History
A few weeks ago I wrote about
using IFTTT as a notification service for HomeSeer
. I also lamented my concerns with the Android version of the
IFTTT app as it seemed that notifications had not been implemented correctly, causing
some notifications to go undelivered. Fast forward to now and, while the app seems to
deliver notifications correctly about 90% of the time, I'm looking for something closer
to 100%. Fortunately for some, I can report that IFTTT does seem to work 100% of the time
on iOS, as far as I can tell. But I'm an Android guy, so let's examine Pushover as an
alternative.
Configuring Pushover
Getting things set up is pretty self explanatory. Start by downloading the app and creating
an account. Once loaded, the app will display your user key. Next head over to
Pushover.net and log in. Follow the instructions to
register an "Application". Call it whatever you like, the important thing is the API token
that gets generated on creation; you'll need this later. For now, though, the user key and
API Token will be all you need to send push messages. Note that there's some more
advanced configuration that can be done here -- user groups, etc -- but we'll stick to the
basics for now.
Configuring HomeSeer
Unlike IFTTT, Pushover unfortunately requires a POSTed message rather than a simple HTTP GET.
While I believe that HomeSeer's scripting language does support POST, it appears to URL-encode
the POSTed data. This complicates things as it causes Pushover's API to return 400 errors.
Admittedly, I didn't mess around with this much before reaching to my swiss-army-knife
alternative: PowerShell.
Calling PowerShell from HomeSeer is simple, at least in the Windows environment. Windows
has a bult-in version (powershell.exe, the one I'll be using) but you can also download
an updated version, pwsh.exe, which is also cross-platform. Aside from the executable location,
the command should be the same regardless of which version you choose.
In HomeSeer, start by adding a "THEN" action, then select "Run another Program or Process".
In the Application Path, assuming you want to use the built-in version of PowerShell enter:
Note that you'd replace this with the path to pwsh if you're using a newer version of PowerShell,
or if you're running in the Linux environment. Next, in the Parameters section, enter:
...making sure to enter the API token and User Token in the proper spots. Notice how here you're
actually creating a PowerShell object and then converting it to JSON rather than just entering JSON
directly. I find this solution to be safer and less prone to errors, and if you're attempting to debug
via the PowerShell command line, it'll give you feedback if you enter something incorrectly.
When it's all said and done, it should look like this:
Conclusion
Pushover provides a more Android-friendly alternative to IFTTT for Push Notifications from
HomeSeer, in addition to some other advantages. The full-featured API
provides a lot more customization options as well, allowing you to restrict certain messages to
a group of users, set message priorities, change sounds and icons, etc. These advantages may
also entice iOS users as well. Should I find any additional quirks with the app, I will
be sure to make further updates.