Notification best practices?

Posted on
Fri Jul 02, 2021 6:38 pm
Professor Falken offline
User avatar
Posts: 289
Joined: Mar 29, 2015

Notification best practices?

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?

Posted on
Fri Jul 02, 2021 7:03 pm
FlyingDiver offline
User avatar
Posts: 7189
Joined: Jun 07, 2014
Location: Southwest Florida, USA

Re: Notification best practices?

Switch to a better email provider. I use RackSpace.

joe (aka FlyingDiver)
my plugins: http://forums.indigodomo.com/viewforum.php?f=177

Posted on
Fri Jul 02, 2021 8:56 pm
FlyingDiver offline
User avatar
Posts: 7189
Joined: Jun 07, 2014
Location: Southwest Florida, USA

Re: Notification best practices?

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

joe (aka FlyingDiver)
my plugins: http://forums.indigodomo.com/viewforum.php?f=177

Posted on
Sat Jul 03, 2021 8:22 am
DaveL17 offline
User avatar
Posts: 6742
Joined: Aug 20, 2013
Location: Chicago, IL, USA

Re: Notification best practices?

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).

I came here to drink milk and kick ass....and I've just finished my milk.

[My Plugins] - [My Forums]

Posted on
Sat Jul 03, 2021 10:34 am
Dual offline
Posts: 255
Joined: Feb 05, 2019

Re: Notification best practices?

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.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Posted on
Sat Jul 03, 2021 10:36 am
FlyingDiver offline
User avatar
Posts: 7189
Joined: Jun 07, 2014
Location: Southwest Florida, USA

Re: Notification best practices?

Dual wrote:
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.

joe (aka FlyingDiver)
my plugins: http://forums.indigodomo.com/viewforum.php?f=177

Posted on
Sat Jul 03, 2021 11:52 am
chase offline
Posts: 75
Joined: Oct 27, 2013

Re: Notification best practices?

I use the iMessage plugin...

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

I love it.

Posted on
Sat Jul 03, 2021 12:10 pm
Professor Falken offline
User avatar
Posts: 289
Joined: Mar 29, 2015

Re: Notification best practices?

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.

Posted on
Sat Jul 03, 2021 12:37 pm
jay (support) offline
Site Admin
User avatar
Posts: 18199
Joined: Mar 19, 2008
Location: Austin, Texas

Re: Notification best practices?

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...

Jay (Indigo Support)
Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

Posted on
Sat Jul 03, 2021 1:51 pm
ryanbuckner offline
Posts: 1074
Joined: Oct 08, 2011
Location: Northern Virginia

Re: Notification best practices?

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

Posted on
Sun Jul 04, 2021 6:25 pm
ckeyes888 offline
Posts: 2417
Joined: Nov 26, 2009
Location: Kalispell, MT

Re: Notification best practices?

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

Posted on
Mon Jul 05, 2021 8:44 am
Professor Falken offline
User avatar
Posts: 289
Joined: Mar 29, 2015

Re: Notification best practices?

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...

Page 1 of 1

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests

cron