Notification best practices?

[Professor Falken]

What are people using these days as the best way for Indigo to notify of events? For years I have used email (via both the built in function and the better email plugin) to generate emails and/or texts. This worked fairly well. But lately gmail seems to almost always block Indigo from sending email, no matter how many times I change the setting in Indigo's dedicated gmail account, it seems to reset it back to not allowing an untrusted app to sign in and send an email. From perusing the forums, I see that the other email services seem to run into the same types of problems.

I am running Indigo 7.2 on a Mac Mini (OSX 10.11.4). I am an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" kinda guy with respect to HA, so I haven't pushed past I7.2 (plus, I still have a handful of applescripts that I haven't converted). But I need to figure out some kind of reliable way for my system to be able to alert me to events beyond gmail saying it blocked a sign in attempt.

Any suggestions?

[FlyingDiver]

Switch to a better email provider. I use RackSpace.

[FlyingDiver]

Or if you're willing to spend a few bucks, look into using Twilio for SMS notifications. Very reliable.

[DaveL17]

I send an email to my_mobile_number@my_mobile_carrier.com and they forward that to me as a text message. I use this for notifications that I want to receive "instantly". For everything else, I send as an email to my personal email account. All this is via an email account that I have dedicated to Indigo (not Gmail).

[Dual]

I love Pushover. It should work with 7.2. I prefer that it is dedicated to use with my two Indigo installs and not intertwined with my Messages from friends etc.


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[FlyingDiver]

I love Pushover. It should work with 7.2. I prefer that it is dedicated to use with my two Indigo installs and not intertwined with my Messages from friends etc.

That's a good one too. And I also recently updated it to use the custom sounds feature that's now available.

[chase]

I use the iMessage plugin...

free, reliable, fast, can send images as well as text, communication back to Indigo....

I love it.

[Professor Falken]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I may check out pushover, as well as some of those email provider suggestions.

Dave, like you, I used the email-to-text feature as you describe (when the email function was working).

A while back I tried using iMessage, but I could never seem to get the unique iMessage account to sign in and stay signed in. I think there was a known bug in that version of OSX with respect to that or something, but it's been a few years.

[jay (support)]

A couple of things I do:

• Since I already use Slack and have the clients installed on all my devices, I use the Slack plugin to send messages to a special Slack channel for notifications.
• I use the notification feature on my Inovelli switches for notifications - when the LEDs chase/blink green, it means the laundry is done (opening the laundry door cancels them). If red, one of my water sensors has detected water. Because I have these switches in every room, it's very visually obvious when there is a notification.

The laundry part of that last solution also uses Slack in a roundabout way: my washer/dryer are GE WiFi capable though the API is Python 3, so I use their IFTTT integration to post a notification to a slack channel which causes the Slack plugin's Message Event trigger to fire the action group that sets the Inovelli notifications.

GE Washer/Dryer -> IFTTT Applets -> Slack channel ->Slack plugin -> Action Group to start Inovelli notification

For a solution with that many parts, it has been remarkably reliable...

[ryanbuckner]

I use the iMessage Plugin. Works really well and it's easy;

[ckeyes888]

Been using the Growl plugin for so long, and it’s worked so well, I haven’t checked out any other methods.
I simply have a variable I populate with whatever the message is and a trigger sends it off to all my devices.

Carl

[Professor Falken]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I think Pushover looks to be the best answer for me at the moment. Thanks for writing the plugin, it seems to be working great in my early use case tests.

Try as I might, I just couldn't seem to get Messages to reliably stay signed in and functioning on the Mac Mini. Very strange.

FlyingDiver, have you been happy with RackSpace for email? I was also looking at that as a second or backup option, but read lots of reviews online about diminishing service quality lately.

Now on to rewrite all my notification triggers...