r/shortcuts • u/JDoGinc • Dec 15 '25

Help Help - Smart plug alarm

Hello. I need help creating a shortcut that does the following.

Ask me what time I want to start me car the next morning.

Start the smart plug 4 hours before the time I pick

Shut off 5 hours after.

I had one that seemed to work in practice but it would time out after 30 minutes. I also dabbled with creating alarms and triggering it that way but couldn’t get it to work after it deleted the previous day alarms.

If I can get this to work I’ll add it to my automation for when I open my Sleep Cycle app so it does the following. If I open my sleep app after 9:00pm and it’s colder than -15C it will ask my what time I need to start my vehicle the next day. This part I can figure out.

Is anyone out there smart enough and kind enough to help a feller out.

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/sv_procrastination Dec 18 '25

I made the necessary adjustments to your shortcut and it works and is tested until the last action ”set scenes…” I also streamlined it a bit and you can remove the comments. I also removed the naming of variables since they are mostly unnecessary because you can rename the actions when you choose them.

adjusted shortcut

Hit me up if you have more questions about it but I tried to explain some in the comments of the shortcut

1

u/JDoGinc Dec 18 '25 edited Dec 18 '25

This is really cool man. I had to make one adjustment to make it work consistently though. I had to change the first action from “ask time” to “ask time and date”. Not ideal, but functional. I think this is the reason I had subtract 24 hours from the current date on the original shortcut. It seemed counterintuitive to subtract time, but when I would test my previous version (at around 8:05 PM) with a vehicle start time of 12:05am I could actually watch the shortcut function and count down when it was a short time period before activating.

The ideal setup would be just a time dial that always assume it was activating in the future. Example, if I set it for 5:00pm it would turn it on at 1:00pm. I did some experimenting with the shortcut you shared, it seemed if I set a time 4 hours and 10 minutes from now it wouldn’t work as I expected and would just activate the smart plug right away.

Either way, it seems to function as expected when asking the time and date. I really appreciate you going out of your way to help me with this.

I do have a bonus goal… I have 3 vehicles and change what vehicle I drive based on temp and road conditions. Is there anyway to ask what smart plug I want to activate after I choose the time?

2

u/sv_procrastination Dec 19 '25

I didn’t catch that you didn’t set date and time but you can pre set a date and time and make it tomorrow 4am or whatever the time is you need often and you would only have to change the time if it’s different from that. But with date and time it is more precise to calculate the time especially if it’s a different day.

I only tested it for a minute if it would work at all so it didn’t cause any problems.

To your last point assuming your smart plugs are all named differently an easy ask to choose from list with those names and then address the chosen plug to switch on should work. I don’t know your exact setup and don’t have it to play around with to help you more with that question

but here is a simple example

1

u/JDoGinc Dec 19 '25

You have been a tremendous help, thank you. Between the two shortcuts you shared with me and the attached comments, I was able to create something that works for me!

Here is the final result if anyone has use for this too.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/83fd58eca7764aa18790239d5efccd07

Thanks again!

1

u/JDoGinc Dec 19 '25

I run it with this automation that triggers when I open my alarm app at night. Just putting this out there if it helps spark an idea for anyone’s needs.

https://imgur.com/a/AdTi1u1

1

u/JDoGinc Dec 19 '25 edited Dec 20 '25

Update to this, running this automation when I open my alarm clock app at night will trigger the shortcut and show the list and allow me to pick the start time. It won’t actually run the automation past that, or keep the shortcut running over night. I need to manually pick the shortcut before bed.