You might read the title and think to yourself ‘Why would I want to use vRO with Wink?” Well there are a number of reasons. I created this because being an automation specialist I thought it would be cool to automate my home. When I started down this path I got a wink hub, a smartthing hub, a philips hue hub, Chamberlain MyQ Garage Door Openers, Kwickset locks, Leviton & GE switches, Light Bulbs, a Smappee Energy, Water, & Gas Monitor, Nest Thermostat, Nest Protect, EcoBee, Ring doorbell, Canary, Harmony Hub, and a number of other hubs, devices, and sensors. As I started my project I realized on their own non of these products do a great job at automation. Sure you can control things via na app, but I want more than that. I don’t just want automation either, I want intelligent automation.
A simple example: I want my door locks to be locked after a defined period of time being unlocked. Well sure I can create a rule or robot that say lock door after x time, but that’s lacking intelligence. Maybe I want to lock the door only if it is closed. Non of these systems can do that. However with vRO I can create a workflow that locks the door and checks the door sensor to determine if it is opened or closed and if it’s closed, lock the door, if not check again in x period of time until it can be locked.
Another example: I park my vehicle in the garage. I like to remote start my vehicle in the winter to warm it up. I would sometimes forget to open my garage door then start my vehicle. With vRO I can mount a Nest Protect on my garage door right behind my exhaust and set a rule that if CO is detected, open the garage door. Alternatively I can use a OBDLink hooked up to my vehicle computer and through Dash determine if my vehicle is running and trigger garage door to open. You get the idea.
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