Control a PC from Android Wear

So I'm now the proud owner of an LG G Watch.  After reading all the flame wars on whether Android Wear was the greatest thing since sliced bread or the worst thing since un-sliced bread I decided to be conservative and opted for a first gen watch before dropping too much cash on the "newest-greatest".  I'm not going to add to the already gigantic pile of Wear reviews, suffice to say I'm satisfied with it for what it is and what I paid for it.

But that's not the point of this post.  90% of the reason I bought the watch wasn't for what it did, but rather what can I make it do???  So I got it, rooted it, and started sideloading apps (xda).  What I ended up with was an android smartwatch that could:

• Play a movie (QQPlayer + ES File Explorer + Bluetooth Headset)
• Run an NES Emulator (NES-FC Lite + Bluetooth controller)
• Open my garage door (V1_Bluetooth_Arduino app + my bluetooth/arduino garage door setup)

None of these were really way out there as far as plausibility so I continued my hunt to push the limits of what this thing can do.

The one place I feel Android Wear falls short is the 'control' aspect of things.  It is a fantastic little devices for providing you with information, but at the end of the day I should be able to tap the thing on my wrist to control my every day life.......

The closest thing I could find right now is the IFTTT integration.  Bravo in general to this website and moreso for making it compatible with wear.  They get it.  Tap a button to cause an action somewhere in the real or digital world.  

So after playing around with existing recipes (https://ifttt.com/android_wear) I remembered a post I saw a while ago about controlling your computer with IFTTT and Dropbox vis SMS.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-issue-a-command-to-your-computer-with-a-text-message/

The premise is exactly the same except instead of using SMS as the trigger, you'll use android wear as a trigger.

On the PC side, you'll still use the same script that monitors a dropbox folder for a specific txt file and if it is found, will trigger the appropriate action.  

But to make it work with your Wear devices, you'll create a different recipe.

1. Create a new recipe 
   
2. Choose Android Wear as the trigger
   
3. Choose Tap Button (which is the only option)
   
4. Create trigger
   
5. Select action
   
6. Choose Dropbox
   
7. Select "Create a text file"
   
8. Enter an appropriate file name and folder location that you will have your windows script look for in the dropbox folder
   
9. Call the recipe by a name you will recognize on the watch
   

Now that all that's done, setup the windows side script in accordance with the link I mentioned above and setup a scheduled task to run that script as often as you'd like.

Remember to modify the windows script to match the file/folder you setup your IFTTT recipe for.

FUN FACT: By default, windows won't allow you to run a scheduled task for anything less than 1 minute...........But what you can do is create 5 scheduled tasks set to run every minute 10 seconds apart (or 11 tasks 5 seconds apart, etc).

What can you do with this? Technically anything windows can do, but hey....it's Christmas!!!  Voila!!! My watch turns on the Christmas tree light show.