Welcome Philips Hue, welcome Apple HomeKit
While we originally were building OTDT as a local “Trigger an Action”-Appliance (like IFTTT – “If This Then That” – does in the “cloud”), we recognized that controlling actions in OTDT directly would be a great thing.
For sure would building a web interface an easy way, but you would have to be in a browser for every single action request. Or – even worse – would have to trigger them over a CRON controlled REST request.
Beside that we had several unhappy experiences with well known Home Automation and Building Automation Appliances providing emulators for Philips Hue and/or Apple HomeKit protocol, where the appropriate clients were not really happy with the implementation of these emulators.
Device state feedbacks are missing, some device type simply do not work (sometimes without any error reported) and such things brought us to the decision to implement a Philips Hue Bridge emulator and an Apple HomeKit Bridge emulator into OTDT for controlling actions and – as a new thing – virtual device states.
That means that you’re now able to get your OTDT triggers and control your OTDT actions in most Smart Speakers on the local network without additional software – they all can use the Philips Hue protocol – and on your Apple HomeKit enabled devices like iPhone, iPad and even the Watch.