Control your smart devices with Chatbot

Objectives

Creating a Dashboard in Adafruit.
Creating an Applet in IFTTT.
Creating a chatbot in facebook by using Adafruit and IFTTT.
Improvising the bot using Chatfuel.

Things

For this project, you will need,

A Facebook account.
An Adafruit account.
An IFTTT account.

Let’s begin!

A chatbot is an artificial intelligence (AI) application that can imitate a real conversation with a user in their natural language. Chatbots enable communication via text or audio on websites, messaging applications, mobile apps, or telephone.

Create a Dashboard in adafruit

Step 1: Open a browser and go to io.adafruit.com. Click on Get Started for Free.

Step 2: Fill in your details and click on Create Account. Note that the site would have navigated to

accounts.adafruit.com

Adafruit Sign up

Step 3: Once the account is created, navigate to Dashboards. Then navigate to actions and create a new Dashboard.

Dashboard

Step 4: Name the dashboard and click Create

Create a new Dashboard

Step 5: Open the newly created dashboard. You will get a blank dashboard. Click on + to create new blocks on the dashboard.Select a Toggle block.

Create a new block

Step 6: Select Enter new feed name. Type ONOFF and click Create

Choose feed

Step 7: Select the newly created field. Click on Next step.

Step 8: Give an appropriate Block Title. Set the ON and OFF texts as 1 and 0 respectively. Click on Create Block

Block Title

Finally you will get a new toggle block. Hence a Dashboard is created.

Create an Applet in IFTTT

Step 1: Open a new browser tab and go to ifttt.com. Click on Sign Up. Create an account in IFTTT.

IFTTT Sign up

Step 2: Once logged in, click on the account icon and then click on create.

Click Create

Step 3: Click on new applet and then click on [+]this.

Click [+] This

Step 4: Search and select Webhooks.

Select Webhooks

Step 5: You will be prompted to Connect to Webhooks if this is your first time. Once done, select Receive a web request.

Step 6: Fill in the details as shown and select Create trigger

Create trigger

Step 7: Select [+]that

Step 8: Search and select Adafruit

Step 9: You will be prompted to authorize the link to the Adafruit account, click on Authorize. Select Send data to Adafruit IO

Step 10: Select the feed name ONOFF from the list which appears. In Data to save, click on Add ingredient and select Value1. It will appear as shown. Select Create action and then click on Finish

Select Value1

Step 11: Once the applet is created, click on the Webhooks symbol

Step 12: Click on settings and copy the Authentication key of your Webhooks applets. Make note of it in a notepad.

Account information

Step 13: Type the following URLs in your notepad. Make sure to replace <event_name> with your event name and <auth_key> with your authentication key

https://maker.ifttt.com/trigger/<event_name>/with/key/<auth_key>/?value1=1

https://maker.ifttt.com/trigger/<event_name>/with/key/<auth_key>/?value1=0

Create a Chatbot in your Facebook

Step 1: Open facebook in a new browser tab and login to your account.Click Create and select Page.

Click Create

Step 2: You need to create a page for Community or public figure. Click Get Started

Step 3: Name your page and select category as Electronics. Click Continue.

Community or public figure

Step 4: Skip the profile picture and cover photo prompts. Your page is now ready to accept messages.

Step 5: Open a new browser tab and go to chatfuel.com. And click on Continue with Facebook

chatfuel

Step 6: Click on Create from Template and select Blank Bot

Blank Bot

Step 7: Once your Blank Bot is created, click Connect then, Click CONNECT TO PAGE on the Facebook page you created. It will prompt Published.

Bot Publishing

Step 8: Click Automate tab. Clear the Welcome message and type as shown

Welcome Message

Step 9: Also change the Default Answer to “I am sorry. I did not understand that command.”

Default Answer

Step 10: Click on + under Add Blocks Here and rename as shown. Add a Text block.

Rename Block

Step 11: Fill the Text block as shown and then click on +

Click on +

Step 12: Select JSON API

Chatfuel Plugins

Step 13: You will get this. Select TYPE as POST instead of GET. Paste the first URL from your notepad here. Remove the tick mark from Report plugin errors in the bot.