NFC automations

Turn a cheap NFC sticker into a physical button for your devices. Tap your phone to the tag and IoT Parrot runs an ordered list of MQTT actions — lights off, sensor armed, garage closed — in one motion.

Maker+ NFC automations are available on the Maker and Pro tiers. See Account & billing for how the tiers compare.

The actions model

An automation has a name and an ordered list of actions. When the automation runs, its actions execute in sequence, top to bottom — IoT Parrot publishes each action's payload to its topic, waits out any delay, then moves to the next.

Each action carries:

name

An optional label for the action (e.g. "Turn off porch light"), shown in the run result list so you can tell steps apart.

deviceId + brokerId

Which device the action targets and the broker it lives on. Every action can point at a different device, so one tap can drive several pieces of hardware across several brokers.

topic

The MQTT topic to publish to (e.g. home/livingroom/light).

payload

The message body to publish (e.g. OFF, ARM, close, or a JSON string).

delayMs

Optional delay, in milliseconds, applied before the action runs. Use it to stagger commands so a device has time to react before the next one fires.

Writing & erasing tags

Once an automation exists, open it in the mobile app and choose Write to tag, then hold a blank NFC tag to your phone. IoT Parrot writes an NDEF URL record to the tag:

https://iotparrot.com/nfc/{automationId}

That URL is all that lives on the tag — it points back at your automation by id. Nothing about your devices, brokers, topics, or payloads is stored on the sticker itself, so the tag is safe to leave in the open.

• Almost any inexpensive NDEF-capable tag works (NTAG213/215/216 stickers, key fobs, cards).
• To repurpose a tag, choose Erase tag in the app and tap it — that clears the NDEF record so you can write a different automation to it.

Tapping to run

To run an automation, tap your phone to the tag. The tag's URL deep-links into the IoT Parrot app, which looks up the automation by its id and runs the actions:

• Each action's payload is published to its topic, in order, honoring each action's delayMs.
• The app shows a per-action result list as it goes, so you can see which steps succeeded and which failed.
• If a step fails (broker unreachable, publish rejected), you can retry the failed actions without re-running the ones that already succeeded.

You can also run an automation directly from the app's NFC list without a physical tag — handy for testing before you write the sticker.

Example: a "Leaving home" tag

Stick a tag by the front door and give it three actions. Tapping it on your way out turns off the lights, arms the motion sensor, then closes the garage — with small delays so each device reacts before the next command lands.

Run order: publish OFF immediately, wait 500 ms and publish ARM, wait another 1000 ms and publish close. Each device can live on a different broker — the lights on your BYO broker, the garage controller on the managed broker — because every action carries its own deviceId and brokerId.

Pair it with a matching "Coming home" tag inside the door that reverses the sequence (lights on, sensor disarmed, garage open) and you have a two-tap home routine with no app screens to poke through.

Limits

Automation and action counts are capped by tier:

Free and Hobby tiers don't include NFC automations. If you hit a cap, see Account & billing or the pricing page to compare tiers.