How to Use Siri to Control IFTTT or Custom Programs

SiriControl utilizes the notes feature of Gmail. And since we have to disable a few security mechanisms to allow SiriControl access to our notes, it's wise to use a Gmail account dedicated to this project.

You can create your Google account here. As always, use a secure password and store it securely.

Visit this site and click the toggle to Allow less secure apps.

From your Gmail account, click the Settings cog icon, then click Settings. Then click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab at the top. Now click Enable IMAP.

On your iOS device, go to Settings > Notes > Accounts > Add Account.

Click on the Gmail logo and sign in to your newly created account.

After creating the account, make sure that Notes is enabled.

Then navigate back to the Notes settings page, and select this account as the Default Account.

To clone the SiriControl repository, you'll need Git installed on your machine.

Then clone the SiriControl repo with:

git clone https://github.com/theraspberryguy/SiriControl-System

Navigate into the SiriControl-System directory. Open the siricontrol.py file and add your Gmail credentials.

To see how this works, simply run the following:

python siricontrol.py

Then on your iOS device activate Siri and say:

"Note - What is the meaning of life?"

Then within a second or two, you'll see the following print to the screen:

The word(s) 'what is the meaning of life' have been said

------------------The meaning of life is 42-------------------


The module 'life' has been executed successfully.

In this step, I'll build a module that I'll actually use. In a recent project, I wired up a Raspberry Pi to control my garage door. So I'm going to write a SiriControl module that allows me to open and close my garage door.

So first I'm going to add a file called garage.py in the modules directory. modules/garage.py will contain the following:

import json
import requests
import sys

moduleName = 'garage'
commandWords = ['garage', 'door']
GARAGE_HOST = 'http://192.168.1.183'


def execute(command):
    try:
        action = command.split(' ')[0]
    except IndexError:
        print('No command passed.')
        return

    if not action in ['open', 'close']:
        print('Invalid action.')
        return

    response = requests.get('{0}/status'.format(GARAGE_HOST))
    status = json.loads(response.text)

    if action == 'open' and status.get('open'):
        print('Door already open.')
        return

    if action == 'close' and status.get('close'):
        print('Door already closed.')
        return

    requests.get('{0}/relay'.format(GARAGE_HOST))

If you're familiar with Python, you can probably see what is going on. If not, I'll explain.

First, there are a few requirements to create a SiriControl module. You need to specify the moduleName, the commandWords, and create an execute function.

If the commandWords are matched, siricontrol.py will pass in the whole command (the note text) to the execute function. So in my case, I'm expecting the note to say either "open the garage door" or "close the garage door". So I'm deriving the action from the first word of the command. Then I'm hitting the API for my garage door to see the current status because my API to open and close the garage door is really just a toggle. So if I say "close the garage door" I don't want it to accidentally open the garage door. So after this validation, if we haven't returned out of the function, we toggle the garage door.

So this is how you create a module! If you need help, you can take a look at modules/templateModule.py.