Hello,
I created a home automation system using Node Red. When someone comes to the porch, a motion detector picks up the movement and I normally get an email message and a text message (using the Node Red email node) via T-Mobile indicating someone came to the porch. Suddenly, about July 5th, the text messages stopped coming but I continue to receive the email messages. I contacted T-Mobile and they said nothing on their end is stopped the text messages. Does anyone know why this is happening?
Thank you!
You have not told us what you do in node red to send the text message.
Thank you for the reply.
The text message and the email message are both triggered by the same mechanism. The motion detector triggers a deCONZ node to populate a flow variable with a value indicating that motion is detected. A function node monitoring the flow variable value detects that the flow variable has changed, indicating motion. The function node then sends a payload to the email node triggering both an email and a text message. For the text message, the payload includes mycellphonenumber@tmomail.net in order to send the text message through the email system.
I will be happy to provide further details if helpful.
Thank you.
If you send an email from an email program - Outlook, Gmail etc to the tmomail.net address does it trigger an SMS?
Does the email node give any error messages?
Does it work if you send from Node-red only to the tmomail.net address?
Thank you for the reply.
I use gmail to send the text.
Yes, when I create an email message using the tmomail.net and send it using the gmail account I receive the text.
No, the text message is not received when I only use the tmomail.net.
So, it appears to be something related to sending emails from Node Red.
I read on the internet that people complained about T-Mobile stopping text messages if they are too frequent from the same source. Unfortunately, shadows across my porch from the sun sometimes trigger multiple text messages over a short time period. So, I thought that T-mobile's system was blocking these frequent text messages. But T-mobile says they are not.
It does sound like something is going wrong in the Node-red email node.
All I can think of to do is temporarily up the logging level (settings.js) and look in the logfile for clues.
Thank you for the suggestion. Is there a node I can use to catch errors like what you speak of?
Have you tried the catch node?
No, I have not. I will try it.
Thank you.
I just tried it. Unfortunately, it did not "catch" any errors.
Did you output the catch to a debug node?
Yes.Yes I did.
I discovered something. I use T-Mobile for cell service. My friend uses At&t for cell service. When I use my friend's cell phone number rather than mine, my friend gets the text message. This tells me T-Mobile is blocking text messages being sent from Node Red. T-Mobile tells me they do not have a block on my cell phone number but I think they do.
Just a thought: Does it make a difference if you have the phone's address in msg.to, msg.cc or msg.bcc (and leave To in the node config blank)?
Try each of them, there is a suggestion online of T-mobile rejecting such an address as a blind copy.
Thank you for the suggestion. I just checked it out and, unfortunately, it does not correct the problem.
I appreciate you trying to help resolve the problem.
Scott
Try setting up a forwarder from a Gmail account.
eg Forward all messages with subject "testing testing 123" to nnnnnnnn@tmomail.net.
I think ISPs dislike mail to SMS, presumably because it costs them money.
I'm not aware of any such service on this side of the pond.
You may be doing this already, but when I started to get problems sending from Node-Red via gmail a few years ago I did this:
- Set up a new gmail account that would only be used for home automation.
- Created an App Password for the new gmail account, and used it in the Node-Red email node.
I haven't had any issues with emails failing or being blocked since.
Hope this helps.
According to the OP, emails are still being delivered, it's just the email to SMS process that's failing. So it is presumably unrelated to GMail's app password shenanigens.
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Thank you for the suggestion. I set up a new email address for home automation and went through the process of obtaining the special app password from Google. Unfortunately, this did not work. But I certainly appreciate your assistance.
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As an alternative you might want to try our alerting node here:
It offers push alerting for free.
