HOME AUTOMATION: WeMo Maker as electric door latch relay

I recently tested the WeMo Maker to replace the electric door strike relay I had installed that was controlled via my doorbell. I picked it up for $69 from Bunnings Warehouse.
The idea was that I would replace the wireless relay that came with my doorbell for the Wemo Maker and then use the WeMo app (possibly with IFTTT) to unlock the door from my phone. I didn't plan to use the sensor input feature on the device. 

Setup was easy, I followed the instructions that came with the device and was up and running in about 15 minutes. It was soon after setup that I realised the limitations of the device...

The issues:

In order to work as an electric door strike relay I required the device to function as a momentary switch, turning on for a short amount of time and then turning back off to lock the door again. Typically devices built for door unlocking operations have a latching delay that can be set by a jumper, meaning that when the door is remotely unlocked it will be held unlocked for the set amount of time. So with the WeMo Maker I needed it to do the same.

When I took a look at the settings of the device I noticed there was no setting for the 'on time' of the relay. Some googling led me to discover that the WeMo Maker is only capable of a 300ms on time as set by the firmware, making the device pretty much useless for my remote entry needs without some extra circuitry.

IFTTT to the rescue:

WeMo have made their products compatible with the IFTTT platform making it possible to connect hundreds of services to the device.
After sifting through all the services trying to find one that allowed me to connect a countdown timer to the device, I found that one of the default WeMo Maker IFTTT actions was "on then off after 2 seconds". Perfect!

The results:

In reality the way this setup had me using the device was not ideal, be default the device didn't allow me to set a relay 'on time'. While I was able to get around this with IFTTT the reality of the service was that I was getting an approximately 8 second delay from pressing the button widget on my phone to having the door lock open. Combine this with the relatively short amount of time that the lock was open and the result was me having to just repeatedly pull on the door waiting for it to unlock after pressing the unlock button. Not ideal given the cost of the device. 

HOME AUTOMATION: Blynk and IFTTT

I found a few sites showing how to link Blynk with IFTTT using the Maker channel service. This thread on the Blynk forums gives a good rundown of how to create a recipe but some of the details seem to be out of date. To get it working you will need to do the following:

1. Ping the Blynk server (blynk-cloud.com) and copy the IP address. In Australia I'm getting 45.55.96.146
2. Create a new IFTTT recipe using the Maker service and use the following parameters:
1. URL: http://45.55.96.146/YOUR_AUTH_TOKEN/update/PIN_NUMBER?value=VALUE
2. Method: GET
3. Content Type: application/json
4. Body: leave it blank

Remember to replace "YOUR_AUTH_TOKEN" with you actual token from you Blynk project, PIN_NUMBER with the pin you want to set (eg: D1 or V0) and VALUE with the value you want to set. You should end up with something like this: