Messaging after VERA decoupling

[droy]

First I want to say thank you to this group. You have given me ideas and help along the HA path for a long time.
I'm an old Vera user and planning to decouple from MIOS cloud now or after 7.32 but I'm stuck at how to push messages out.
I'm using Reactor and Scenes for Vera native messaging. What's a good solution going forward?

Also want to mention that after reading the Decoupling document I have built a NTP GPS server on a Pi3B and enjoyed learning more about Linux along the way. I have it stabilized after learning 100 different ways.

Thanks

[LibraSun]

May I be among the first to recommend Multi-System Reactor (MSR) for this purpose? Anything you could do before with Reactor and/or Scenes, you can do with MSR and so much more. Built-in SMTP support should get you well on your way right out of the box.

It's rock solid, and from the sound of things, you're more than tech savvy enough to get MSR up and running on a suitable platform.

[toggledbits]

Both Reactor for Vera and MSR support a variety of notification methods natively. I've become a Pushover convert, and I also do a lot of SMTP messaging, of course. The Telegram plugin by my venerable peer @therealdb also seems to be quite popular and is well-supported by both RFV and MSR.

[LibraSun]

@toggledbits said in Messaging after VERA decoupling:

I've become a Pushover convert

I had been toying with the idea of Pushover ever since you first mentioned it. I just couldn't come up with good use cases, until today. I think the idea of MSR being able to send messages directly to my Web browser and the included Tasker plug-in won me over. (I no longer use IFTTT, due to $, but if I did...!)

Totally fair deal paying one-time cost of $5 per platform. Installing it now on Android and will configure MSR in the AM to test it out. Thanks again for the recommendation!

P.S. Pushover has upped the trial period from 7 to 30 days.

[therealdb]

@librasun as @toggledbits said (thanks for the kind words!), I'm into telegram and I love it.

For my PC, while still working from home, I've developed a simple app staying in the system tray and showing messages via mqtt. I'm sending UDP messages from vera to my own app (similar to msr in scope, but less powerful and less generic). This app running in my Linux box is routing Messages via mqtt and a couple of adapters/clients are transforming them (I use the same message to trigger Alexa tts, LG notifications, telegram and this windows app in the tray).

As soon as MSR has support for plugins, I'll port and release some of them, since part of this is already written with node js (even if my main app is written in c#). A friend showed me a very similar concept for home assistant.

[sender]

@therealdb haven't you got the telegram desktop app?

[therealdb]

@sender yes, but I love to experiment things. the desktop app is actively sending notifications to my Vera system via MQTT, so I'm turning on lights (including a BusyLight outside my home office) when I'm joining a call, when it's dark and I'm working at the PC, or turn them off when it's light enough in the morning.

[droy]

I'll check out Telegram and Pushover. Thanks for the suggestions.

[droy]

Settled on Pushover.net as it fits my messaging alert needs perfectly. I have added to my other systems instead of e-mailing.
I was surprised on how many applications have direct integrations with it including Home Assistant.

[rafale77]

Yep, I have been running pushover, replacing the vera mobile push notification for quite a few years. It's been rock solid. I was particularly enamored by the ability to push snapshots of my security cameras to my apple watch... To make it easy I used Home Assistant as the integration relay so openLuup (and vera before that) sent the call to home assistant which then went to pushover.

[parkerc]

I’m a bit old school, I still use Prowl with my Veras - https://www.prowlapp.com/

Here’s some code examples on how to use it.

function my_escape (s)
    s = string.gsub(s, " ", "+")
    return s
end

function my_prowl (appl, event, description)
    local prowl_url      = "https://api.prowlapp.com/publicapi/add?apikey="
        .. "put-your-api-code-here"
        .. "&application=" .. my_escape(appl)
        .. "&event="         .. my_escape(event)
        .. "&description=" .. my_escape(description)
        .. "&priority=-1"
        .. "&url=https://www.google.co.uk/"
    luup.inet.wget(prowl_url)
end

my_prowl ("Vera Home Controller", "Testing code", "this could any description")

Or something all in one..

luup.inet.wget("https://api.prowlapp.com/publicapi/add?apikey=Your-api-key-goes-here&application=Test+Event&event=Armed+Notification&description=The+DSC+alarm+system+has+been+armed&priority=1")

[LibraSun]

I've gotta ask, since Pushover essentially breaks their paid apps down into three "flavors" (Web browser, Android and iOS), how do they differentiate other channels like Home Assistant or IFTTT? Or do those get lumped into "Web" along with Chrome, etc.? (I assume every endpoint has to have a unique name, no matter what.)

[rafale77]

I am really not sure. I am only using the iOS app as the notification target. Home Assistant just sends the notification and is not considered a channel... (Simple python http post call) I also have not used any paid tier. It's been 3 years.

[wmarcolin]

@droy last week I changed all notification types to a Telegram BOT, it works great, fast and simple.

[droy]

@librasun it looks like they charge the onetime fee by user consumption endpoint groups (Android, iOS, and Desktop) and not integrations or apps.

[LibraSun]

That's right. I thought someone above was saying that HA was acting as an endpoint, not just a broadcast source. I was wrong.

[ArcherS]

@droy I use the excellent Telegram plugin by @therealdb in OpenLuup, it should work on the Vera also.

[therealdb]

@archers 100% working under Vera as well.

[sender]

I use homeassistant with node red and telegram natively. Alternatively I use the homeassistant companion app with messaging. Both rock solidand instant.