Using Zapier with Adafruit IO allows you to automate tasks on the Internet with your data, like writing to Google Sheets or sending a Tweet.
Linking Adafruit IO and Zapier
You'll want to first link Zapier with your Adafruit IO Account.
Zapier for Adafruit IO is currently not listed on the Zapier Integrations page (we need 10 active users to make it public), you can sign up for it using this invite link.
After signing up for Zapier and linking your Adafruit IO account, you'll need to create a Google Sheets account if you haven't already.
Google Sheets Setup
We'll want to create a spreadsheet to hold all the data from the Time Tracking Cube.
Navigate to the Google Sheets Homepage, Click Start a New Spreadsheet
On the Spreadsheet, make three row headers:
- Task
- Timestamp
- Minutes Spent on Task
These three columns will hold the metadata from the Adafruit IO feed created in the previous step.
Next, we're create a Zap. A Zap is a combination of a trigger (like an Adafruit IO Feed receiving new data) and an action (like sending a Tweet or writing to a Spreadsheet).
To do this, navigate to the Zapier Dashboard and click Make a Zap!
You'll be prompted to choose a trigger app. From the dropdown, select the latest version of Adafruit IO.
Next, you'll want a trigger. Select Get Feed Data, which triggers on new feed data.
Next, select your Adafruit IO Account (or connect it if not done already).
On the Set Up Options step, Select the Orientation Feed from the dropdown (if you have a lot of feeds - you can search for it).
Finally, select a data sample (if the feed is newly created with no data, these won't exist yet).
Next, we're going to set up the action. In this case, it'll be writing the value of the feed, and time which the data was sent to the feed, to a Google Sheet.
From Choose an Action App, select Google Sheets.
From Select Google Sheets Action, select Create Spreadsheet Row.
Click Connect an Account to link your Google Sheets Account (the same as your Google Account) with Zapier.
From the Spreadsheet dropdown, select the spreadsheet we made earlier from Worksheet. Zapier will automatically load in the column names.
Select the Timestamp column.
From the dropdown, select Created At as the data values to bring in.
From the Cube Orientation column dropdown, select the value field.
Click Continue to finish setting up the action.
Since we'll want to send the minutes and the task as Adafruit IO data, we'll need to get clever.
Each value sent to Adafruit IO has associated metadata - such as the time it was sent, and the ID of the data point. To send our timer in the same data point as our task, we'll be using the latitude metadata.
From Zapier, select Minutes Spent on Task. Scroll down to select Lat.
Another piece of metadata which we'll use in our spreadsheet is the timestamp - which is when the data was sent to Adafruit IO. This lets us keep track of our tasks and organize them by data or time.
From Zapier, select Timestamp. Scroll down to select Created At
To test if the sheet was set up correctly, click Send Test to Google Sheets.
If everything was set up correctly, you'll see an updated row on the Google Sheet you've created earlier.
Finally, give your zap a name and turn it on.
Next, we'll move onto coding up the Time Cube.
