Incessantly checking Poloniex or Coinmarketcap to see where Steem is, in terms of price, can become not only addictive, but, once over a certain threshold, even toxic. I know that, because I felt this stress, and not only once. So, how to decouple form the stress, but still keep yourself informed?
SMS alerts to the rescue!
In this article I'm going to share how I set up an SMS alert using Zapier. Or, in other words, how I programmed the Internet to do what I want.
A Zapier workflow consists of 3 stages: a trigger, a filter (optional, but useful in our case), and an action. In our case, the trigger is the price of a certain currency, pulled from a certain website (Coinmarketcap), the filter would be the exact value of that currency (what's the value that will activate the action) and the action will be an SMS. The rest of the article assumes that you already have an account on Zapier (it's free).
Step 1: Set up the trigger
After certain a new Zap (how they call it), I am invited to set up the first step. I chose a "Zapier Webhook", which is just a way to interact with various sites.
The webhook has certain actions, I chose "Retrieve Poll" (polling a website and retrieve a certain result). The polling will happen every 15 minutes.
The URL is taken from the Coinmarketcap API, and it returns a JSON containing various information about a certain cryptocurrency (it's the same endpoint I'm using in steem.supply). Here it is, for the lazy ones:
https://api.coinmarketcap.com/v1/ticker/steem/?convert=EUR
The important field from above is the Key parameter (in our case it's not optional). From the entire JSON returned by the request, we're only interested by the price. The JSON key responsible for that is price_usd, write that down in the field, we're going to need it later on.
After each step there's a nice option to test it, which, in this case, actually sends a requests to Coinmarketcap and checks for various stuff (is the URL really there? the site is up? etc).
Step 2: Filtering the values
The filter that we add is going to use another Zapier tool, called "Zapier filter":
From this filter, I chose the option: "Only continue if". I don't need to get an SMS about the price of Steem every 15 minutes.
In the "Edit Options" step, we can add certain conditions. This is a very powerful query builder and you can create some very complex filters with it. I chose only one condition: if price_usd (the Key set up in the trigger) is bigger than $2, then the workflow can continue.
The last step lets you test the filter again.
Step 3 - Sending the SMS
This is the easiest part. You just choose any SMS transport providers, there are many, and I chose ClickSend SMS only because was the most convenient in terms of set up. You may replace it with whatever SMS transport provider you want, provided Zapier has an integration with it).
The rest is very specific to each SMS provider so I didn't include it, let me know in the comments if you want some screenshots for that as well.
There you go. Easy as pie.
(By the way, I always thought baking pies is a very complex and time consuming activity.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
If you're new to Steemit, you may find these articles relevant (that's also part of my witness activity to support new members of the platform):
And...crypto goes into the toilet today as your phone buzzes off the hook.
well, some days are better than other, right? :)
Yes. LOL
I wish I was at good at stock trading as I am bad at it.
Don't we all
You could also download Blockfolio and set up a price alert for Steem.
Zapier is awesome to test out diffrernt integrations. Thanks to zapier I no longer need to use the companys yammer and still get the usefull information
This will help a lot to not check prices again and again Thanks that was a great share
i want to know can we set up using http://ifttt.com/ too ?
I tried with IFTTT but for some reason I stopped, I guess they don't have the webhooks equivalent of Zapier, just a feed checker. Using that feed checker to make an API call could have been problematic.
recently found out Integromat may come handy for you someday :) thats a good site too
Appreciate the post about the site. Probably won't use it for the steemit price, but I might can use it for something else I wanted updated for. Thanks.
I barely track the markets anymore so this will be useful on the go.
Thanks @dragosroua
Let's see if it will save me any money haha
Following, upvote, and resteemed. Cheers mate.
nice post @dragosroua
i upvoted and followed you, please visit my blog and dont forget upvote me @muhammadriky
I have voted for you can you vote my comment please .. Thank you dear in advance .