Really must remember to restart for the automation to be reliable 
Cheeky request for some assistance. I wish to use an alternative sound to the default on my iPhone. Where would I place the Sound: local/media/sound/ door_bell.wav in your excellent Blueprint.? I have it up and running in my simple notification and indeed in additional actions on your blueprint But……. It is too far behind the rest of the actions to be helpful when it sounds.
I see others have asked this but possibly I missed an answer or it is not possible. Everything works beautifully … I have it working as it notifies my phone with text content. It saves the image, I added it to a card with camera/local-file to display that image so I know everything is OK.
However, I live on 42 acres and the cameras are on a different Home Assistant mounted at the gate > 1 mile away on a completely different ISP even.
I was hoping this would notify my phone WITH the image as it states clearly that it “sends a notification to your device with the picture”. It does not send any picture. At least not in my setup.
Am I missing something? Or does this merely send a URL to click that is some lovelace page to display? Because as I said, I may be in my Home or I might even be somewhere else. While I have Nabu Casa on both instances home and gate, but clicking a link to get into them is not going to work if I have to be at the gate. I might as well look at the car or open the camera app on my phne, or open the companion app on my phone to the gate system.
I was hoping for a solution that notified me WITH the camera image. Is this not possible? Right now my solution is when the notification comes, I walk over to a wall mounted pad that shows the last image.
Can’t I get that image inside a notification on Android?
If this is not possible then the description should be changed because it does not send it “with a picture” it sends a link to view the picture and this will not work in my case. Like I am in Italy and I want to see am image of who is at my gate in California.
I can only assume that one need to use a public available folder (i.e. www?) to store the image and build the notification with that public folder so that it appears in the notification.
I used single to keep it from spamming. This it’s main purpose isn’t meant to record snapshots, but to notify.
I am not sure, can you add custom sounds to notifications? I haven’t looked into that but if you can point me to some documentation, I can take a look.
It seems to work as intended for me, I am on Android. I also use a picture entity that updates on snapshot changes like you do as well. The notification picture is hosted in the www/ folder, otherwise pointing to any other directory will not display the image in the notification. I attached a screenshot of my phone for a test notification (see if you can spot my cat takin’ a nap!)
OK. But that is probably the key … you are hosting it in the /www directory and not /media directory.
That is an OK solution I guess but it does mean that anyone can see your cat napping I would say.
And unfortunately I cannot access the remote Home Assistant server except through Nabu Casa because that ISP changes the outbound IP address all the time.
So I am back at square one I would bet.
There is no secure way that I see to do this.
What is the issue with your setup? Yours should also be saving in the /www directory and sending with the notification. I think it has to be in that directory for it be attached to the notification. On that note, I have the archive snaps being saved into the /media directory and using that for my dashboard cards when needed. Only the latest snap is saved in the /www directory
And how do you access your /www directory from the “outside”? What is the URL? Can you use https://{nabu_casa_url}} or are you using http://my_ip_address?
I cannot use the second option as the ip_address changes at the wim of the ISP.
I will need to move the folder to save in the www/ folder and see, but I was trying to avoid that as it basically exposes that snapshot to the world.
As I said in my comment:
“I can only assume that one need to use a public available folder (i.e. www?) to store the image and build the notification with that public folder so that it appears in the notification.”
1 Like
that file url is:
snapshot_create_file_path:
/config/www/tmp/snapshot_{{ states[camera].object_id }}.jpg
So if your Camera’s Friendly Name is Computer Room, it’ll be
/www/tmp/snapshot_computer_room_camera.jpg
which is where the notification snapshot is saved if you have the box checked. The File Path option in the Blueprint is useful to save the image in the /media directory regardless of using the notification option.
The IP shouldn’t matter here, but the camera name.
As for the url to view that image in the browser:
https://<HA-URL>/local/tmp/snapshot_computer_room_camera.jpg
And YES I tried to do the notification image using /media file, but it wouldn’t have the image attached, which sounds like your issue now. So I believe the notification uses your Home Assistants webserver to access images, rather than sending the image with the notification.
That is it as I suspected. I need to change the snapshot directory to a public address in www/ (and not use /media).
I shall try again setting things up and see (sometimes it takes a day or so for someone to come to the gate!)
1 Like
Try running/triggering the automation manually to test it. Also, your property looks and sounds beautiful!
I can do that. I will test in a bit.
Here’s a perspective:
Home at the top, gate is way off all that property (it might as well be a different zip code)
1 Like
Heya, take a look at my edit on this BP, I think I figured out a way to notify multiple devices using a Notification Group. My wife won’t let me install HA on her phone to test it, so lemme know if it works!
1 Like
Since you have 2 HA instances, do you use the Remote Home Assistant custom add-on in HACS?
Yes I do. I am still trying to figure it all out. i have a wall mounted pad that is linked through Companion only to the gate HA.
Phones of course are normally linked to the home HA (at the winery).
And thus the issue … a phone at the winery gets a notification that someone is at the gate (works perfect but no image). Clicking it tries to go to the home lovelace page (which does not have the gate and even if it did, I cannot for the life of me get the image back).
So I am either trying to get the gate cameras to display in the winery Home Assstant (no bueno yet) or minimally have the image at the gate in the notification.
Ideally this is the flow:
- Car arrives at gate (triggers your blueprint)
- Image captured (stored locally on Home Assistant at the gate)
- Phones notified with image of the car (with the image of the car)
- … more to come as in we approve access and buzz the gate open …
Trouble is now #3 … I can get notification but no image.
So I need to likely change the location of the storage of the image in #3 to a place that anyone can access.
1 Like
the URL option can direct you to a certain dashboard at least, ex. /dashboard-security/camera
But it redirects what? If my Companion app is currently pointed to the winery, it points to a URL at the winery (and not the gate). Unless it can point to:
https://{my_nabu_casa_gate_link}/gate_security
And not be a local /gate_security because that would point to the current nabu casa link that could be the winery and not the gate.
ah thats right, try that url. After all, it’s still a url like /dashboard-security/camera and should work. be sure to keep the https:. If you can access it on any browser, you it should redirect to that url
That is what started all this. It doesn;t and yields an error because it is trying to load the link from the current companion app. Bt I will try again, lots of great info here to understand.
I will debug but I saw things like it was sending:
http://https://{nabu_casa_link}/gate_security/gate_security and other things.