Add simple scheduling to your projects with an Adafruit IO schedule action. Turn on or off lamps, fans, solenoids, and other small appliances without the headache of reading and parsing output from real-time-clock (RTC) or obtaining the network time.
This guide's project is a continuation of the IoT Power Outlet guide where we built an internet-connected electrical outlet with an Adafruit PyPortal and connected it to Adafruit IO. This guide will take the IoT Power Outlet guide one step further by adding some scheduling logic to the outlet to turn a lamp on or off at a specific time or day.
This project is not only for scheduling and automating lights - you may adapt it to control a fish feeder, turn off an interactive art exhibit at night, water your plants at specific times, or schedule anything powered by an A/C outlet.
What are Adafruit IO Actions?
Adafruit IO Actions add some lightweight logic to your IoT project without writing extra code. Actions are a way to do something when a certain situation occurs. This guide focuses on the simplest action type - schedule actions.
What is a scheduled action?
You can configure a scheduled action to publish a value to a feed, send an email containing the value of a feed, or even send a webhook message to a URL at a specific time.
Scheduled triggers allow robust scheduling actions such as sending a value to a feed “At 11:15 AM, only on the 2nd August”, “Every 4 hours”, or “Everyday at 15 minute intervals between 1:00 PM and 2:00 PM”.
They also utilize your Adafruit IO account's local timezone - no complicated date-time math required!
Page last edited May 15, 2025
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