I hate to give up (yet again) on this whole Home Assistant thing. Over the past year I’ve had it working then not working, and sometimes doing things but usually just wasting time trying to do the simplest of things. Well this time I started with the basics - I want to get notifications from HA. No sense having a home automation setup when you don’t know what’s going on at home when you’re not there. I was encouraged by a thread called “push notifications now available!”. Mainly it was just a few hundred people saying that you had to start and stop the app and Home Assistant until it showed in your services as "a new notify service prefixed with notify.mobile_app_ " Apparently that isn’t my problem. I can go into “Developer tools”/ services and choose “notify.mobile_app_moto…” in the drop-down. I enter message: hello under service data and hit {Call Service}. Voila, I get a push notification. When I try to make an automation using Configuration - automation - (+) - action - call service - notify.mobile_app_moto… - service data - 1 message:hello and try to save I get “Message malformed: expected dict for dictionary value @ data[‘action’][0][’”
It’s probably a syntax thing - seems it’s ALWAYS a syntax thing. Funny (not funny?) thing is I can’t enter spaces in the message (service data field).
I have loaded HA under VirtualBox in Windows (a dozen times) and on a Raspberry Pi again since I know people will say “there’s no support for Windows”. Doesn’t make a difference. I am using the free trial of Nabu Casa since I gave up on DuckDNS having tried it and new installs of HA at least 5 times following the very simple instructions in several YouTube videos as well as written documentation.
Any help will be appreciated even if it’s to tell me to quit trying. I won’t even mind if you tell me I’m too stupid for this environment
First of all don’t give up The issue you are having is not being able to type spaces! Try copying and pasting message: hello into the service data box and see if that works. If it doesn’t work tell us the error message.
Not sure about the problem with typing spaces, is it only in that box you are having problems? Are you directly connected to computer running HA or are you using some form of remote access?
Great questions. I forgot to say that it is on both the Windows - VirtualBox setup AND the Raspberry Pi. I bought the Pi a year ago and had it setup through Python (if I recall correctly). Now I set it up with Windows since it was an option and I have an always on computer for Blue Iris. I used a YouTube video called “Home Assistant Beginner’s Guide, Installation…”. I used the image for Raspberry Pi 4 model B for the Pi and the virtual device VMDK file for VirtualBox. I have done each enough times now that I can do it from memory without the video. The Pi is actually much easier to do, but I forgot the USB stick for WiFi the first time. Have run into trouble on both trying to get DuckDNS to work, but I’m sure I had it on the Pi a year ago. I had a lot of the Pi options I wanted working then. Something changed (I think it lost power) and then it stopped working.
I access it either way (only running one at a time of course) from one of my 2 Windows computers on the same network or from the app on Android. I think I had Samba setup previously (last year) and used that from a computer.
I actually tried the cut and paste either directly into the automation integration or the Yaml option under it. When I paste message: “hello” into service data, I get Message malformed: Integration ‘’ not found. Of course I tried with or without quotes - single or double quotes too. Beginning to think maybe I should put it into Automations.Yaml but seems like every time I change something (especially in Configuration.Yaml) that looks right, I get locked out after restart (or more likely it doesn’t restart). There are multiple examples on the internet and all seem to show the Yaml input directly. Couldn’t find the syntax in the article about push integration though - guess it was too obvious until they started talking node-red and sending pictures, etc. It has been deprecated BTW.
I guess this is a good time to ask if there is a way to save everything and cut out part of the installation for a quicker reinstall. Maybe not have to flash the disk again in Pi since that takes the longest - of course the first boot takes “up to 20 minutes” and uses most of that.
Thanks for the encouragement. Guess if I have to set up the Pi again a few dozen more times it’s no big deal - no smoke, no problem. Maybe I’ll try Python virtual environment again, but would have to look for directions again. The “new way” seemed so much easier though.
Which browser are you using and have you tried using another one?
Browser/platform compatibility may be an issue. For example, there are parts of the Lovelace UI that are completely unusable for me with Firefox on Android (notably the Template Editor and the Lovelace UI editor in text mode). I have used the Chromium based version of Edge (unofficially called “Edgium”) on Windows and have not encountered the problem you described. I’ll have to try it again and see if it’s a new problem.
I am using Chrome. I can’t open Edge for some reason. It’s in my toolbar and acts like it’s opening but nothing comes up. It’s not in the background - I checked with task manager. Maybe this is part of the problem. Think I can open it on the other computer though, but have to move the mouse connection and HDMI to switch computers. I have Firefox, but if it doesn’t work for you it probably won’t for me either. Worth a try I guess. Thanks
On Android. Firefox on Android. In contrast, Firefox on Ubuntu works perfectly.
The fact you can’t open Edge on Windows may have no bearing on Home Assistant but, from the perspective of someone trying to debug this problem, it makes one wonder how much of a magnet you are to strange glitches.
Looking at your two images it seems to me as you have forgotten a space between the colon and hello.
In the developer tools you have a space between as you should but in the automation you seem to have forgotten it.
Edit:
I tried this with and without the space.
With space it worked, but without I get the error on image.
And regarding duckdns.
I spent hours trying to get that to work and it just would not work, whatever instructions I followed.
Then I found pinkywafer or something like it on YouTube and she had an instruction video which seemed like the others I tried a few months earlier but it just worked.
My advice is to follow her instructions on YouTube, it worked for me.
Thanks for the input. It wouldn’t let me put commas into the automation when I logged in with Chrome (weird) but did in Firefiox. Still didn’t work for me though. Strange how the service works in developer tools but can’t implement in automation. I’ll try Edge if I can get it working on this computer. I am on the VirtualBox installation since I just tried DuckDNS on the Pi and it is NOT restarting - surprise. I’ll try to find the video that worked for you. Seems like the biggest problem with Home Assistant is the multitude of environments that you can in stall it in and then the abundance of “help” available without specifying (in all cases) the contributing factors.
Sorry - I meant spaces. I tried message: “hello” with or without the quotes and of course with the colon. Tried single quotes too and with or without space since I can do spaces in Firefox.
Looks like I’ll be loading HA onto the Pi again. It’s been on “Connection lost: reconnecting” for about 20 minutes. I’ll wait til I break the VirtualBox. Maybe if I can find the other DuckDNS video…?
Two new developments - 1 bad, 1 potentially good. Trying to log in with Edge I just get the Home Assistant logo and “initializing” for at least 10 minutes before I abandon that. I found the video about DuckDNS (pinkywafer) and she says a few things different than JuanMTech and “the guys”. I remember Juan making a big deal last year about using quotes around domain name and id key but his video says not to now. Also port forward 8123 to 8123 not 443 to 8123. Going to try that - maybe brick my remaining install and try again with both environments
Can I make a suggestion; you don’t need remote access to send notifications if your mobile is on the same network. Take one step at a time, make sure you have a browser where you can type spaces, then get your notification sorted (hopefully that will resolve itself when you can include the spaces) then face the next challenge of remote access. Trying to fix several things at once will make it difficult to workout what changes are impacting what (and make it difficult for people trying to help you fix one problem).
Also take a snapshot (backup) when you have each stage working, that way toy can restore back to a point where notifications are working if you break things trying to get remote access working.
I’m being forced to reload because DuckDNS doesn’t work and I’m not going to pay NabuCasa 5 bucks a month for something that doesn’t help me do what I want it to. It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the reason DuckDNS no longer works. Pinkywafer’s method didn’t restart either. Now that system is bricked for now. I did the same to the Pi this morning trying to get DuckDNS to work. Every time I check configuration and it says okay - yet another thing that doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to.
Maybe next year they will have a more standard way to do things. That seems to be the worst part of all this is that there are a hundred ways to install or modify Home Assistant.
Thanks again for trying to help. Guess I’m not so much stupid as cursed.
Sad to hear it didn’t work for you.
I have also noticed that the check configuration does not actually check everything.
It has not been enough to crash it completely for me just so that my frontend did not work as intended.
Not sure if that is a bug or if it’s not supposed to check everything.
Keep in mind that the DNS thing can also be your router.
You can always skip duckdns and just enter your “external IP:8123” in the browser. That should open up your HA Interface if you open that port in the router.
Not sure what you mean here. All DuckDNS does is keep your DuckDNS subdomain tied to your WAN IP address. If you’ve set up the add-on properly, set up the SSL parts in the http: section in your config (and set your external URL to your DuckDNS subdomain), and forwarded whatever external port you want to 8123 internal, you should be able to access your instance remotely at https://your-domain.duckdns.org:PORT where PORT is the external port you forwarded.
I connected with my external ip a few hours ago, but it changes and probably not on a set schedule so it wouldn’t be reliable away from home. I have open port checker tool also and port 8123 is open. As far as HA crashing on restart, DuckDNS and the associated Configuration.Yaml modification is the only thing I do before restart. I know I have tried at least 4 different syntax variations on the yaml file as well as quotes or no quotes on the domain and token. If a syntax error can prevent a restart then that in itself should be a bug. At least Windows (and all it’s problems) has a safe mode to find errors on loading.
Have you used the official add-on called Check Home assistant configuration? It takes forever to install, so I abandoned it. Maybe it will help. I guess I’m still trying. Now I am copying the ISO VMI file in VirtualBox before restarting since I have certain things working and other than the 20 minute initial start, it will save me some work if I have to load it again. Haven’t messed with the Pi again since it’s too intricate and I don’t feel like messing with tiny parts (SD card)
First of all, thanks for trying to help. As stated in the first part of this thread, I can’t write automations under the configurations - automations heading in the UI. The service call for push to my Android is there to choose (see picture 2), but I can’t type what I want into the action (message) or I’m doing it wrong. When I just use developer tools, it sends a push so I know there’s a way. I even cut and pasted scripts I found in the forums directly into Automations.yaml but they give me syntax errors there before saving. That is problem one.
As far as DuckDNS, I understand what it does. I use No-ip DNS on my Blue Iris installation and it does basically the same thing although it has a separate updater client on the computer. There is an integration for No-IP that looks simple enough, but I now find that outside of the Blue Iris app, I am having a problem getting to my computer through No-Ip now. If you’d be so kind as to type out specifically the correct way to input the domain and token in the DuckDNS integration (including punctuation such as quotes), whether to use https://, etc and the same for the Configuration. yaml file (BTW, it has no separate http: entry since it has default_config:). I can literally find ten ways people are saying it will work and I have tried them all. Home Assistant doesn’t restart after any of them. There are also 3 (or more) different port forwarding rules that “should” work - 80 to 8123, 443 to 8123, 8123 to 8123, and I think 443 to 443. Of course they can’t all be correct.
Regarding the mobile app: I have Android and it looks like in the documentation it should have something to turn on push notifications. I could be wrong - it doesn’t if it should. I for sure won’t get notifications if I can’t write any. Developer tools only humiliates me more because now I know I SHOULD be able to do it.
The issue you are having is not being able to type spaces! Try copying and pasting 
