Use Signal Messenger for Notifications

picohassiotts · August 1, 2020, 12:58pm

I think this is the state right now.

Even though the makers of signal are moving forward to make it also available/accessible without phone number for the future

jeffmn · August 1, 2020, 4:57pm

that’s awesome to hear.

but, what are people using for numbers for their home assistant installs at present then? a google number? something else?

picohassiotts · August 1, 2020, 8:19pm

Pre paid cards, burner cards, virtual cards? Guess that’s are the same terrorists would use

markmghali · August 13, 2020, 7:49pm

I am using my google voice number I NEVER used prior. IT worked really well and is free in the USA.

vdrko · August 22, 2020, 3:43pm

A couple questions from a beginner… I have installed the Signal add-on to Home Assistant running on a rPi3, no docker, or other complexities. Now, I need to use REST requests to register a phone number.

How does I do REST requests to register a phone number? SSH into the rPi and use the commands listed on the GitHub API page?
if yes, then in the USA, the phone number should be “+1xxxyyyzzzz”, right?
lastly, IP:port is address of the rPi, right?

Any chance there’s a video that clearly describes each step of installation for us simpletons?

brandon · December 25, 2020, 6:45pm

Any news for the integration with node-red?
I’d like to use Signal instead of my current notification method. But I cannot find any Module for Signal.
There is a Feature Request for “node-red-contrib-chatbot” - but its from 26 May 2018…

So is there a different way to use this integration with node-red?

Update:
Well, I found out you can just use cURL. Or the http-request node.
In detail this is described here

Cheers

Will711990 · December 29, 2020, 6:12pm

Hi everybody !!

I don’t understand how to use Signal Messenger without a spared number…
I only have my cellular number, and if I registered it, I can’t use it to receive messages again…
Does it a solution ?

thank you !!

Mulperi · January 5, 2021, 7:17pm

To my understanding, you need a spare telephone number. Just go out and get a pre-paid card and use that to register.

danbutter · January 6, 2021, 1:12am

Not positive, but I think you can register with any number that can receive a text message.
Google voice number, even some voip numbers can get texts in a web interface. Whatever is easiest for you.

nuki47 · January 18, 2021, 10:33am

Google voice works only in the US.

alexbelgium · January 20, 2021, 1:36pm

@ Will711990 I tested several free messaging alternatives. Either numbers were already registered, or the signal code received was truncated. The only site that worked was : Free Receive SMS Online - GetFreeSMSNumber (of course I have no affiliation with this site). I went on the first page, saw the last active numbers, and tried to register those. After a few tries it worked I used a +44 number and it worked very well, although I am not in this country - so actually any number can be registered. As the number is only used to send, and your own number is in your private configuraiton, I don’t think there is any risk/issue of using a public number.

andriej · January 24, 2021, 10:10pm

Did anyone manage to receive messages from signal (the docker rest api from this thread)?
Would like to see incoming messages and be able to parse them (number and content)

ju88a · February 27, 2021, 11:11pm

Is there a way for me to choose the recipient s number to send a message too please. I want to send a msg to me if my wife leaves a zone and not have it send to her as well but if I type recipient: +number and then message: left zone it complains about recipient and errors.
Thanks

ju88a · February 28, 2021, 9:41am

Ok so I completed this by adding two notifiers in .yaml called signalme signalher and separating the numbers if anyone is looking for an answer for this.

Pepe_Le_Pew · March 5, 2021, 9:02pm

Maybe my journey on this can help other newbies:

Install the Signal Addon, I changed the default port or nothing would happen
The next step is to execute some code from a CLI, I downloaded the Terminal&SSH addon from the hassio store, and put my phone number and port in. No SMS is sent to me.
I signed up at signal using my extra phone and it’s number. I hope this was not a mistake. I assigned a PIN to the Signal account. This is the number I want to use for Hassio.
I send the code to register my number in the CLI and get an error with a web link. Click that, press F12 in web browser that pops up, then click the Console tab. I see a long verification token, right beside Failed to Launch signalcaptcha://…
I tried to paste the long code into the CLI but it does not send, instead I get a new line that says:
error:invalid captcha

Here is what I tried to paste into the CLI. My phone # is edited out for privacy.

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"captcha":"03AGdBq274kf5vhdbgf5UaPNBn1HCMxEUy5B3v41LOCd7Pj63Dd0elzbyKfB1teJofHoM6oZ2w9ZtrDkCKabaSDAlNBsgmYdRAXV2eUaAjD5hbKzUFZWSD0508pjIjFhQG0KeHa0DGpE2gZw7HbAV0l3xqe6CGh6nmU1RDy52u12wMDYk5JpMPRmJpTQ0zVWOZZvP64_QG0t1gnc_PqxDQkGGvpES8yklZ-fcMGP2GAV_cel9Arpif4sDiL0C3DG7AjKS0oJVtdZ7R_JiHoKUQ8e7VKJ8TuRCHZwEo-Im4TdlqIcAd8mTLhue5lY86yK8RY7FkLb8_2tYVlKgU6EKPBpRtHT0vilrgWOTifOuhXp0uq6MeiUoVyftgYZJlWZS6jDr2s88888a5WLl9ST3OjUOGBgZR5OqQjEpFQqzaooUVRXa_AM9mJdwYHHgWpvzjB45oWtttIRXwFS_lYgpR7cIoigeahBoDDKvZLI1TRDi7Dp586impvkY"}' 'http://127.0.0.1:8082/v1/register/+18888888886'

How did I mess this up? Does this captcha code look correct? I tried the process a couple of times and I get a new captcha code but none seem to be valid.

CentralCommand · March 5, 2021, 11:04pm

This is a pretty long thread so I definitely skimmed it more then read it. But if people are having trouble getting signal set up I found haberda’s Signal Hassio Add-on really easy to use. It basically just turns bbernhard’s Signal CLI REST API container into an add-on.

If it helps, here’s the postman collection I made for interacting with it. It’s on paste.ubuntu because I can’t upload a JSON file here. Just download it as a file and import it. It’s got all the basics defined (Register a number, Create a Group, List Groups, etc.). There’s a few environmental variables to fill in (phone, HA_URL, and Port) and you should be able to call whatever. Then once you got your group(s) you can add the signal integration and point it at it.

I saw a question or two about what number to use for HA. My suggestion is to sign up for a Twilio account personally. It’s free to sign up and you can get a dedicated phone number that can send or receive texts. It’s pay as you go so it’ll cost you a total of $0.0075 to receive the one confirmation text from signal. After that you don’t really have to use it again but can still hang on to it since the Signal account is attached to it.

CentralCommand · March 5, 2021, 11:11pm

Also if anyone is interested, I made a Signal bot in Node RED. It takes any texts that mention it and feeds them to Almond then sends the response back.

I can share the code if people want but to be honest it’s not very good, I wouldn’t recommend it lol. Polling to receive texts just isn’t practical. Plus the it takes like 5-6 seconds to receive a text and another 5 or so to send it so there’s a pretty good delay in there, not even including time Almond takes for procesing it.

So yea in short, if anyone else was thinking about taking Balloob’s Almond Telegram Bot and making an Almond Signal Bot I’d say its probably not worth your time. Was kinda fun though

fatuuse · April 17, 2021, 1:53pm

Anyone use signal to receive messages?
Now i use a sensor like:

- platform: rest
  resource: 'http://127.0.0.1:8083/v1/receive/+1234?timeout=10'
  headers:
      User-Agent: Home Assistant
      Content-Type: application/json
  method: GET
  name: Signal messages
  scan_interval: 60
  timeout: 10
  value_template: "{{ value | to_json | default }}"

But when there’s no new messages there at json answer with just:

[]

And HASS return it as an error in logs:

ERROR (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.rest.data] Error fetching data: http://127.0.0.1:8083/v1/receive/+1234?timeout=10 failed with

Anyone with an ide how to get rid of errors??

JamieMe · May 3, 2021, 5:55am

I would like to achieve the same. Similar to how it seems to work with Telegram bots, I would like to be able to write to my homeassistant something like: “get power solar” to get a watt value back from homeassistant.

Is this already possible somehow?
At the moment I use GitHub - bbernhard/signal-cli-rest-api: Dockerized Signal Messenger REST API

AleXSR7001 · May 6, 2021, 5:24pm

Hi,
I set up Signal and Telegram to notify me (wanted to try both) and I found that the notification process takes 0.06 sec with Telegram but 9-10 sec with Signal.

Code is identical in both cases and I just in one automation call notify.signal and in the other notify.telegram.

Does anybody know what is causing this delay?