How to make tags with Multiple Actions

NFC tags, as you may have learned from our previous articles, are very versatile. They can be programmed to do so many things with just one tap.

Of course, going by the things I have taught you so far, you might have thought that you could do it faster by just tapping on the Wi-Fi toggle or the Bluetooth toggle of your phone. That may be the case if you are using only one action, but what about making a whole list of actions in one tap?

You see, the real strength of NFC lies on the ability to make shortcuts. It can be used to quickly perform a single task or the ability to launch a whole range of tasks in one tap.

Today, we will provide an example and a tutorial of how to make a tag with Multiple Actions.

Just like before, our app partner would be Tagstand’s NFC Task Launcher.

Making a Bedtime Tag

For the sake of this tutorial, we will program a bunch of actions on our NFC tag that will help you simplify the process of the things you need to set up before you sleep for the night. All of the actions presented here will be done as soon as the tag is tapped on the NFC chip of the device.

First, you need to open the NFC Task Launcher app and tap on the + symbol on the upper right.

Tap on “Add a new Task”

Label the Task as you would like. On this tutorial, this task will be known as “Bed Time”.

Tap on Add actions.

It will then present a list of actions to choose from.

Turning off Radios

Now let us think about what we want our tag to do. When we go to bed, we want to make sure that our phone remains alive for as long as possible. To preserve the battery, we need to turn off some unnecessary radios.

That said, the first tasks we would like the tag to perform are to turn of the Wi-Fi connection as well as the Bluetooth connection. To achieve that, tap on “Wireless & Networks”, then choose “WiFi On/Off” as well as “Bluetooth On/Off”, and then choose “Next”.

Bonus: If you don’t want to receive any alerts at all including calls and texts, you can simply choose “Airplane Mode” instead.

On this screen, we want to choose “Disable” from the drop down boxes. Once done, choose Ok.

The ending page should look something like this. You can see that 2 actions are currently queued in the actions list.

Volume Control

Of course, there are more things to be done before going to bed. We also need to minimize the noise from texts and calls while we sleep. We want it to be less intrusive as possible, but still remain to be audible for emergencies. You may even want to mute it but still allow your phone to register calls and texts for you to review when you wake up.

In this scenario, we want to make sure that we lower the volume of the Calls and Notifications, but make sure to maximize the volume for your alarm.

To set these actions, tap on “Sounds & Volume” and then choose “Ring Volume”, “Notification Volume”, as well as “Alarm Volume”, and then choose “Next”.

At this point, it is entirely up to you how loud or soft you want to set the volume to. 0 means that you are muting the sound completely. I have set the Ring Volume to 1, the Notification Volume to 1 and maxed out the volume for Alarms. Once everything has been set, choose OK.

Our task list should now look like this. So far, we have 5 actions to perform and it takes about 93 bytes of memory in total. If you are using the standard type 2 tags with 144 bytes of memory, you still have plenty of space to work with.

Setting and Alarm

Well, we did set the alarm volume to max earlier, now we have to make sure that there will be an alarm to sound off.

From the actions list, choose “Alarms”, followed by “Set Alarm”. Once you are done, choose “Next”.

You can choose the label you want for your alarm set up from here. I chose to write “Wake up for School” as the label.

Tap on the “Time:” label to choose the time you want to set your alarm on. It is totally up to you, but I want to wake up at 8:00 in the morning. Once you have decided on a time, choose “Set”.

It should now look like this. Choose “OK” when you are done reviewing your setup.

So now, we have a huge list of 6 actions for Bed Time. We have a total of 118 bytes which will be written on your NFC tag. If you still have the space, you can go for one more task at least. For now, I would like to stop here and proceed to actually writing this set of actions on the NFC Tag.

Tap on “Save & Write” from the upper right and then tap the NFC tag to start writing on it.

Once you are done, test it out. After tapping your NFC tag, the Bed Time profile would launch immediately. It will turn off your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, set calls and notifications to 1 volume and raise the Alarm volume to max, as well as set an alarm for the nearest 8:00 am slot available.

As you can see, NFC tags can do so many things in just one little tap. Imagine all the time you have saved by using such a simple method such as tapping your phone against a sticker. It will surely make the bedtime routine a lot smoother.