Telegram being blocked

Its been 5min since I asked a stupid question… so here’s another…

does my instance of HA need to be open to the internet for this to work!
… Hanging my head in shame while I wait for the smart people to help

I hate that the instructions on the dock page does not list dependencies and requirements!

Im gonna eat crow… sort of…
No Telegram in BROADCAST mode does not require exposure… I stumbled across the component page… I was reading one of the OTHER 4 pages… which didn’t reference the page I found!

Most likely I just didnt see it!.. because FOUND IT

but It wasnt mentioned here:


or on the other three component pages… UGH…

But Im still getting this error
xxxxxxxxxxx = My Chat Id

Error sending message: Forbidden: bot can't initiate conversation with a user. Args: (xxxxxxxxxxx, 'This is a test'), kwargs: {'parse_mode': 'Markdown', 'disable_notification': False, 'disable_web_page_preview': None, 'reply_to_message_id': None, 'reply_markup': None, 'timeout': None
I know someone’s gomnna ask… so…

telegram_bot:
  - platform: broadcast
    api_key: eeeeeeeee
    allowed_chat_ids:
      - xxxxxx
notify:
  - name: telegram
    platform: telegram
    chat_id: xxxxxxxxx

And you have a chat going with your bot already?

No I havent… how do I do that?

You start a chat with your bot in Telegram…

How did you get a chat ID if you don’t have a chat with the bot??

If you think the documentation could be improved, then just do it!

Oh hey flamingm0e…

I know that’s what I thought too! (BTW I got it figured out)… for me it turned out hat you needed to go thru the web interface and use
telegram.me/<My_BotsName>>_bot
to have your conversation

You don’t need to go through the web.

You can invite your bot to a conversation or a group

Ya know Rick… as soon as you’d get it done… the tool will have shifted … and I simply dont know enough about the subject! That be just like relying on a year old youtube “How To”… it might be close… but just not quite.

In this case I discovered that there were 4 or 5 different “modes” polling, broadcast…etc But each was written up not referencing the other… so on a google search… you’d get one but not another… problematic for a person just fresh on the HA boat. But Im coming around

But I ought to quit bitching lol

See… a priori . information… you’d have to know how the tool worked to know that… or found it in a search… Its most likely in the documentation… just beyond where I stopped reading LOL

I’m getting along … Ive started on boarding more entities… learning a bit of templateing

It has nothing to do with home assistant though. It’s in the Telegram bot documentation…

Exactly! that’s where I found that gem…
Once HA had all it needed I needed to open the door on the Telegram side

But I’m still not sure how you got a chat ID without your bot being IN a chat…which is required to configure HA

Folled these instructions…

I get that.

What I’m trying to figure out is how you got a CHAT ID for your bot, when you didn’t have a CHAT going with the bot. Without the bot being in a chat, it doesn’t have a chat ID.