Mobile Alerting in Node-RED via App, Text, Voice with Tracking and Escalation

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Mobile Alerting in conjunction with Node-RED

SIGNL4 is a mobile alert notification app for powerful alerting, alert management and for mobile assignment of work items. Get the app at https://www.signl4.com.

Why SIGNL4

Integrating SIGNL4 with Node-RED can enhance your daily operations with an extension to your mobile team in the field or on the shop floor.

SIGNL4 Alert
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How it Works

All it takes to pair Node-RED and SIGNL4 is an node that implements a webhook and encapsulates the SIGNL4 alerting capabilities.

Integration Capabilities

  • Service engineers alerted via mobile push, text and voice
  • Staff can acknowledge and take ownership for critical events that occur
  • Alerts are escalated in case of no response
  • Communicate within an alert to address a particular problem
  • Alert on critical device states
  • Two-way integration to interact or set the device state

Scenarios

  • IT Operations
  • DevOps
  • Industrial IoT
  • Industry 4.0
  • IoT Service Alerting
  • IoT Device Management
  • IT Operations
  • Manufacturing, Utility, Oil and Gas, Agriculture, etc.

Integrating SIGNL4 with Node-RED

Gathering events from IoT devices and sending team alerts in case of critical incidents is a broad field. It starts with simple prototypes using a Raspberry Pi and goes up to industrial IoT scenarios, machine data or distributed systems in the field and even IT operations.

The integration of Node-RED with SIGNL4 is straightforward. In the following we explain a simple IT monitoring case. We automatically ping a server in certain intervals and send an alert via SIGNL4 in case a ping fails.

Prerequisites

A SIGNL4 (https://www.signl4.com) account
Node-RED (for example on your Raspberry Pi)

Integration Steps

In Node-RED you can create a workflow as follows.

Node-RED Workflow
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Ping Server (ping)
Specify the server you want to monitor (ping). For testing purposed you can specify a server that does not exist so the ping will fail.

Ping Failed (switch)
This switch checks if the ping failed. If so it will proceed to the next node.

Alert Text (function)
Assemble the SIGNL4 alert in JSON format.
We use the following script:
msg.payload = "{'Subjset': 'Ping failed.', 'Server': 'mycluser.somecloud'}";
return msg;

Debug (debug)
Just a helper to see the output in the debug view.

SIGNL4 Alert (http request)
This HTTP request will send the alert data to the SIGNL4 webhook. You need to specify your SIGNL4 webhook address including team secret here.

Test It

Now you can test your workflow by clicking Deploy. It will run immediately and if the ping fails you will receive the alert in your SIGNL4 app.

I hope you find this helpful.

Thanks

Ronald

PS: I work for Derdack, the company behind SIGNL4.

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Nice, looks useful.

I use Telegram for my projects but I can see this would be more useful for some things.

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Looking at the pricing on the SIGNL4 site shows the different packages described as “basic features”, “essential features” or “full features” but I can’t see anywhere what the actual differences are. Just like the free plan being described as “free after trial”, but which plan is loaded on a trial, and what do you keep after that trial is over? Can you specify some more about that?

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@rons4 What is your affiliation with SIGNL4?
If you represent SIGNL4 it would be nice if you could introduce yourself, and tell us what your affiliation is.

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This looks like an ad, is it an ad ?

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Hello and sorry, this is my first post here and maybe I missed something. I am Ronald from Derdack, the company behind SIGNL4. We show a couple of integrations and I thought sharing this here might be of general interest here as well.
We often come across alerting requirements in the industry of IT field where integration is needed. We are a pure software company and not so much an integrator. Node-RED helps to make the integration part easier.
I hope this makes sense.

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When you scroll down on the pricing page you can see the actual differences of the plans. During the free trial you are in the Optimize plan. The Free plan allows you to receive push notifications on your mobile, so the integration shown above still works with the Free plan.

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It's great to see companies supporting Node-RED themselves.
But it was probably worth mentioning that you're an employee of the company in your initial post.

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Thank you for your comment and I edited the initial post accordingly.

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Need to amend your link to take people to your site

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Oh, you are right. Thanks a lot and the link works now.

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You might need to test your website on mobile devices, especially with direct links to mobile app stores on it for the Signl4 app. Saw the FAQ on the bottom of the page say that the trial is on Optimise, rest doesn’t show there.

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I see what you mean. Thanks for mentioning it and we will double-check this.

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@rons4 - I may have overlooked it, but...
The pricing page shows that the free version includes 'basic' features, but I can't see anywhere on your website that tells us exactly what is included in the 'basic' feature list.
The same applies with 'essential' features.

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This could certainly be a useful service for notifications. I had been planning to use a R-Pi with a GSM module to send notifications, but even the free option would cover everything I need.

I do wonder however if you've anticipated likely demand and server load from offering a free service. I know other companies & organisations who've provided free use of data have had to introduce limits on various aspects (API requests, download bandwidth etc.) in order to cope with the load of the small / casual users.

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There seems to be an issue on the mobile page. If you go to https://www.signl4.com/pricing/ on the desktop and scroll down a bit you can see the information about the different plans. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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We adapted the page and not the information about the different plans is available on the mobile as well.

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Just tried it out - alerting me if pool temp changes
(with my new found skill with template node :slight_smile: )

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Worth installing app just for the alert sounds alone :slight_smile:

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Hello, here comes a quick update ....

We just released a Node for easier integration with our SIGNL4 alerting app:

I hope you find this helpful and please let me know if you have any comments.

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