VeraMate Push Notifications (Version >= 6.1)

Apps & Remote Access Unmaintained
#1

[size=14pt]VeraMate Alerts - BETA support for Push Notifications[/size]

Version 6.1 now supports push notifications. I would like to stress this is in BETA mode, and I’ll be watching it
carefully over the coming days/weeks. Please mention any problems in this thread, and we’ll try and work through
any wrinkles.

Known Problems
[ul][li]If you have VeraMate open when an alert comes in, you may receive multiple popups.[/li][/ul]

I have written up some information on how to install this on the FAQ which is a good place to start.
[url=http://veramate.com/site/veramatefaq]http://veramate.com/site/veramatefaq[/url]

I’ll also place some of the information here:

Setting up VeraMate Alerts

There are 4 steps required to setup VeraMate Alerts. You will need to do this for each vera you wish to have alerts from.

[ol][li]Install the VeraMate Plugin on your vera. [url=http://apps.mios.com/plugin.php?id=6826]MiOS Apps
[li]On the VeraMate Plugin, specify the username you will wish to receive alerts - this can be comma delimited, and use “guest” if logged in as guest.[/li]
[li]Open VeraMate, and under settings/alerts, enable push notifications.[/li]
[li]Change your devices/scenes on Vera to notify user. How? Both ways require you to modify the configuration on your Vera box itself:
[list]
[li]VeraMate is able to work with the plugin VeraAlerts. This is the simplest way - simply specify a notification by using the notification tab in the Vera web UI.[/li]
[li]Alternatively you are able to add some “LUUP” code to any device or scene. This enables greater flexibility as you are also able to specify which device the notification belongs to.[/li]
[/list]
[/li][/ol]

VeraAlerts Setup

[ol][li]Install VeraAlerts. [url=http://apps.mios.com/plugin.php?id=3008]MiOS Apps
[li]In your Vera web UI, in the VeraAlerts settings, switch to the Profiles tab.[/li]
[li]Select “Plugin-Forwarding” from the drop down[/li]
[li]In the fields, add the following:
[tt]
ForwardedPluginDeviceID : [The device ID of your VeraMate Plugin (this can be found in the settings screen of the plugin]
ServiceID : urn:veramate-com:serviceId:VeraMatePN
Action : SendAlert
DefaultArgs : Msg=“{Message}”
[/tt]
[/li]
[li]In the settings tab, select this profile for your default recipients[/li][/ol]

You may now enable notifications through the web UI for any device you wish to be notified on if you haven’t done already.

LUUP code

For more advanced users, you may use the following LUUP code to send a message to VeraMate.

[tt]luup.call_action(“urn:veramate-com:serviceId:VeraMatePN”, “SendAlert”,
{Msg = “My Message”}, deviceid)[/tt]
where deviceID is the device ID of the VeraMate Plugin.

Optionally, you may also specify the device ID of the device being alerted on, which will then appear in VeraMate showing the correct icon (which will be the current icon at the moment, not what it was). Please append “AlertedDeviceId” to your payload, such as
[tt]luup.call_action(“urn:veramate-com:serviceId:VeraMatePN”, “SendAlert”,
{Msg = “Front Door Opened”, AlertedDeviceId = “40”}, deviceid)[/tt]

More details of this will be forthcoming. Support will hopefully also be enabled in the future to specify different preselected sounds (Apple does not easily allow customization of which sounds to play per APP).

#2

Feature Suggestion: Different priority and different sounds.

I currently use another third party push notification which works great and it’s free. I have it setup to play different sounds for different functions such as doors, arm, disarm, alarms, and etc… It also has priority levels. Lowest priority doesn’t play a sound, normal plays sound, and elevated plays sound and turns message red. If your app supported these features I could eliminate the other app all together.

#3

There is actually some code there to use different sounds, but I couldn’t get this working for the 6.1 release. I’ll work on this again once some of the other priorities are out of the way. Good idea for priority levels though - I’ll think about how and try and work this in.

#4

Does the push notification work with iOS 8.02? I am using the luup code method with my vera lite UI7 and it does not seem to work.

#5

It does, but it looks like the authorization request has changed, meaning VeraMate doesn’t get you to confirm this, so you’ll need to make sure this is turned on before you can use it (under apple settings/notifications).

#6

In looking under settings/notifications, I find that the VeraMate app is not listed. Not sure why. So, I’m unable to turn on notifications on my iPhone.

Something else I noticed, in the VeraMate app, when I enable ‘Alerts’, it doesn’t keep it enabled. I can close the settings screen, then go right back in and the Alerts are ‘disabled’.

#7

[quote=“rsmed1, post:6, topic:181792”]In looking under settings/notifications, I find that the VeraMate app is not listed. Not sure why. So, I’m unable to turn on notifications on my iPhone.

Something else I noticed, in the VeraMate app, when I enable ‘Alerts’, it doesn’t keep it enabled. I can close the settings screen, then go right back in and the Alerts are ‘disabled’.[/quote]

I’m looking into why VeraMate is not giving feedback that it doesn’t work, but will get that fixed for the next version.

Are you certain VeraMate isn’t appearing in the setting/notifications screen? Even under the “do not include” section down the bottom? I can’t replicate it not appearing here after a new install.

There are definitely some “quirks” with iOS8 though - it looks like in the iOS settings you have to disable notifications (if you are able to see it), and then reenable, and it’ll start working. There have been changes in iOS8 that I’ll look to have VeraMate have better support for in the next release.

#8

I am sure it does not show up on the iPhone in settings/notifications. Not even near the bottom of the “do not include” apps.

I rebooted my iPhone to see if it would show up, no luck. I uninstalled then reinstalled VeraMate…still does not show up in “Notifications” on my iPhone 5s with iOS 8.0.2.

#9

One other tidbit I noticed…besides not having the VeraMate app showing up in the ‘Notifications’ of my iPhone…when I go to ‘Alerts - Enable alerts for this user’ in the app and turn it ‘on’…once I get out of the settings menus, the app immediately crashes/closes. It happens every time I try to enable the alerts on the app.

#10

I have the same problem on my iPhone 5 with IOS 8.02: Veramate does not show in the notification list of applications and the alert switch in Veramate ‘does not stick’: everytime I return to the screen the switch is in the off position.

#11

Turns out this is a known problem for iOS8. I have the next version queued with Apple with a workaround, so please bare with us. There’s a chance you may need to disable, and then reenable notifications in Apple settings after starting the next version, but it will work with the upgrade.

#12

Thanks for the update. I am really enjoying this app!

#13

I’ve installed the app on my iphone (ios 8.1.1) and can’t get any notifications.

Have configured VeraAlerts (v6.21) hopefully correctly, created a profile “plugin-forwarding” and named it VeraMate8, installed VeraMate plugin (VeraMate Alerts Plugin v1.0) - I can set the username correctly and when I test send it, message “I love veramate !” looks like it’s been sent, but nothing appears on the phone.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled the app, enabled and disabled the notifications both in veramate and iphone settings… I have a couple of questions

I originally downloaded the free version of veramate8 and the did the in-app purchase, is this the same as the premium app? Or are there differences?

Are there any logs I can check on the Vera to see if the messages are being sent?

Any help appreciated.

Just to add to this, I’m running Vera 3 - UI7 - 1.7.439
IOS Version VeraMate 8.3.1.2 (IAP:Premium)

#14

The “I Love VeraMate” should be retrieved if you have entered the username the same as the account you’ve logged into the app, as well as made sure the “enable alerts” on the alert screen in the app is enabled.

If that’s not the case, either the username is different, or perhaps it hasn’t registered with the VeraMate servers yet. If you ping me your username, I can check that.

And lastly, it could be that notifications aren’t enabled for the app. In apples settings, you might want to check that.

The Free/Premium editions are identical, the IAP just removes any limits to make it identical the Premium.

#15

Hi,

I installed VeraMate now trying to get a notification to my phone using luup:

luup.call_action(“urn:veramate-com:serviceId:VeraMatePN”, “SendAlert”, {Msg = “Test Test”}, 29)

This is not working?!?

when I go to settings and hit the test button I do get a alert on my phone “I Love Vera”. Even setting up plugin forwarding with vera alerts work. But why not luup?

Thanx.

UPDATE:
Got it working with:

luup.call_action(“urn:veramate-com:serviceId:VeraMatePN”, “SendAlert”, {Msg=“NoSpace”}, 29)

So no spaces in this message part seems to work?!? Also the Msg text has a limit on the amount of characters…

#16

@Bertin

I can confirm you shouldn’t need to remove the spaces in the Msg. It is just a string, so I can’t think of any bug that would cause it to consider spaces in there. In fact as you’ve noticed, “I Love Vera” uses the exact same mechanism.

I can only think you perhaps have the free edition of VeraMate, which limits the number of messages you can receive a day? Otherwise, if you PM me your username, I’ll check the push notification server to see if there is anything untowards in the logs.

#17

Does this app work in Vera UI5? I was reading the FAQ and it does not match what is available in the Vera app:

VeraAlerts Setup
1.Install VeraAlerts. MiOS Apps
2.In your Vera web UI, in the VeraAlerts settings, switch to the Profiles tab.

I don’t see a Profiles tab. I’ve tried to send test messages, but it doesn’t work. Can you please point me to instructions on installing for UI5?

#18

@Kmitchel - I highly doubt this would have only been made for UI5. Most people are still running it and the author of VeraMate considers UI7 to be beta and has recommended against upgrading to it (I can confirm though that it works really well with a VeraEdge & UI7).

All you really have to do is set the username you used to login to Vera with your VeraMate app. You also have to enable alerts within VeraMate.

I don’t see a profiles tab either and it is working just fine for me.

#19

@Airedale, I understand that it wasn’t ONLY written for one UI, I’m asking if it works in UI5.

I’m on UI5, I don’t see the Profiles tab and I’m simply asking how to get this app to work.

I set the user name to my Vera login as well as my VeraMate app and I am not getting the alert.

If anyone has this working in UI5 and can help, I would appreciate it!

#20

The “Profiles” tab is in the Vera Alerts Plugin.

VeraMate has it’s own Push Notification Plugin.
This can be invoked from:

  1. LUA Code
  2. The advanced Tab of a Scene.

If you want the EXTRA capability to link a VeraMate Notification to a Vera User, and Use the standard Vera Notification Tab on devices then you
also need to install the Vera Alerts Plugin.
There you can create a profile as described earlier that will forward standard Vera Notifications to the VeraMate plugin for delivery to your mobile device.
But as I said, it’s optional. Without it you can create a scene to send a notification.