Best notification app on android?

Hello guys, what the best app to sending notification from node.js / node-red to android device ?
except Pushbullet app. Thanks

I am using Telegram for this purpose.

It can be integrated into Node-RED with this node:

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Telegram.

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I'm using IFTTT through a webhook with rich notification.

I compared different solutions and posted my review at Notification Solutions.

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I use Telegram to send messages to my Android phone and tablet.
The system works VERY quickly and is very easy to implement.

I use this Node-RED node (it includes many useful examples to help people get started)...

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Again, Telegram, except I use a different set of nodes that could do with better documentation but so far turn out to be quite powerful: node-red-contrib-chatbot. Though keep in mind that if you only were to use them for Telegram, they might convolute your palette as a lot of nodes get added. I also use other functionality exposed by this library, namely the possibility to extend it to other platforms.

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I'm a minimalist. I use the cellphone provider's Email to mms text gateway to send images from my AI enhanced alarm system with the node-red Email node.

Don't have to explain anything to my wife or install any apps on her phone, she just gets a text with photo on her phone when an alert is necessary -- so far only the mailman, UPS, FedEx, Amazon deliveries, but provides nice peace of mind while we are away.

Also easier if we are on vacation and have a neighbor or my sister-in-law "watch the house". They can understand and use a text message with photo without needing to learn anything.

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Hi all,
Does someone test this "email 2 MMS" site ? it's look like free and worldwide.
https://mms.yuboto.com/email-to-mms
Like @wb666greene , i'm minimalist and I like the idea of sending a notification to the people I want without having to have the right application.

Its not a gateway. You setup an Email account with them and use it to send messages to their server which then sends an SMS to the phone number with a web link to their site to download the MMS attachments.

I wouldn't go near it. YMMV.
I get SMS spam from this kind of crap all the time :frowning:

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Thank you for your opinion, that's what I thought! I'll have to dig my head to find other ways to do that.

If you’d like to do it that way, look up Twilio. Not free, but does what you suggest above, and works well from/with node-red

Thanks for reminding me about Twillo, it was something to look into. $0.02 per MMS sent, 5 MB limit.
Apparently in the US $1/month for a "number" $0.50/month if you use an existing number (land line or VOIP I presume).

I think I wall sign up and give it a try, our "landline" moved to Ooma VOIP many years ago, but lots of people still assume its a cell phone and send texts to it, which we of course never get.

Unfortunately I suspect services like this are responsible for the growth of SMS spam messages.

But still IMHO the best way is to use your carrier's Email to MMS gateway if they have one. The Big four do, The reseller's often only support SMS.

I use two different channels: telegram for non-urgent stuff (like snapshots taken when the front door is opened), and pushbullet for stuff requiring immediate attention (like "kids' room door open at night, and I'm watching TV" - it also flashes TV-LEDs red/blue and posts a message to TV screen).

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Since this old thread is active again I'll followup on Twillo.

I opened a trial account but for me the show-stopper is they don't really do MMS texts you have to host your images somewhere and they SMS a link. Their tech support was timely and helpful. That is just the way their service is, and not the way I want.

The carrier Email to MMS gateways work well if your carrier has one.

For me, a snapshot when someone is at the front door (or anywhere inside my perimeter) is as urgent as it gets.

Usually one of us in home when the mail comes, but when we aren't its a good test.

I use text to speech to give alerts when we are home. I don't have to be looking at anything in particular and I can hear it from anywhere in the house.

The big negative for me with Telegram etc. is I'd have to set it up on my wife's phone and teach her how to use it. Worse issue when we are on vacation and one of our neighbors is picking up the mail etc. and getting alerts from the alarm. With MMS and their phone number "it just works" I just add them to my notification Email list.

You can check out SIGNL4 (https://www.signl4.com) which supports push, SMS and voice alerts. It also supports resolve, team alerts, escalations, acknowledgements and more. You can find the SIGNL4 node for Node-RED here: https://flows.nodered.org/node/node-red-contrib-signl4.

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What: Pushover.
Why: It is fast, reliable, free, customizable
Use case:

  • catching all errors
  • standard notifications e.g. washing machine has finished it's job
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I have been using Pushover for years. One time app fee of $5 per device. Very stable, easy to integrate with to anything, Python, Node-RED, Octoprint etc. You may have many apps and you have a 7500 msg/app/month limit.

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I used IFTTT for a while, but found it very slow and inconsistent. They also just eliminated the free tier so I have removed it completely from my life (couldn't stand the UI either).

I just started using Discord webhooks for this. It was surprisingly easy to set up and I think I will be staying with it.
Key advantages:

  • free
  • no phone number required (Telegram still requires)
  • almost instantaneous - way faster than IFTTT
  • has a desktop app as well as mobile apps
  • Discord users are able to mute the channel independently (or leave completely) if they choose. I.E. no management on the node-red side after setting up the webhook. New users are just invited to (or kicked from) the Discord channel.
  • Discord channel acts as a log (replying to the thread is a good way of annotating the log)
  • the "channel" structure of Discord lends itself to organizing different types of notifications or topics into different channels (making it convenient to selectively mute certain notifications by muting the specific channel).
  • Like telegram, you can easily send commands back to node-red in the chat.

I'm still open to other solutions, and interested what others are doing, but so far this is everything I want.

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I've been happy with phone carrier's Email to MMS gateway, but am looking for alternatives again as it seems spammers have discovered it and the phone carrier doesn't seem to care.

My whole point is to have "drop what you are doing and look right now" notification reliability from my security system. I was getting really close until I started getting all these spam texts.

Can I send an image via Discord? Can you post a simple example of how to use it?

You can apparently send an image through discord using the same webhook, but I haven't got to it yet. It seems easy enough, but I haven't figured out the correct syntax for the http request node's "file upload".

To get started, you make a Discord account and create a "server" (not a real server, but that's what they call a chat room). There will be a default channel called "general" which you can use or create a new channel. Right click on the server icon (left pane) and go to server settings --> integrations --> webhooks. Give it a name and copy the URL that it generates. This is the URL you put in your http request node. If you do a GET request on this URL, it will return a JSON string containing the auth token and all the other parameters you need to configure a change node that feeds into your http request node.

You could do the initial request in node-red and pass the returned values to more nodes to be processed, but since the values never change, I just do a GET in my browser and manually copy/paste the values into a change node which pipes into an http request node that goes off to discord.

I believe there are a couple of discord node-red modules available which might make it easier, but I haven't tried them because it's easy enough to do it this way.

I could post the flow if you really want it, but since there are a lot of personal values in there, it would take some time to sanitize and I want to go to bed. It did take me a bit to figure out how to properly write the JSONata payload (this helped).

The discord developer docs were also helpful.

Let me know if you need the flow or some screenshots and I might get to it later.

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