Telegram bot notifications and communication

fernandex00 · January 17, 2019, 8:43pm

I want to know if a can send a URL to mapas with a data template that contains the latitude and longitude off one of my device tracker, does telegram have option?

Domoticon · January 26, 2019, 9:32pm

Probably you used the broadcast config instead of polling or webhooks.

Check this component page for more info.

Domoticon · January 26, 2019, 9:36pm

Do you mean this?

taddeuz · January 27, 2019, 7:59am

@Domoticon
I am using polling. Is there anything which I have to add to the config?

Current config:

telegram_bot:
  - platform: polling
    api_key: <API_KEY>
    allowed_chat_ids:
     - <CHAT_ID>

taddeuz · January 27, 2019, 8:00am

I am also using duckdns.

Domoticon · January 27, 2019, 11:21am

@taddeuz

I only use HA Telegram broadcast. For Telegram interaction I use Node-Red (link), Your polling config looks good to me, as far as I can tell.

I do not have experience setting up interaction with HA, but I read the component docs, linked in my previous answer.

So, if you use polling and a Telegram answer message starts with

/

then you probably need an event triggering to, ehh, trigger an event…

Also, as far as the none Home Assistant part, you don’t need extra config to communicate with Telegram, no need for port forwarding, dynamic DNS config, etcetera… If sending a message works, then sending back commands should be working also.

I don’t know if sending a message without / will work, I don’t think so, but I’m not sure about that…

Can anyone, with more experience, please jump in?

taddeuz · January 27, 2019, 12:01pm

Thank you for your help!

Its still not working. I am using the exact code like in the initial post from @Kallb123. I double checked my code and so far, I didn’t make a mistake.

I assume that there is something which blocks the message from telegram because of the error “Incoming message is not allowed”. So, telegram sends the message back to my HA and then it got lost…

2019-01-27 12:45:34 ERROR (dispatcher) [homeassistant.components.telegram_bot] Incoming message is not allowed ({‘id’: ‘’, ‘chat_instance’: ‘<CHAT_ID>’, ‘message’: {‘message_id’: 335, ‘date’: 1547658445, ‘chat’: {‘id’: , ‘type’: ‘group’, ‘title’: ‘’, ‘all_members_are_administrators’: True}, ‘text’: ‘’, ‘entities’: [], ‘caption_entities’: [], ‘photo’: [], ‘new_chat_members’: [], ‘new_chat_photo’: [], ‘delete_chat_photo’: False, ‘group_chat_created’: False, ‘supergroup_chat_created’: False, ‘channel_chat_created’: False, ‘from’: {‘id’: , ‘first_name’: ‘’, ‘is_bot’: True, ‘username’: ‘’}}, ‘data’: ‘/removekeyboard’, ‘from’: {‘id’: , ‘first_name’: ‘<FIRST_NAME>’, ‘is_bot’: False, ‘language_code’: ‘de’}})

taddeuz · January 27, 2019, 12:15pm

I found the following information: https://www.home-assistant.io/components/telegram_bot.webhooks/

“To get your chat_id and api_key follow the instructions here. As well as authorizing the chat, if you have added your bot to a group you will also need to authorize any user that will be interacting with the webhook. When an unauthorized user tries to interact with the webhook Home Assistant will raise an error (“Incoming message is not allowed”), you can easily obtain the users id by looking in the “from” section of this error message.”

But I dont know what to do with this information…

taddeuz · January 31, 2019, 8:15am

No one an idea how to solve the problem?

azrael783 · February 6, 2019, 9:17pm

@syssi Would you share your code? I’m interessted

azrael783 · February 6, 2019, 9:18pm

@taddeuz Did you send your bot a message first? Cause you have to get in contact with him the first time. Bots are not allowed to send message to users at first.

taddeuz · February 6, 2019, 9:31pm

@azrael783 Yes, I send a message to the bot.

Klagio · February 25, 2019, 3:50pm

Hi, I receive successfully messages to my Telegram android app with notification from HASS.

But I receive message only from one user (I called it HASS). Since I setup many notifications I receive 2-300 messages a day making it a bit less useful.

I wish to establish more users and receive messages from different users like HASS-error-messages, HASS-sensor-values, HASS-important-alarms, and so on all of course from the same Home Assistant server.

Is this possible?

apop · February 25, 2019, 4:02pm

I achieved this by creating multiple group chats. I’m still only using a single Telegram bot but one bot can join many different groups. Since a group does require more than two participants in order to be created, I just add my bot and IDBot to the group initially. Once I get the chat id, I remove IDBot from the group. So, i currently have one regular chat with my bot for my main notification channel, and one group called Hass-system that I use for lower-priority system status notifications. But you could create as many as you want in the same fashion.

Klagio · February 25, 2019, 4:08pm

Great thanks.
Still trying to understand how to make new groups.
I go in my Telegram android app, click on + then New group… then, if i put my name (which in settings is @ xxxxx) xxxxx its not there…?

Edit got it, when you create a group the creator is part of the group by default.

I am curious how many groups you created and which type of messages for each group you use.

apop · February 25, 2019, 6:13pm

I really only have one group right now. My main chat with my bot is for my main notifications that I want to see. Right now, I get notifications when our mode changes to Home or Away. I also get an actionable notification when my alarm clock goes off in the morning, tied to a lighting routine on my bedside lamp.

My group, Hass-system, is for lower priority notifications. I have the android app configured to put notifications from that group at a low priority. Right now I get notifications for when my weekly snapshot runs and backs up to Google Drive, and when files get added to a folder I’m monitoring, as well as when Home Assistant updates are available.

That’s all I have for now, but I still have more in mind. For example, I’m also going to have a group that includes my wife, so that the bot can remind us of daily/weekly tasks that either of us can do (feeding the dogs, getting the mail, putting the trash out). That way, whoever completes the task can use the inline keyboard to indicate this so that if my wife wakes up after me, she can already know if the dogs have been fed. Or when I get home from work, I can already know whether she’s brought in the mail or not.

Klagio · February 26, 2019, 11:09am

I am having a hard time making this work
So this is what I did

I do have my bot called @mybot

I created a group HOME ALERT MESSAGES consisting of

MYBOT
HOME ALERT MESSAGES
its CHAT_ID of this group is 12345

When I do the below command, the text SAMPLE TEXT goes correctly to the group HOME ALERT MESSAGES (XXX:YYY is the api of MYBOT)

curl -X POST "https://api.telegram.org/botXXXXX:YYYYY/sendMessage" -d "chat_id=-12345&amp;text=SAMPLE TEXT"

But when I do this from Home assistant

notify:
  - name: alerts_telegram
    platform: telegram
    chat_id: 12345

with an automation

action:
  - service: notify.alerts_telegram
    data_template:
      message: 'TEST MESSAGE'

the message does not go to the group HOME ALERT MESSAGES, but only to MYBOT

What am I missing here??

EDIT I found two problems in my installation
1 groups starts with minus: -1234567
2 the service notify.xxxxx sends the message only to my bot, in order to send messages to my groups I need to use

  - service: telegram_bot.send_message
    data_template:
      message: 'John is home'
      target: '-group_chat_id'   # the group chat id (do not forget the minus)

apop · February 26, 2019, 1:23pm

EDIT: Nvm, looks like you got it while I was replying.

Did you also add this piece to your configuration.yaml file?

telegram_bot:
  - platform: polling
    api_key: YOUR_API_KEY
    allowed_chat_ids:
      - CHAT_ID_1
      - CHAT_ID_2
      - CHAT_ID_3

The only other thing I see is that for the chat_id, it has a dash in front of it in the cURL example, but not in your configuration.yaml file. I know 12345 is not your actual chat id, but you may want to check and confirm what you have in configuration.yaml completely matches your Telegram chat_id. I don’t have my config in front of me, but I’m pretty sure users have a positive number for their chat_id and groups always have a negative number.

Klagio · February 26, 2019, 1:25pm

Yes I had 3 problems (tweo are explained in the previous post), I also had to add the group id (with a minus in telegram_bot configuration

telegram_bot:
  - platform: polling
    api_key: !secret telegram_bot_api
    allowed_chat_ids:
      - -12345  # this is a group
      - 23456 # thjis is a user

Klagio · February 26, 2019, 1:27pm

No, I did that but was not working, I had to do the

- service: telegram_bot.send_message  # it works, 


- service: notify.xxxxx  # NOT working