Zanzito is looking good, I’ve got the GPS working great and just started playing with the notifications and seconds before my demo mode connection ran out I got my first notification through.
I do like that I can publish a MQTT message to have it deliver a text message which means I can even bypass HASS and deliver text messages direct from my ESP8266 if HASS is down. That is pretty handy.
I’m back online and testing some more.
@MrMep I just had an idea about group messaging. For example some of the events in my home I only need to be notified and others I want my family to be notified about so instead of repeating the notify service for each recipient could Zanzito allow us to specify group topics to subscribe to and we’d then publish to that topic to allow multiple Zanzito clients to display the same notification whilst still retaining their personal notifications via their own MQTT topic?
That’s an idea I like very much: group notification.
Although, you can already do this: create a zanzito notifier in HA with a fake device name, then add a custom report of type Notification in each Zanzito device, subscribing to zanzito/-fake-device-name-/notification et voilà 
I’m having issues with alarm. Device is not reacting on message published to
zanzito/<device_id>/alarm/play
It reacts only on
zanzito/<device_id>/notification
is Alarm enabled in Preferences->Inbound Alarm?
Yes.
Override silent mode also activated.
zanzito/RedmiNote3/alarm 1
Strange, is the alarm message in the logs? Have you selected an alarm sound? Maybe your phone doesn’t have a default alarm sound, so you have to select one manually in the prefs.
I’ve set alarm sound.
I don’t see alarm message in logs. Message appears on broker when I send it via HASS.
I’ve tried to create a “Report” and message to this topic also do not appear in logs and no info in topic details.
But posting message to notification immediately appears in logs and on screen.
Are you using the notifier component or the mqtt.publish HA service?
Also, maybe you have set ACL permissions on the broker?
Can you see the alarm status message from zanzito on the broker?
We’ll find the problem, but at the moment I can’t see anything wrong with Zanzito: it looks like it doesn’t have access to that topic on the broker.
I’m using mqtt.publish. I’ve found problem. If post to zanzito/RedmiNote3/alarm/play topic includes any message it ignores by app. Publishing without payload triggers alarm.
I also noticed that app do not post ack after alarm has been stopped.
You can use the custom zanzito notification platform and the group notifier; https://home-assistant.io/components/notify.group/
That’s how I do it.
@MrMep another idea for you which would be particularly useful for wall mounted tablets as well as kids devices to allow them to interact with the home in a controlled manner.
As you have the ability to publish and subscribe to MQTT topics it would be good to have a ‘Home’ panel with customizable buttons that you can use to publish a topic allowing a trigger in HASS and also subscribe to the state for the button.
I’d be thinking that on my Galaxy Note phone a grid of 4 x 6 buttons would be very useable.
Food for thought…
Lots of ha and zanzito users have xiaomi phones…
still strange: it is supposed to take a payload and show it as a message on zanzito.
I’m not able to reproduce the problem, I’m sorry, but it seems zanzito isn’t allowed to read/write on the alarm topic: do you have acl permissions on the broker? Do you have another device to test it?
Thanks! It’s been a while I was thinking about switch Activities view from a list of elements to a grid of buttons. Good idea also to automatically subscribe to the same topic 
Generally speaking, I resist the idea to reproduce a small HA in Zanzito, that’s not its main purpose, of course. But I agree that buttons are more appropriate as interface elements.
I’m using cloudmqtt. User which is used to connect broker has read/write permissions on following topic
zanzito/#
Will try to install app on another phone.
Well, it works as expected on another device. Permissions not changed.
Could it be that device (Xiaomi RedmiNote3) can’t process alarm and custom notifications with message?
Question for wide audience who is using xiaomi devices with global FW. Have you tried to activate alarm with mqtt publish service? Is it work? Does your post include payload? What permissions you granted to app?
It’s strange… by any chance, can you notice Zanzito’s connection going to “Not connected” upon receiving an alarm notification?
No. Connection is stable. Ack sent on alarm stop.