Hi everyone: I work in a clinic where we have a homepod mini in the operating room (everything you’ve heard about surgeons and music in the operating room is true). I’m trying to figure out the best solution where someone in the operating room can say, “Hey Siri, we are ready for the surgeon” (or some such) and a light in the surgeon’s office will blink. We don’t play music or anything in the offices, so investing in another homepod mini for the intercom function doesn’t make sense.
Theoretically, this could be expanded so that the light could be a different colour depending on the message, but right now, I just need the light to blink. The surgeon would then ask Siri (once they’re in the operating room) to turn the light off–or we would just have it on a timer so that it shuts off automatically (since a light that doesn’t shut off makes signalling kind of useless).
Wondering if a Phillips Hue or similar would do this in terms of a light bulb; and if I would need to do anything specific with Siri (scripting or otherwise)
I have a bedside light plugged into a Meross smart switch.
If I go Hey Siri Turn On [name of plug in the Home App], Siri tells me she has turned it on.
I can also tell her to turn it off.
I can’t tell you whether she is “lying” as I am not at home and cannot see whether the actions actually happened. But, if I tell Siri to turn on some like, say, Bedroom light - which is not in Home, Siri returns Sorry, I don’t know what that is.
@bryanc - do you have an “always on” computing device running that is capable of running Homebridge? If you do, or can get something - then the home bridge plugin homebridge-grumptech-triggers can do that for you. In the plugin configuration, you create a “trigger” which publishes a switch and motion sensor service to HomeKit. HomeKit would see these as having the name you provide in the configuration, for example Ready for Surgery. You could then say “Hey Siri, turn on Ready for Surgery”. As for the trigger configuration itself, you would want to specify it as a Timed trigger that was on for a few seconds (specified in milliseconds) and remained triggered for a few seconds. Then in HomeKit, you could create 2 Home automations, one that turned the light on when motion is detected and the other turns it off when motions is no longer detected. By default, this on/off cycle could continue as long as the switch remains on, and you could turn it off via Siri with the “Hey Siri, turn off Ready for Surgery”. But you can also specify a trip limit, where the switch will automatically turn off after the trigger trips a specified number of times (for example, after the light has turned on 20 times).
Unfortunately, no “always on” device that could run Homebridge. Not easily anyways. Our clinic IT folks would also not appreciate it even if it seems fairly harmless.
Alternatively, you could use the intercom feature which does require a HomePod to set it up but once it’s set up it works with iPad iPhone max HomePod HomePod mini, etc.
You still would not get any confirmation that it was delivered though.
