How to turn your Elgato Stream Deck Mini into a smart home controller

The Elgato Stream Deck Mini is a great little device for streaming games and creating useful macros when you want to use social media in the middle of a stream. What you might not know is that the software used to create these custom buttons is quite powerful and you can hook it up to IFTTT, making it an almost magical portal to your smart home.

Products used in this guide

How to create an IFTTT applet

1. Go to IFTTT.com and create an account if you don’t have one.

2. In the right corner, click on your username and click on New applet.

   

3. Click on the huge blue + THIS on the screen.

4. To research Webhooks in the search bar.

   

5. Click on receive a web request to activate this action.

6. Give the event a title. In my case it was to turn off my fan so I named it TurnFanOff. It won’t use spaces, so use capitals or underscores to make it easier to see.

   

7. Click on create a trigger to complete the first half of the applet.
8. Then click on the giant + THAT on the screen.

9. Here you will need to find the smart home service that connects to your product. It could be Nest, or Ring, or in my case Smart Life – they make smart switches and sockets.

   

10. Log in to your smart home service using username and password and grant access to IFTTT.

11. Choose the action you want the service to take. In my case it was switch off.

    

12. Choose the smart device you want the action to work with. In my case, it was the kitchen light, which is also my fan.
13. Click on To finish to terminate the applet.

How to connect the applet to the Stream Deck Mini

Now that the applet is created, you need to connect it to the Stream Deck Mini. This is why webhooks are so important – they allow you to send an IFTTT request just by going to a single web address. This means that the Stream Deck Mini can be used to call up a web address which will activate the applet. Here’s how to connect them.

1. Go to https://ifttt.com/my_services
2. To research Webhooks in the search bar.

3. Click on the Webhooks service when it appears.

   

4. at the top right click on Documentation to find your unique url.

5. Fill in the box with the trigger title than you did earlier. In my case, it was TurnFanOff.

   

6. Highlight the Url which is generated at the bottom, leaving aside the Curl command, and press Ctrl + C to copy it to your clipboard.

7. Open your Streaming platform software. If you haven’t already downloaded, you can do so here.

   

8. Scroll through the list of commands on the right until you find the system Website order.
9. Click and drag the Website command in one of the button areas on the left.

10. Name the action in the Title box. In my case, it was Fan Off.

    

11. In the URL box, tap Ctrl + V to paste the previous web address.
12. Be sure to check the background access check box. If you don’t, the Stream Deck will open a new browser window each time you press the button.

And we are done

That’s it! Now every time you press the Stream Deck button will send webhooks an address request, which will activate your smart device. It will work anywhere too. Even if you take the Stream Deck to a hotel, it will still activate this smart device.

If you want you can upload or create an icon for your new button, but if you try to use transparent backgrounds it will look weird.

It’s not the only thing IFTTT and Webhooks can do either, so feel free to jump in and look for some great ideas.

Our best equipment choices

Maybe you’ve thought about buying a Stream Deck but didn’t feel the bother. Well, I hope this guide shows you the value of this cool little gadget.

Smart things that work with the Stream Deck and IFTTT

There are many smart devices out there and a lot of them use IFTTT to connect. Here are some of our favorite picks.