Q/ Practical flows

[Yam]

Hey there!

I'm a long time flow user, and have quite a large collection of flows that I can't live without ~ however it's sparked my curiosity...

We all have some big complicated flows that solely suits our lifestyle, so my question is:


What practical flows have you made that would make anyones life easier?



Here are some of mine:

- Press both volume keys to toggle torch on lockscreen, or autorotate in an app

- Copy a authentication code from sms to the clipboard automatically.

- Unlock my phone and open spotify when I'm in the car

- Automatically send a text message to people with Birthdays

- Advanced remote sms commands:
• Connect to wifi with or without a passcode.

- Floating loudspeaker, mute and dialer during an active call.

[Desmanto]

I hate to answer "a lot", as the answers I typically got from most Automation's app forum. But currently I can't help but to answer the same. But stay with me, I have managed to documented some of my usages. Documenting all of them takes maybe very long, as my flow also keep changing in the process. You can maybe look at some of thread

About the show off ideas
viewtopic.php?t=7191

Accessibility group usages
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7126

WearOS
https://forum.xda-developers.com/wear-o ... c-t3956264
Which leads me to request a bunch of additional features here :
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8184

As usual, when you read thru all of those, you probably only find 1-2 interesting things. Because everybody's needs are different. So something that is super important to me, might be totally useless for you (and vice versa).

To add up maybe some flow which I considered worthy to be shared :
1. Office Announcer flow. I have used this since in tasker. My coworkers now relied on my phone to know when the lunch time, breaktime-in and go home time. I made a speech output to announce the time when it comes. After switching to Automagic, i extend the flow again to use any of the random 4 languages. So sometimes it speaks english, sometimes Chinese, Indonesian or Japanese. My coworkers already depends so much on my phone that if they miss their clock-in time (when I am not in office), they blame me that my phone is not announcing the time. They have took it for granted, which is a sign of a good technology. We setup it once and forget that we are enjoying it everyday.

2. Speech Project. I have shared some detail in the link above. But the latest addition is not only I can speak and Automagic as usual, which is similar to Google Assistant and already boring. Now I can sing a phrase of song and Automagic will continue my songs. Google assistant can't do that

3. Some network related flow, which usually require several clicks to query some data. I now automated restart of the router, checking quota balances, checking rouge wifi user and will extend to the script to block them (takes long time)

4. Combined with eventghost, to sync clipboard back-thru, open link back-thru, sharing files, doing command to PC, mirroring, adb remote shell and many other

5. Camera part, I make remote shutter, my own light painting timer, shortcut to Google Lens, comparing night sight, shortcut to ARCore animal, QRScan until secret silent photo taker

I think it is too long to type them all. Since most of them are specific usage, I don't think most users are going to be interested to the detail. The current ones I have just finish the last couples days, is the google lens, scanning QRcode to track packages (I hate to install one-trick pony app for that) and the current one I am working with, the Yeelight scene creator, to help me create the flow for controlling the Yeelight. I can make the lamp dance, behave like police siren (blue red) or maybe simply use it as alarm waker or notification. Cool thing to show off when my friend came by and I just shout "Illumination" to turn on the light. I don't want to use the yeelight built-in plugin, as I want more precise control and prefer privacy.

[Yam]

Fantastic! That's a sensational response, thank you for the good knowledgeable read!

[Yam]

This one really has sparked my curiosity. Can i know what method you used to achieve automation of the restart router?

Was it through control UI, or something I don't know about?

Thanks!

3. Some network related flow, which usually require several clicks to query some data. I now automated restart of the router, checking quota balances, checking rouge wifi user and will extend to the script to block them (takes long time)

[Desmanto]

Control UI doesn't work inside browser webframe. As most browser already sandboxed the inner webframe from external accessibility interaction. I use HTTP request to mimic what the browser does. I usually use Chrome developer option to help me tracing the post/get, sometimes using wireshark and sometimes bruteforce it directly using Automagic and debug dialog. It heavily requires Chrome debugging, regex, HTTP post/get, javascript, json and sometimes xml.

Mifi
For my mobile wifi router, mifi, as I posted here : https://www.kaskus.co.id/show_post/5aad ... 568/6897/-
I open the webUI of the mifi. Then I study how it process the login from the chrome developer. After know it, I use standard HTTP POST with the form field username password to login into mifi. To query the data, I check which url it use to get the data. Using HTTP POST to this url will get the status result in json.


As some point, I need to reposition the mifi to get a better signal. So I plot the json into chart (widget with hundreds of rectangles), then show it in widget. I can then reposition the mifi and check if the signal becomes better or worse, to find the best position.


Mifi sometimes becomes slow, as typical network devices. My carrier also require me to restart the mifi before using night's quota. So I click the command to restart the mifi, find the url and use that url in HTTP request to restart the mifi. But just remember, most command only can be passed after the first successful login. Usually the router provide token or some identifcation id to maintain the session. So not everyone can simply post the restart url and immediately restart the router. We still need to pass the username password to login first before issuing command.

Other related to mifi flow, My subscription is quota based. I have to check my quota periodically to ensure I don't overuse my average daily usage (or I will run out of quota at the end of month). So I do the same, finding out method to login to the website, using regex to parse html and find the remainding quota. Later I found out the mifi also can check the quota without having to login. It turns out to use its own API with the mifi id + number hash to get the data. I mimic this and the flow becomes shorter and much faster then. The result also in json format, so I don't need to use long regex anymore.

Office Wifi
At the office wifi, I do approximately the same. Login to the router and find the restart url. When someone tell me the connection is down, a simple shortcut tap is enough to restart it; rather than having to open browser, login, navigate to the UI where the restart button located and click it.

When we still have 1 Mbps internet speed (yes, only 1 Mbps), and there are approx 25 devices; users complain a massive slowdown. After checking the router connected clients, I found some unknown devices from the outsider/neighbour office. I blacklisted those in the router, so they can't connect even they typed in the correct password. As far as I remember, that is the first time I heavily use regex to parse the router's connected devices list. Using Automagic, I can easily identify which devices are rogues ones, instead of looking one by one thru their mac address in the web UI. (which is very exhausting to do it everytime).


Other network related is the latest one I just finished last week, QRcode to track packages. I just tried it today and it is working fine so far. For this purpose, it is as easy as getting know the correct url with the tracking code. A simple debug dialog, copying to regex testes, replacing the variables with proper regex syntax, are enough to complete the flow.

Again, most of these flows are devices specific and most likely only for my own purpose. I use mifi Andromax M2S with Smartfren, Tplink Archer C7 v2 (which I don't automate); and at the office, the wifi router are ZTE F660 and Tplink WR740N (as secondary AP thru LAN). If you need to do the similar thing, you have to do it by your own. I can only guide at the big picture only.

[Yam]

Wow... You really are at a god tier level.

I'm really impressed at your work, furthermore it's completely just flipped my knowledge of automation. Never would have guessed tk have automated a simple router restart.

So I really appreciate the time you put into your responses and the steps you took to solve some of the problems you faced.
Heck, I wouldn't of even consider using wireshark when attempting this. But you've really given me a new perspective and goal for this week.

Incredible stuff! Will let you know how i go!

If you need to do the similar thing, you have to do it by your own.