Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

NFC Sticker Automation

Here’s a geeky tale for you.

We have an old Bluetooth stereo in our car that does not support CarPlay, and it irritatingly connects automatically to my iPhone in the mornings before school when I start the vehicle to warm it up. This evening I successfully configured a NFC sticker (37 cents each in a 30 pack) to turn my Bluetooth back ON when I tap it with the phone… AFTER an iOS automation script turns Bluetooth OFF earlier on weekday mornings. It’s not a super-complicated workflow, but it did take me awhile to figure out.

NFC Sticker Car Automation” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

I have created a range of different IoT automations via Google Home for our lights and WiFi enabled electrical plugs, but have only dabbled a little bit previously with Apple Shortcuts for iOS and MacOS. Now that I can use ChatGPT as a coding assistant and mentor, however, I’ve been trying out a variety of different scripting ideas.

I brainstormed with ChatGPT to figure out an easy way to get my BlueTooth setting on my phone to auto-magically switch to OFF just before I start my car. Initially I tried to create a shortcut script which checked to see if the Bluetooth had been turned off previously, like in the past 3 hours, and only turn off if that condition was false. I don’t want my BlueTooth auto-shutting off whenever I’m in the car driving.

That script turned out to be too complicated for my meager skills, however, and a more straightforward solution was just creating an automation which turns off BlueTooth every weekday at 7:15am (before I start the car) and then an automation which works with the NFC sticker when I actually get in the car to leave.

I wouldn’t have thought of or considered using a NFC sticker if ChatGPT hadn’t suggested it. NFC stickers don’t just automatically work when your iPhone is close by, you have to actually TAP the sticker to trigger it. By placing the sticker on the front dash panel on the driver’s side, I am able to readily tap it with my phone before putting my phone in the dash holder.

NFC Sticker Car Automation” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

Now, truth be told, it’s really not that big of a deal to turn BlueTooth on or off on my iPhone using the Command Center shortcuts. However, I like the idea of having this automation to save me some steps and just make life a little easier, every school day.

Someday we’ll purchase a newer car stereo with support for wireless AirPlay. But for now, we’ll make do with what we have… and use a NFC sticker to automate our morning routine.

NFC Sticker Car Automation” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

Now that I know how to use a NFC sticker and trigger automations, I’m sure I’ll think of other uses for these… Including automations that my spouse sometimes has trouble activating… Although if I need to trigger a Google Home automation, I may need some hardware to serve as a “bridge” between my iOS and Google worlds.

Last week on our EdTech Situation Room show, Jason Neiffer shared the open source home automation project home-assistant.io as his closing “Geek of the Week.” I may play with that in the months ahead, as a way to both bridge devices (between the Google and Apple IoT worlds) as well as create a home automation capability which (might?) could be resilient to Internet outages.

Have you created helpful iOS or MacOS shortcuts you like to use? If so, please share them!

NFC Sticker Automation” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

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