2. The basic idea

The idea behind this project is to find a way to remotely control any possible home appliances without the use of proprietary hardware and apps. We use a Raspberry Pi connected to relays to control the power to the appliances, we use Google Assistant to send it commands at will, or any app that can communicate with MQTT, and we use AdaFruitIO as the middle man behind everything.

I'm going to create this project step by step and add new features and guides on how to use them as I go along. Right now the idea behind all of this is to just turn my bedroom AC on from anywhere in the world. Later on, I'm going to try and control my powered window blinds, then make it fully automated with a temperature sensor inside the room, then possibly going as far as making a Nest Hello clone on the Raspberry Pi, with a custom app and everything. But let's start with the basics, I just want to turn my AC on.

You tell Google Assistant to turn your AC on, the assistant sends that command to IFTTT, IFTTT routes it to AdaFruitIO, AdaFruitIO broadcasts this new change in its data, the Raspberry Pi picks up this new data and turns the Relay on to power on the AC.

A more basic way of doing things is to just find any way to send the data to AdaFruitIO, either by opening their site and manually hitting the ON/OFF toggle, or by using an app that talks to AdaFruitIO via MQTT, or using something fancy like Google Assistant :D

Optionally

I added a folder called autodoorbell which converts your basic doorbell into some kind of "smart" doorbell by controlling the chime and, if at all possible, taking a picture of who's at the door and sending it to someone (Maybe You!) via Telegram.