I’ve made my own smart doorbell that consists of the old school doorbell (acting as a contact sensor) and a separate Tapo camera. I’ve got an automation that sends me a notification if someone presses the doorbell:
alias: Doorbell notification
description: ""
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id:
- binary_sensor.doorbell_button
to: "on"
condition: []
action:
- service: notify.ios
data:
title: Ding Dong 🔔
message: "[{{ now().strftime('%H:%M') }}] Er staat iemand voor de deur!"
- service: camera.snapshot
data:
filename: >-
/config/www/images/front_door/snapshot_latest.jpg
enabled: true
target:
entity_id: camera.front_door_sd_stream
- service: notify.ios
data:
title: Door snapshot 📸
message: "[{{ now().strftime('%H:%M') }}] Er staat iemand voor de deur!"
data:
image: /local/images/front_door/snapshot_latest.jpg
enabled: true
Note: I’ve separated the notification in two separate messages due to the ~5s delay in the notification that includes the snapshot. If someone has suggestions to improve this, I’m all ears!
Yesterday I was testing the automation and even though the snapshot_latest.jpg file is updated every time, it keeps on sending an older (cached?) image:
It looks like it is sending a cached image, instead of the recently modified snapshot_latest.jpg file.
It is also not a timing issue; triggering the automation a few minutes later still sends the same image:
If it would be a timing issue, you would expect in the above screenshot to have the snapshot_latest.jpg with timestamp of 10:12 that we created earlier.
Does anyone know how to make Home Assistant pick the latest jpg-file from the www folder?
I had the same issue, added 100ms delay to the notification and the problem was solved.
I use “notify.notify”
for some reason Android didn’t have this issue.
another solution would be to make the name of the image unique, use a variable for timestamp or something and add it to the filename
Thanks for the suggestions!
What is before your delay in your automation? And how do you specify a target for the notify.notify service? I’ll give it a try
I might do this as a plan B, but it will also require me to clean up the www folder once in a while, which I’d like to prevent. But apart from that, I assume my approach should work so I’d like to figure out why it doesn’t!
I send also some other notifications as well, and Turn on the lights.
I do not specify devices using notify.notify. Just everyone who has installed the app gets a message.
which in my case is ok. Maybe other scenarios are different. You could still use notify.ios.
but I just want to mention there is a difference in the script.
I’ve marked @bkbartk 's reply as the answer. The trick was to use the external URL (https:///local/…) in combination with the timestamp. Thanks!
For people wanting to do more research on this topic: I think it could also be related to the fact that I use Cloudflared to connect to my home-assistant instance. Maybe Cloudflare caches the image, instead of Home Assistant?
This just saved me hours of frustration, thank you! I recently moved from DuckDNS to a Cloudlfare tunnel, and couldn’t figure out why I was getting outdated, cached images in my doorbell notifications. Using the external URL and unique timestamp was the solution.
I know I’m late to the party, but I wanted to share my solution. First of all, thanks for pointing me in the right direction, you guys made me realise my issue was caching in Cloudflare. If you go into your Cloudflare Dashboard, and then Rules and Cache Rules, you can create a rule that will solve your caching problem. I choose “Cache Default File Extensions” and selected jpg and jpeg as file extensions and “Bypass cache” as cache eligibility. It immediately solved my issues, without having to create a new file everytime my automation triggers.
