Today I discovered that my doorbell is broken. Since I'm awaiting some deliveries, I figured I need a hotfix until my landlord repairs the analog doorbell. It took me only 10 minutes to implement a digital solution.

Concept

I immediately thought of IFTTT, an online service that acts as hub between several IoT devices or internet services. The scheme is always the same:

If this happens, then do that.

For this I thought of a QR code that someone in front of my door could scan, which directs her to a website. As soon as that website is accessed, the trigger is fired.

The that would just be a simple notification on my phone, displayed by the IFTTT app.

Implementation

I went to set up a new applet in my IFTTT account. The suitable trigger for my purpose is called "Webhook". It can easily be enabled and in the trigger's settings page, I can see my custom URL, which looks something like https://maker.ifttt.com/use/{key}. When accessing that page, the instructions are very clear:

To trigger an event, make a POST or GET web request to https://maker.ifttt.com/trigger/{event}/with/key/{key}

where {event} is a custom key to identify the event. I chose ring_bell.

With that set up, I only needed to create a QR code, that directs to that website. There are enough options do to this, but I used QR Code Generator. When setting up a free account there, I even get the possibility to add a text field to the code. I chose to use my name, obviously.

For the action, I chose the notification service which just sends a push notification to an IFTTT Android or iOS app. I set it up to notify me with the text "Someone just rang the doorbell".

Now all I had to do was print out the code and glue it onto the "out of order" sign someone has put up to cover the broken doorbells. Here is the notification I get (in German) with about 3 seconds delay after someone accesses the website: