automations. Haven't really used them because I've made it so there is little to no human interaction to automatically know when to run automations (something I would have struggled to do on my previous hub)
I also have one that reminds me if I haven’t taken medication. I have a tag stuck to a pill box; if it hasn’t been scanned by a set time then I get a reminder…
Sorry I should have been clearer. Yes you can have Siri Shortcuts on Apple Watch but you cannot make a shortcut automation using the NFC capabilities on the watch. Apple has not exposed NFC on the watch for passive chip "reading" in the latest version of watchOS. I believe that the issue is that on the watch NFC contactless payment using the NFC radio is initiated/powered by the reader not the watch, most likely to save battery life. On the phone the NFC radio is powered by the phone and can "energize" the NFC chip from the phone. I am sure that they are working on it but who knows when it will be available.
Download the Hubitat app
