Update notifications (Core, OS, Addons, HACS, etc)

[robertalexa (Robert A)]

Hi Mike @CentralCommand

Just a tiny contribution, just in case you want to compile a library of “changelog urls” in your original post, so that users can quickly copy and paste what they need.

Here is my collection based on my addons.

update.appdaemon_update: https://github.com/hassio-addons/addon-appdaemon/releases
update.home_assistant_google_drive_backup_update: https://github.com/sabeechen/hassio-google-drive-backup/releases
update.influxdb_update: https://github.com/hassio-addons/addon-influxdb/releases
update.log_viewer_update: https://github.com/hassio-addons/addon-log-viewer/releases
update.mariadb_update: https://github.com/home-assistant/addons/blob/4ea140e5a707ac7d9abe9b5e7a78c4ecb66ac9ae/mariadb/CHANGELOG.md
update.mosquitto_broker_update: https://github.com/home-assistant/addons/blob/4ea140e5a707ac7d9abe9b5e7a78c4ecb66ac9ae/mosquitto/CHANGELOG.md
update.node_red_update: https://github.com/hassio-addons/addon-node-red/releases
update.ring_mqtt_with_video_streaming_update: https://github.com/tsightler/ring-mqtt-ha-addon/blob/906ecbadb241ab81e7acdc63910bae05a341dc07/CHANGELOG.md
update.studio_code_server_update: https://github.com/hassio-addons/addon-vscode/releases
update.tasmoadmin_update: https://github.com/hassio-addons/addon-tasmoadmin/releases
update.zigbee2mqtt_update: https://github.com/zigbee2mqtt/hassio-zigbee2mqtt/blob/85a19bbc57f37b6bbd19d02ff6a5692b795f38fd/zigbee2mqtt/CHANGELOG.md

Hope this helps someone

[sebby (sebastian)]

This is a great blueprint and was working flawlessly, but every time i reboot HA, I see this in the logs. Unsure how to go about troubleshooting it:

Logger: homeassistant.components.mobile_app.notify
Source: components/mobile_app/notify.py:195
Integration: Mobile App (documentation, issues)
First occurred: 4:00:10 AM (1 occurrences)
Last logged: 4:00:10 AM
Timeout sending notification to https://mobile-apps.home-assistant.io/api/sendPushNotification

EDIT: originally i thought i was not getting notifications, but i realized i had muted them.

[e-raser]

What of this should I be worried about?

— 1 —

Logger: homeassistant.components.automation.notify_diverse_updates
Source: helpers/script.py:1718
Integration: Automatisierung (documentation, issues)
First occurred: 19:38:33 (10 occurrences)
Last logged: 19:42:06

Notify_Diverse_Updates: Error executing script. Error for choose at pos 1: Device not connected to local push notifications
Notify_Diverse_Updates: Choose at step 1: Update started: Choose at step 4: Only send to mobile devices if within provided time range: Choose at step 1: default: Choose at step 3: Send to second mobile device if specified: Error executing script. Error for device at pos 1: Device not connected to local push notifications
Notify_Diverse_Updates: Choose at step 1: Update started: Choose at step 4: Only send to mobile devices if within provided time range: Choose at step 1: default: Error executing script. Error for choose at pos 3: Device not connected to local push notifications
Notify_Diverse_Updates: Choose at step 1: Update started: Choose at step 4: Only send to mobile devices if within provided time range: Error executing script. Error for choose at pos 1: Device not connected to local push notifications
Notify_Diverse_Updates: Choose at step 1: Update started: Error executing script. Error for choose at pos 4: Device not connected to local push notifications

— 2 —

Logger: homeassistant.components.automation.notify_diverse_updates
Source: components/automation/__init__.py:525
Integration: Automatisierung (documentation, issues)
First occurred: 19:38:36 (2 occurrences)
Last logged: 19:42:06

Error while executing automation automation.notify_diverse_updates: Device not connected to local push notifications

[CentralCommand (Mike)]

It sounds like you’re using the minimal HA app or otherwise have it set to only use websockets when talking to your phone. And since your phone wasnt connected to HA at that moment when the automation tried to send it a notification and using the Google queue service wasn’t an option then the service call failed. If you have the Google queue fallback turned off entirely then I imagine you’re going to see failed to send notification errors periodically when sending a notification happens to line up with a time when your phone lost service or power.

Not really anything this automation can do about that. I guess I could set it to continue_on_error if that helps for some reason. But there’s no way for the automation to actually respond to an error with some kind of try-catch construct.

[e-raser]

continue_on_error sounds good. I have two devices set up as notification targets.

• one is only using Firebase messaging, no local
• one is always using websocket (local), no Firebase messaging
  Frequently both of them are not online so yes, this happens (and does for other notification automations as well, where the error message is a more precise Error executing service: <ServiceCall notify.mobile_app_[...] homeassistant.exceptions.HomeAssistantError: Device not connected to local push notifications).

I think until the HA companion app finally has an event for a successfully sent notification, those errors will stay. See Basic notifications via HA Companion app issue: not received if devices not online - #9 by zacwest where I need to follow up and the creation of a feature request (sth. like “event for received notification”) is needed.

By the way: I use notification groups, which your blueprint currently does not allow/offer. In those I group certain HA companion app notification targets. Using two single devices might be sufficient for most, but not all cases (as written above: my two are offline from time to time, e. g. flight mode during the night etc.) and if I swap or add devices next to updating my central notification group I need to recall “oh yes, there’s another automation I need to update”. Maybe you can change the blueprint to allow such targets and more than two entries (I’d go for 5 ;-)).

[CentralCommand (Mike)]

I can’t do notification groups or random notification services. See here for why (was asked above):

Update notifications (Core, OS, Addons, HACS, etc)

So unfortunately that is actually quite difficult. There’s a couple reasons for this: 1 - There is no way to make a selector for a notification service. The only two options are to use a generic action selector or a generic text selector. Both work very poorly though. With the action selector you’re literally just asking the user to fill in all the details. You can’t even be sure the action they’re giving you is going to send a notification, you don’t know what its going to do. And there’s no …

Basically there is no selector for a notification service. I’m only able to “cheat” that restriction with mobile notifications thanks to device actions.

I guess I can do 5 mobile devices to send notifications to. I was really hoping device actions would take a list of device IDs though so I didn’t have to hardcoded in a specific number of devices…

[e-raser]

OK I got you. Well there always are some limitations, aren’t they Good if you could at least enhance the number of devices/recipients.

BTW: do you know when HACS update entities will come to stable? Don’t want to enable experimental features but miss those notifications somehow

[Quacked]

Possible to not show update button for integrations not supporting the update service? I get this on my Synology NAS:

Error for choose at pos 1: Entity update.nas_dsm_update does not support this service.

[e-raser]

@CentralCommand OK I want/need to understand what is different in this blueprint versus any other default usage of notify.mobile_app_* service.

Updates popped up (addons). Old notification (Supervisor command_line sensor, you know it because it’s from you ) automation worked perfectly. Received it on my iPhone via usual push over mobile network.

Few minutes later once the update entities were switched on, your blueprint based automation got triggered - but didn’t fire any notification:

Yes, one of my two configured notification targets/devices is switched off (Android via Websocket). But what about my iPhone which sits patient in silence.

Do you either only use Websocket for push notifications or does the automation fail if one device could not be supplied (where the other could be)?

In short:

• old automation: fine
• blueprint notification: none

And yes, of course the listed addons are selected to be monitored in the automation config (at least one of them).

UPDATE - Strange thing: next update notification was delivered successfully.

[CentralCommand (Mike)]

I wasn’t aware that was possible. What is creating that update entity if it has no update service?

[Quacked]

This looks like the commit that created the update entity for that integration: Add update entity to Synology DSM (#68664) · home-assistant/core@61f8af8 · GitHub

[CentralCommand (Mike)]

So the package relies on polling of the supervisor API that returns info on what updates are available. I actually didn’t set a scan_interval on the sensor in that package by default so that means every minute it was asking supervisor what updates are available. If supervisor returns any then the sensor turns on and the alert sends out a notification immediately saying “there are updates available”.

This new one no longer polls the supervisor API. Instead it relies on the update entities that the supervisor integration makes and manages. This is great and much more efficient with resources. However there’s an issue. It is not possible for me to make a trigger like this:

trigger:
  platform: state
  domain: update
  to: 'on'

In order to trigger the automation any time any update entity turns on that’s what I need. It’s not an option. The best I can do is this:

trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id: !input update_entities
    to: 'on'
  - platform: time_pattern
    hours: !input reminder_hours

This way it will notify you immediately when any of the entities you list in update_entities turn on. But listing out all the entities manually sucks and you have to update that list every time you install a new addon or HACS component. So it has a polling loop every few hours where it collects all the update entities and notifies you about any that are on.

I almost didn’t make the blueprint because I was frustrated by this gap in functionality but was convinced the polling loop is good enough for most people. You can see the note about it at the top:

@CentralCommand

1. Don’t make users list update entities to watch, just watch them all.

@CentralCommand

EDIT: After talking through it with @Sir_Goodenough below I think we’re good on #1. I forgot the polling loop I added (reminder_hours) will send you a notification about any available update, not just the ones you listed in update_entities. So update_entities is just for the updates you want to know about immediately. And core if you want to use the “run config check when a core update is available” feature. All others this will inform you about every x hours (whatever you put in reminder_hours)

I’m guessing you have the update_entities input either left blank or with very few update entities in it right? Unfortunately you will have to list out every update entity that you want immediate notifications about it. For others that you don’t list, you’ll get a notification every x hours (whatever you put in reminder_hours). It’s the best I can do at this time. I will fix it if a future enhancement allows, it bugs me too.

[e-raser]

@CentralCommand

I’m guessing you have the update_entities input either left blank or with very few update entities in it right? Unfortunately you will have to list out every update entity that you want immediate notifications about it. For others that you don’t list, you’ll get a notification every x hours (whatever you put in reminder_hours). It’s the best I can do at this time. I will fix it if a future enhancement allows, it bugs me too.

No I listed 90 % of my addons cause those are the ones I care/use productively. I tested the reminder_hours and found it pretty annoying, I’m totally fine with a single/one-time notification.

By the way: the permanent notification “open” link defaults to the default page - I would have expected the /config/dashboard or /config/updates or /hassio/dashboard instead.

Update: it always directs to the current page (here a custom dashboard of mine), not the default one.

[robertalexa (Robert A)]

@CentralCommand Hi Mike,

I am getting errors in the HA logs, and I think this is a problem with validation.

Are you seeing the same at your end?

[clipse (Marco)]

Hello Dude,

i don’t understand what’s going on now, the blueprint works great but today I got these error:

Error while executing automation automation.system_update_notification_addon_integrations_automation: Unable to find notify service for webhook ID

My Notify Service is always the same like iPhone with HA Companion App

[e-raser]

So are we removing the execution prior a HA Core update @CentralCommand ?

home-assistant/addons/blob/076f0e2fe4b1b17a92d682da1ea5f2d2ab4cb6c7/check_config/README.md#home-assistant-add-on-check-home-assistant-configuration

[CentralCommand (Mike)]

It’s always been an option in the blueprint so I’m not in a rush. But yea I’ll probably mark it as deprecated like the addon and default it to false from here on out. If the addon goes away entirely then I’ll remove the option as well.

[Taylor]

Hey there! Thank you for creating this blueprint – it’s made keeping up with udpates so much easier
I have multiple HA instances so when I receive a notification on my phone there’s no way to know which one sent it. Here’s my feature request…

FEATURE REQUEST

• Optional text to prepend in the notification’s title.

For example, all notifications from my home HA instance would have [House] prepended…
[House] Home Assistant Core: Update

The notifications sent from the HA instance at my office would look like…
[Office] Home Assistant Core: Update

This would allow me to use the notification actions and know which instance they’re running on.

Thank you!

[CentralCommand (Mike)]

The title is just the friendly name of the update entity with an update available:

https://gist.github.com/mdegat01/13d91bc293e8b98cba2c9ee932527dea#file-update_notifications-yaml-L320

If that’s what you want then just change the friendly name of your update entities. You can do that right from the UI and whatever you put will become the notification title