A few weeks ago I learnt about Glide.
It gave me the feeling I could build something very fast.
So I wanted to show how fast you could learn and build something useful with it.
After 2 weeks of going through the Video tutorials and online materials I’ve built this app.
I made an integration with an asset tracking (IoT) device in order to locate & recover stolen objects.
The app is built using:
GlideApps offcourse
Google Sheets
Zapier
Viloc API (webhooks)
It doesn’t really make sense I think to share the link of the app itself since without access to the other API’s and Zapier it doesn’t really work. So I made a video to showcase the app which you can view below.
I’m not a coder, I didn’t have any previous knowledge apart from Excel.
And I used to work for Viloc so I know a little bit about their API (webhooks + JSON) and had a clear end-application in mind.
btw: Anybody else working on IoT related no-code projects?
Best regards,
Tim
Some feedback for Glide: (things I ran into building the app and while learning about Glide)
It would be nice to have a proper QR code scanner > this way we can easily connect API’s and couple devices - the current implementation (at least for me) is simply not working
There’s no proper way to capture the user time zone (apart from very complex solutions offered on the forum). All the timing Glide is in the timezone of the device, while my IoT API only uses UTC, as a result I can’t really make calculations since these will differ from region to region.
It took me a lot of time to figure out how the data in the app works - I often got stuck in the beginning by using row-owners & user specific columns (I simply could send certain information to Zapier - or use certain info as an input). Since I got rid of that and started using data filtering based on user email instead, everything came together properly.
Zapier costs quite some money it seems - although it was easy to set-up. I mainly used it in order to send webhooks to the Viloc API for “things” that are owned by the user and then update the google sheets table using the Glide API. I try to limit it but still, are there better alternatives you can recommend? Some provided solutions in the form off AppsScript but I’d prefer solutions without coding.
The devs do know about the time zone issues and are looking at best options. Also, one of the main goals of the team is in simplifying anything we can.
Zapier can get expensive, nothing we can do about that. There are alternatives such as make.com but you’ll have to see if they are a better option for you.
I’ve never used Zapier, but I use Make extensively and I’d thoroughly recommend it. I find their pricing to be quite reasonable (although I have no idea how it stacks up against Zapier).
Thanks for the reference @Tim_Gestels , interesting your use case.
Let me give you some tips that can be handy:
It would be nice to have a proper QR code scanner
Totally agreed! … the plan B could be this kind of soft-keyboard to scan barcodes or QR codes into your APP. It isn’t the best solution but depending of case/user, it can be the workaround.
There’s no proper way to capture the user time zone (apart from very complex solutions offered on the forum).
true but we can some tricks to get a simpler solution and show the right time to your users. Some JS code can create the magic you need, I could help you.
Since I got rid of that and started using data filtering based on user email instead, everything came together properly.
Will your APP work as service (Saas) reading customers’ IoT devices regularly (polling) or eventually when a user needs to find his/her tag? If it is the 2nd case, using USC is enough in my opinion.
Zapier costs quite some money it seems - although it was easy to set-up. I mainly used it in order to send webhooks to the Viloc API for “things” that are owned by the user and then update the google sheets table using the Glide API.
That is correct and Make (Integromat) is almost the same regarding costs if you need a lot of actions/readings
To carry out your process in Make, it might look like …
Totally agreed! … the plan B could be this kind of soft-keyboard to scan barcodes or QR codes into your APP. It isn’t the best solution but depending of case/user, it can be the workaround.
Soft Keyboard is indeed a good recommendation, I’ll try it out!
true but we can some tricks to get a simpler solution and show the right time to your users. Some JS code can create the magic you need, I could help you.
I prefer not to code > the whole idea of this app was basically to show the power of No Code
I understand Low Code is an option but I’ll leave that to the professionals.
Will your APP work as service (Saas) reading customers’ IoT devices regularly (polling) or eventually when a user needs to find his/her tag? If it is the 2nd case, using USC is enough in my opinion.
It only needs to work when the user needs to find his or her tag atm. So in a normal use case the app usage is quite limited. Webhooks will do. I have 1 Zap Trigger - that basically triggers a Zapier Loop updating the device info of all the devices belonging to that specific user. The loop only runs upon login in the app or after a few hours. However when you have 10 devices the loop basically uses 60 tasks every time. So it will really depend on how much the users check their location.
That is correct and Make (Integromat) is almost the same regarding costs if you need a lot of actions/readings
To carry out your process in Make, it might look like …
From reading the above post I would concluded Make is up to 25 times cheaper. Am I missing something?
I think so! (I hadn’t seen the Zapier price list since a long time )
Also, Make is more “visual” (friendly) to configure and see how your process/scenario is running
Another alternative for Make & Zapier that I have loved recently is n8n. They have a run-based quota count, not at a node level (say a Make scenario with 10 node runs will consume 10 from your quota every run, with n8n it’s counted as 1, albeit their quota is at a lower level).
Also offer it completely free if you can host the thing yourself, or run things from your desktop.
Indeed, I’ve looked into it very briefly but figured that (with how I’ve built the app) this would trigger the Zapier call a lot more (also when the user is not logged in) and that this could cost me a lot of money on Zapier calls. But it’s a very interesting proposal. I wonder if it could be set-up in such a way that it only happens when the user is logged in and then send the zap action including the unique row & email of the active user?
Computed columns are computed on the user’s device, so in @gvalero’s example, if the app is open and running on a user’s device, then that’s when the trigger would run. So, yes, to answer your question, the trigger would only happen when the user is using the app. But, if you have 100 users, then there will be a 100 user devices calling that zap action if all user have the app open at the same time.
Hola Tim,
What Jeff wrote is right and is what I was thinking after reading your concerts about costs.
But you could do all this without Zapier or Make I think. Are your tags (IoT devices) able to respond web requests directly?
If so, your APP can read them at any time using Glide’s API plugins and retrieve their data by handling JSON payload received on your APP.
There are no external costs using this procedure.
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