IFTTT reliability issues

Cloud
1

Hello,

I hope that I’m not duplicating this discussion from elsewhere.

I’ve been playing around with a simple IFTTT email upon a pin being drawn low on the spark core recipe. I’ve noticed that at one point the recipe was not working. I had to go onto the IFTTT website to turn the recipe off then back on. It worked following that.
For an embedded unsupervised device, one would want it working all the time.
My question is twofold.

  1. Has anybody else noticed these reliability issues?

  2. How does one detect a successful published request from within the spark core? This would allow my embedded device to re-request the notification email after a certain time period if it wasn’t succesfully triggered.

The present simple code example is below.

Thanks, Stuart

int inputPin = D1; //push-button pin
int val = 0; //variable for push-button status
int state = 1; //variable for on/off state
int led = D7; // integrated LED


void setup() {

    pinMode(inputPin, INPUT);
    pinMode(led, OUTPUT);
    Serial.begin(9600);
}


void loop() {
    val = digitalRead(inputPin); //read the state of the push-button

    if (val == LOW) { //if push-button pressed
        state = !state; //reverse on/off state
        delay(250); //primitive button debounce
        Serial.println("button pushed!");
        digitalWrite(led, HIGH);   // Turn ON the LED pins
        notification();
    }
}


void notification()
{
    delay(1000); 
    Spark.publish("button1",NULL, 60, PRIVATE);
   //
    Serial.println("Complete");
    //
    digitalWrite(led, LOW);    // Blink LED
    delay(250);               
    digitalWrite(led, HIGH);   
    delay(250); 
    digitalWrite(led, LOW);  
  }
2

Have you looked into using the notification as a sort of ack?

3

Hi Dave here!

Sorry about that, I was working on webhooks features, and I think I might have impacted the IFTTT service yesterday / this morning. :frowning: Should be back to normal now!

Thanks,
David

2 Likes
4

Hi Bulldog, Dave,

Guess you’re working on it tonight also!! (as it’s not working)

Seriously though,
I couldn’t find the “receive notification when recipe runs”

Do you recall where it’s located?

Thanks again, Stuart

5

it’s in the panel when you edit the Recipe:

6

Hi @StuartK,

Please let me know if you find a scenario where your recipe reliably isn’t working as expected, any extra details or info about when it does / doesn’t work would be really helpful.

Thanks!
David

7

@Dave I have one example:

I noticed my Spark publish, which is still running (and public FYI):

event: Temperature/Casa/laSala
data: {"data":"73.40","ttl":"60","published_at":"2015-03-06T21:16:18.248Z","coreid":"55ff6e065075555336270287"}

Is no longer logging to Google Drive, you can see it stopped at 3:29pm (eastern time)

Temperature/Casa/laSala 75.02 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:00PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 74.84 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:01PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 74.84 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:02PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 74.66 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:03PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 74.48 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:04PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 74.48 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:05PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 74.3 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:06PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 74.3 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:07PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 74.12 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:08PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 74.12 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:09PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 73.94 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:10PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 74.12 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:11PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 74.66 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:12PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 74.66 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:13PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 74.84 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:14PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 75.2 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:15PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 75.56 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:16PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 75.56 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:17PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 75.74 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:18PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 75.74 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:19PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 75.74 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:20PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 75.38 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:21PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 75.2 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:22PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 74.84 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:23PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 74.84 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:24PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 74.66 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:25PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 74.3 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:26PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 74.3 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:28PM
Temperature/Casa/laSala 74.3 VeraController March 6, 2015 at 03:29PM

8

Hi @BulldogLowell,

I’ve also had a recipe connected to Google Drive de-activated, but I think that has more to do with the Google Drive channel’s integration with IFTTT and less with the Spark channel on IFTTT.

I think many of the other channels on IFTTT issue much shorter access tokens, or disable recipes when they’ve caused too many events. We’re also planning on announcing a new feature next week that should make it easier to pipe data into your sites, and could help with this kind of logging. :smile:

edit: I double checked, and I can see a bunch of published event notifications from your device queued up for IFTTT, so I’m guessing either IFTTT stopped checking, or the Google Drive Spreadsheet action stopped working.

Thanks!
David

1 Like
9

Thanks @Dave, I checked and the queued up data must have released, it is all caught up… or perhaps it was a just a Heisenbug.

I realize I’m asking a lot sending the data every minute, but I wanted to see if I would have issues with the data logging which I want to replace (running on my vera home automation controller to a USB drive).

I can say that the implementation of IFTTT has been fun, and is very powerful, so if you are saying that there is a Bugatti coming out of the shop, well I can’t wait!

10

Thanks! I’m going to revisit our realtime connection again, I added some new health metrics earlier this week and I suspect they might be causing some issues, so I want to dig in there and make sure nothing is afoot! :slight_smile:

Thanks,
David

1 Like
11

Hi Dave,

My recipe is very simple. If Spark then Gmail. Sends an email to me@rogers.com up here in Canada.

It now seems to be working now.

Bulldog, I can’t find the field you’re showing above. It may not be available with If Spark then Gmail.

It’s too bad that IFTTT doesn’t let you create recipes with ‘and’ in them, such as; IF Spark Then Gmail and Spark, in order to pass a notification back to Spark verifying that the recipe has in fact executed.

Have a nice weekend,

Stuart

1 Like
12

Hi Dave,

The Spark IFTTT IOS notification channel was very unstable @HK time 16:30 to 18:30 today. Sometimes no notification received and sometimes, very long delay (1 hour).

Michael Leung

13

@Dave, I have also seen this problem. I’m sending data to a Google sheet every 15 minutes, and that works fine when I run it for hours on a single day. However, when I disconnect my Photon, then reconnect it the following day, the recipe is not being run, unless I turn it off and back on again. I’ve done this several days in a row, and it always fails, when I try to start it up on the day after I’ve powered down the photon. With logs, I can see the the Photon is publishing as it should, but what I see on my IFTTT page, is that the recipe hasn’t been run since yesterday. Has anything been resolved about this problem? Is it Google specific?

After Edit: Today, I left the Photon running even though the IFTTT recipe was not being invoked, and after a couple of hours, it did start working on its own.

1 Like