I started doing a lot of my automations in Node Red as I found it simpler to understand at first due to the UI and more intuitive flow based interaction. However, over time, I’ve found myself migrating to native HA automations in YAML as Node Red can make simple automations overly complex to build, and the more recent HA updates gave us a UI in configuration to build automations which I like.
I’m using Telegram for a lot of my notifications from HA, as I find it better than the push notifications on the mobile iOS app since I’m using Telegram for notifications from other systems.
I have a very basic telegram bot integration using Node Red where I am able to turn off my zwave water main control. However, creating that was a big of a nightmare and seemed overly complex. This is the result of one experiment to toggle water main, and be able to query for my kid’s room temp:
I don’t claim that is the most optimal way of doing it, but yeesh, it got complex for something relatively simple.
I want a world where I can interaction using Telegram to query the state of certains things in HA, and toggle certain actions. So my question is this:
Is it better to create a bot integration with telegram using Native HA telegram bot integration or should I be using the Node Red ChatBot? I’m sure there is not a one size fits all, but curious as to people’s experience.
As a bonus, I would love to get examples from your setups where you are using either approach so I can see a real world application.