[quote=“FlyBoyBob, post:20, topic:168044”]I’m a native New Yawker as well, of the Long gIsland variety. Spent many years in Old Blighty (Cambridge, UK) however recently and miss some of the handy phraseology = bollocks, for instance, which I hope not to have to apply in this thread…
cheers, bob[/quote]
Funny, small world, grew up in North Massapequa and now I have one foot on LI and the other upstate, hence the need for vera, … I love the color of the Brit expressions, they can say mundane stuff and it sounds cool, also like the way they understate/overstate stuff, if your arm gets hacked off you’re having “a bit of trouble” but if you’re stuck in traffic it’s “a bloody mess”, all we have to offer is dis,dat,deese,dem,and dose, lol
Got battery low notification emails working - reliably, easily (once it worked!), and without guru help (sadly)
To answer my own questions, using a Scene and some noddy Luup code:
I read the BatteryLevel of each battery device, if it is below a defined value I fill in a string with the name of the device.
After reading all battery devices - if the name string is empty I exit.
Otherwise I use the SMTP function to send myself an email, which is surprisingly instantaneous compared to notifications that go through the MCV servers.
I set a timer to execute the code once a day at 6am.
Simple.
I can post actual code if anyone is interested.
Since I got 2 requests for “the code” and specifically “the email part” I will reply in two sections with appropriate Subjects for future searches.
Detecting a low battery level in any number of devices:
local test_for_below = 30
local room = ""
local level_to_report = ""
local serviceId = "urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:HaDevice1"
local variableId = "BatteryLevel"
local warning = "The battery in the "
local level
-- duplicate these lines for each device to test
level = luup.variable_get(serviceId, variableId, 44) or "0"
level = tonumber(level)
if (level < test_for_below) then
room = "Garage 3-in-1"
level_to_report = level
end
-- end of duplicated lines
if (room=="") then return false end
local message_out = warning..room.." is now at "..level_to_report.."%"
The code gets a battery level from 3-in-1, temp/humidity sensor, and Shlage deadbolt devices for me, you might need to change serviceId for other devices but I doubt it.
For each device - change the device number, 44 in this example, and the descriptive text for the email. Check in the Dashboard to be sure that device shows a battery level on the Settings tab.
Change “test_for_below” to the % battery level you want to trigger when it goes below.
Put this code in a new Scene and set a timer to run it, mine is set for every day at 6am.
Copy the “to duplicate” lines for as many devices as you want to check, changing the device ID and text for each.
If you don’t want to do an email notification (see my next post) you can change the room= “xxx” part to “return true” and put “return false” as the last line of the code, then assign commands to the Scene.
That’s all the code you need to scan all of your battery devices and get a Low Battery in any device to execute some command(s), or set up to send an email.
The email-sending part of the Low Battery Notification code:
if (room=="") then return false end
local send_to = "email address to receive notification"
local sender = "any valid email domain"
local subject_out = "Battery Low Notification"
local smtp = require("socket.smtp")
local mesgt = {
headers = {
to = send_to,
from = sender,
subject = subject_out},
body = message_out}
local result = smtp.send {
from = sender,
rcpt = {send_to},
source = smtp.message(mesgt),
server = "smtp.xxx.com",
port = "587",
user = "xxx",
password = "xxx"}
(code copied and modified from several forum postings, credit due where appropriate)
Specific to my implementation:
If no battery was low - “room” is still blank, therefore quit for the day
The body of the email is message_out, which is the concatenation of the generic warning and the device that caused it.
Generic to sending emails:
Fill in “send_to” with your email address that will receive the notification.
“sender” with anything, and although “god@heaven.above” works it gets tossed into Spam :o
“server” with any email account that allows you to use their smtp server, I have my own domains but I understand yahoo and hotmail are fairly loose with their servers(?). gmail is too secure for the current socket.smtp AFAIK.
smtp port = 587 or 25, get that info from your provider.
Your valid user name and password with your email provider.
Things to watch for:
Best to load the generic sending-emails part into a new Scene by itself, substituting message_out with “OMG WTF it WORKS!”, for instance, and tweak the hard parts (your email account parameters) until it works. Just Run Scene and hold your breath…
My domain server checks the sender address against the account address for security, so don’t get too creative with Reply addresses too quickly.
Maybe somebody could test and post which “free” servers have loose enough security to work. Set up an email account with them rather than banging your head against a gmail wall. Just a suggestion…
Hope that helps, and it would help a LOT if others could post “free” servers that they got it to work with,
bob
[quote=“FlyBoyBob, post:28, topic:168044”][quote=“michaelk, post:27, topic:168044”]thanks for the code.
…off to cut and paste…[/quote]
I will accept at least the “thanks” once I’ve seen some posts about “Hey it works!!” and what servers and settings were used.
In the meantime - thanks for trying it and hope it works for ya ;D
Post results asap please,
(hopefully not “flu” boy) bob ;)[/quote]
So this is cool. But just for clarity, this is going to send your username/password to the SMTP server in the clear, right? Vera hasn’t the capability to do ESMTP, so you really have no choice, right?
It will be sent from your Vera, through your router, and through your provider’s servers just like your PC would. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) was originally designed to be interactive text from a dumb terminal, modern programs just emulate that. Someone could “sniff” it if they could tap into your wires yes, I know I could, but I could do that with many programs.
I prefer to let the Vera post the email directly than through the MCV servers, I think they would be a more likely target than my little old farmhouse in south central PA. (Oh no! I’ve posted my location!! I’m bound to be hacked now!!!) :-X
I’ve tried a couple of dozen combinations of email variables, etc., and have had no luck. Maybe it won’t work with a mobileme mail account. Maybe I simply don’t know what I"m doing. I’ll leave it for those of you who don’t require any luck to figure this out.
Sorry I don’t have a success story to post, but thanks for sharing your code.
edit: I went back to my ADD and tried some of the variations I tried on this, and low and behold, it worked for the first time. So now I’m going back to try your BLN once more…
local myEmail = "your valid email (they check)"
local message_out = "OMG WTF it works!!"
local send_to = myEmail
local sender = myEmail
local subject_out = "Battery Low Notification"
local smtp = require("socket.smtp")
local mesgt = {
headers = {
to = send_to,
from = sender,
subject = subject_out},
body = message_out}
local result = smtp.send {
from = sender,
rcpt = {send_to},
source = smtp.message(mesgt),
server = "smtp2go.com",
port = "2525",
user = myEmail,
password = "verasmtp"}
It uses a “free” SMTP server, “free” as in 10 emails/day limit but how many batteries go dead in one day at your house? There are also minimal fee higher plans.
Go to http://www.smtp2go.com/ to create a free account, use “verasmtp” as the password or change it in the code above. Your normal email address will be your user name which you also enter into the top line above.
Copy and paste the above code into a new scene, enter your email address after having signed up to smtp2go.com, save Luup code, save changes, click “Run Scene”, and it WILL WORK ;D
Change things to suit, it’s always easier to break code than make code…
[quote=“CMRancho, post:33, topic:168044”]I’ve tried a couple of dozen combinations of email variables, etc., and have had no luck. Maybe it won’t work with a mobileme mail account. Maybe I simply don’t know what I"m doing. I’ll leave it for those of you who don’t require any luck to figure this out.
Sorry I don’t have a success story to post, but thanks for sharing your code.[/quote]
smtp.mac.com appears to be running ESMTP, and is probably blocking what it perceives as relaying from an untrusted host…your Vera. There’s likely nothing you can do about this. Bob’s suggestion of using an intermediate account somewhere where things aren’t buttoned down as well is your best bet. It also means you’re no longer sending your Mobileme username and password around in the clear–just the one for the relayer. Mobileme may even have plaintext authentication blocked, and that’s all you can do from Vera.
I administer our own mail servers at home, and they’re all running ESMTP–it’s really the only way you can prevent spammers from using your hosts (and your bandwidth) for polluting the universe. We’re locked down tight enough that I had specifically to enable relaying from machines in the house, since the mail servers are in the DMZ and on a different subnet.
ESMTP can be annoying, but they’re doing it for good reason.
I added a tiny bit of code to the battery-low detection code in my previous post (modified) to get a bit more information in the notification = the actual level in the device that triggered the notification in the first place.
Here’s what it looks like now:
myVera@mi-server.net to me
The battery in the Garage 3-in-1 is now at 29%
Feel free to add an “OMG!” to personalise the message for yourself. Or a “Dear xxx” if you are a true geek (like me) :
My email is working beautifully. I have mine set up to check 5 different battery powered units. The test run ignored the first 4 units (which it should because they are
all over the 35% threshold that I set), but the email came back saying “The battery in the closet motion is now at 0%” This particular motion is at 91% in reality.
Any idea why this is happening? Does it have to do with the test level?
[quote=“ballroller, post:38, topic:168044”]… the email came back saying “The battery in the closet motion is now at 0%” This particular motion is at 91% in reality.
Any idea why this is happening? Does it have to do with the test level?[/quote]
The value of “0” is the diagnostic “or 0” in the line:
level = luup.variable_get(serviceId,variableId,44) or "0"
where if variable_get can’t find the variable the code at least won’t crash.
Also what it tells me is that you are probably using the deviceID for the Motion Sensor, rather than the “3-in-1”. If you look in your Dashboard you will see that each 3-in-1 (I am assuming you are using HSM100s?) shows up as 4 devices = Light, Temperature, Motion, and 3-in-1. Only the 3-in-1 deviceID contains the BatteryLevel variable. Each of the other 3 devices will return a “0”, as you have seen.
I would also recommend temporarily changing low_test to a value just above levels you are seeing on your Dashboard for each sensor. See that you get an email with the correct value, keeping in mind the code is not fancy and will only report the last detected low value.
