FREE Cambrionix Intents are live

Published on October 18, 2024 by Amanda Lee Fox

We’re pleased to announce our FREE Cambrionix Intents, which are now available from within our Cambrionix API version 3.22.0 onwards. These powerful new MacOS actions allow you to automate device charging behaviour, swap USB ports between charge/sync modes and create comprehensive workflows to automate business processes in the tech & education sector, enterprise markets and device circular economy. 

What are Intents?

According to Apple, “The App Intents framework provides functionality to deeply integrate your app’s actions and content with system experiences across platforms, including Siri, Spotlight, widgets, controls and more.” “We’ve used the full power of Intents and integrated the Cambrionix hub controls with MacOS Shortcuts, so you can do so much more than ever before with your smart USB hubs, hands-free,” says Director of Engineering, Mark Robson.

What are Cambrionix Intents?

We’re the first smart USB hub manufacturer to come to market with pre-made Intents because we want to empower our clients’ business growth. Cambrionix Intents are specialised actions that allow you to interact with Cambrionix devices through the Cambrionix API. These intents are built to integrate seamlessly with the Shortcuts app, making it easy to add and control features of your Cambrionix products within custom workflows. You could use them to do things like find all the Cambrionix USB hubs on your system or find all USB-connected devices and list all product info for each. Or you can use Intents to change the colour of the hub LEDs after performing a certain action like a system update or switch them between charge and sync modes for specific durations.

What’s the benefit?

Cambrionix Intents (accessible via Shortcuts) allows you to use drag-and-drop functionality to create Mac OS workflows for tasks which are usually manual. The use cases for this are exponentially ROI-heavy, reducing the time for tasks from minutes to seconds across most major tasks completed with our smart USB hubs. Here are some things that used to be manual which can now be automated using Intents:

  • Identifying the physical location of devices
  • Disconnecting devices following a factory reset, iOS restore or update
  • Visual confirmation via LED status of a task in progress
  • Visual confirmation via LED status of task completion

How do I access Cambronix Intents?

To access them, simply go into Shortcuts from your Mac OS device and on the right-hand side, you’ll see the Cambrionix Hub API or you can use the search tool to find it. If you’re not seeing these Intents, redownload the latest Cambrionix API update and make sure not to untick any boxes when you reinstall. And, if you want to really get into the fine detail with our new Intents, you can download the Cambrionix Intents manual here.

Our industry connections with Apple developers mean we are an early adopter of this tech on MacOS and we’re interested in pushing this technology to its limit. So if you need to do something specific with a Cambrionix USB hub and we haven’t built an Intent for it yet, please let us know. We’d love to support you.