How To: Use SMS to Control Your House

[josh]

Using SharpTools + Tasker, you can automate actions in your smart home based on receiving an SMS.

For example, let’s imagine that anytime an SMS is received from our contact Josh Lyon with the words "open sesame" in it, we want the garage door to open. In this case, Tasker would be setup such that whenever an SMS is received, it would tell SharpTools to control the garage door on SmartThings.

1. In Tasker, create a new Profile → Event → Phone: Received Text
2. Configure the profile with your desired filters (who it came from, what the message says)
   • In our case, we limit the Sender to our contact by tapping the search icon
   • And then require that the content of the SMS be “open sesame” by using the Content filter
3. Configure the action to take your desired SmartThings action via SharpTools
   • This uses the Plugin → SharpTools → A Thing action to control our garage door.
   1. First we select the desired device type of “Z-Wave Garage Door…”
   2. Then select the “Garage Door” to control
   3. And finally select the command of open()