The holiday season is firmly upon us, and with it comes festive decorations, far too much shopping, and endless entertaining. Given how busy this time of year can be, wouldn’t it be cool if you could set your holiday lights up so they blink when someone rings your doorbell? Well, it turns out you can do just that so no delivery person, caroler, or partygoer will be missed.
Why would you want your lights to blink?
You might wonder why anyone would choose to set their holiday lights up to blink every time someone rings their doorbell, and to be perfectly honest, until last weekend I wondered the same thing. I mean, if you are expecting a delivery or a guest, wouldn’t you hear the doorbell ring when they arrived? The answer is nope, not always.
For example, last weekend I invited my new beau to a holiday party my friend was hosting in what can only be described as an area of the city with ridiculously poor signage. I expected said beau to show up at a certain time, but over the music, general chatter, and animated laughter, I didn’t hear my phone ping when he texted me, nor did the group hear the doorbell ring when he pressed the button. Had their lights blinked to alert the group to the fact that there was someone at the door, he may have avoided spending so much time in the cold wondering if he was at the right location or just ringing the doorbell of someone he didn’t know.
Needless to say, blinking lights during the holiday season are a great idea and easy to set up with IFTTT. If you’re not familiar with the acronym IFTTT, it stands for If This, Then That, and is a service that allows you to set up certain “situations” via various apps. In this case, the “situation” you can set up is having your smart home lighting blink when someone rings your doorbell.
How can you make your Christmas tree blink when a doorbell is rung?
IFTTT allows you to connect all sorts of smart home products together that you might not otherwise be able to connect, like your Christmas tree lights and your doorbell. Or, your Philips Smart LED Lights, which you can set to festive colours like red and green. The IFTTT service will guide you through an easy set up process to create situations or triggers that are completely customized to suit your wants and needs. For example, you can set it up so that your Hue lights will flash if you’re tagged in a Facebook post. Personally, the alerts I get on my smartphone are more than enough for me, but if this kind of things floats your boat, you can set it up via IFTTT.
The bottom line is that by connecting your doorbell to your interior lights, you don’t have to be connected to your phone day in and day out during the holiday season. Whether you’re entertaining or simply watching a movie by the fire, your lights will keep you posted should anyone show up at your door.
