HOWTO: Make your own SoundTouch sleep timer and alarm clock with IFTTT and Microsoft Flow

[Marty K.]

Hi All,

Using Bose’s SoundTouch API, I’ve been able to create my own sleep timer for my SoundTouch speaker with Microsoft Flow, and an alarm clock using a combination of Microsoft Flow and IFTTT.  

I decided to share out to the SoundTouch community how I did it.  

I'm still working on typing up instructions on how to do the alarm clock.  For now, I can share how to set up the sleep timer and I hope to make another post in this thread when my instructions for creating the alarm clock are ready, hopefully in a few days time.

Because its long, I am not going to post the whole thing here, but instead here is a link to the instructions.  

Please note that this is informational only.  I’m not necessarily suggesting that anyone actually go and do this. There are some security risks associated with this, and a bit of tech savvy (or at least a willingness to dive in) especially in the area of router configuration is required.  No one should do this if they do not understand the risks or are not comfortable accepting them.

Finally, I just want to thank the team at Bose for being willing to let me share this out.  There are lots of potential ways to integrate IFTTT (which I will cover in the alarm clock section), Microsoft Flow and SoundTouch and my hope is that other members of the community will be inspired to perhaps tinker on their own and share some of their own ideas and even implementations back here.

[Marty K.]

And here are instructions for setting up an alarm clock with IFTTT and Microsoft Flow.

[iSchorsch]

Thanks for the great instructions, Marty! Since I want to keep running as litttle devices as possible and don't want an extra device to control my speaker, it would be awsome if Bose could add native IFTTT- and -sleep-timer-alarm-clock-support.

[MarianOKon]

Hi Marty!

Thanks for the instructions!

I am having problems with the Headers in MS Flow. I receive this message when I enter the text you have: "Enter a valid json" (you can see it below... hopefully. If it doesn't you can see it here: https://flic.kr/p/Q81j1K)

What the heck am I doing wrong? 🙂

Thanks!

Mariano

[Marty K.]

Hi Mariano - Apologies for this - I typed those instructions in to Google Docs and in Google Docs, it turns out sometimes it will turn a regular quotation mark in to an opening quotation or a closing quotation mark, instead of just the regular quotation mark which is what we need.

Please try and copy and paste the text below into that field.  Meanwhile I've updated the instructions to fix this issue.  

{"Content-Type":"application/xml"}

[CentralBK]

Thank you very much for the instructions 

It shows the capabilities of the system - but for myself, I do not want to open my devices to the public internet and suddenly my speakers are a part of a zombie botnet.

I don't see any security (or I missed it) so I hope for an integrated solution for now.

[Marty K.]

@CentralBK - Yes, as far as I can tell the options right now using the API are either something like I've outlined here where your speakers are exposed to the internet with no security, or write your own program that you can run locally on your network to perform these functions, which involves having your PC or another device powered on and available to execute the functions.  Neither is ideal, both have tradeoffs and for some (many) people neither are going to be an acceptable solution.  But until Bose provides something better these are the available options for anyone who really wants a sleep timer or an alarm.  

[MarianOKon]

Thanks Marty! That worked! I don't believe I would have caught that in a million years... 🙂

[ftb28064212]

This is awesome. I think I'm going to set this up but, instead of using it as an alarm clock, I'm going to use my Nest to trigger it. That way, when I walk in the door, and my Nest ends away mode, music will automatically start playing. I already use Tasker to turn my lights on when my phone connects to WiFi (and turn them off when I leave) so this will be a great addition.

[TimDonovan]

I absolutely love this solution, its genius. I hope Bose add native IFTTT support natively at somepoint though.