So I’ve been thinking a lot about notifications recently. I have a ton of automations and notifications embed within all of them… but I’m starting to wonder if calling an automation dedicated to notification is a better approach. Or if there’s an even different approach that I’m not even thinking about because I’m nowhere near an expert with home assistant…
What do others do to simplify notifications?
Call a script, not an automation. You don’t need to trigger it.
I looked at doing it this way but the number of variables I would have to pass with the script call was the same as just putting the notification options in the automation. So why bother with the added complexity?
There’s a custom integration, Supernotify, that attempts to make it easier to send notifications down multiple notifier channels based on defined scenarios.
I’ve only played around with it a little, so I can’t give a full critique, but it might be something to look into before you start building out a bunch of scripts.
I took a step back and while ago and redid my notification setup.
First, I categorized the different type of notifications and defined what the notification strategy should be. I ended up with 4 categories
Emergency (smoke / co / propane detectors) - actions - all light on, emergency siren sound, announce on speakers ,emergency alerts to iPhones.
High (power failures, hvac failures, too cold, leaks) - actions - alert siren sound, announce on speakers, emergency alerts to iPhones.
Medium (devices off line, ping failures, …) - telegram message
Low (low batteries, filter replacements, …) - display in dashboard home page.
Summary - emergency = get out of bed and perhaps evacuate; high = wake me up it’s something that needs dealing with but I’m not evacuating; medium = text my phone, but don’t wake me up; low = next time I look at the dashboard is fine.
With that in place then it was just a matter of implementing.