If you feel Home Assistant is overwhelming, you are not alone. I was and I still am. That does not mean Home Assistant is necessarily difficult it just uses a lot of techniques which I have not come across before: YAML, Jinja2, etc.
I will share with you what I have learned. I cannot spend hours at a time to write a long post so I will be adding to this post as I go along.
I do want to thank the community and everyone who created blogs, videos and other resources on Home Assistant. Google continues to be my best friend as well.
I got my inspiration from the Send came snaphot notification blueprint 
Send camera snapshot notification on motion - Blueprints Exchange - Home Assistant Community (home-assistant.io) by @vorion. However, I wanted to achieve some additional functionality.
- send persistent notification and e-mail notification in addition to the mobile notification
- make the notifications scripts so that they can be used in other automations
- make the notifications optional
- control the notifications using a alarm control panel entity
- make mobile notification critical depending the state of the alarm control panel
The solution presented here is far from perfect, remember I am a newbie, and any suggestions to further improve it will very much appreciated.
Here are some of the things I struggled with:
- persistent notifications link to an image rather than embedding the image within the notification
- device_id: does not accept templates; unable to pass field or variable
- how to send an e-mail notification to multiple recipients
Scripts
Scripts are sequence of actions which can be executed by Home Assistant using a service call. Note that useful information on actions can be found in the documentation on automation and blueprints as well.
While Home Assistent seems to support script blueprints, I have no idea how to create and use them (I noticed they are available in 2021.11.1 and need to look into them more).
I created three scripts for sending a persistent notification, e-mail notification, and mobile notification.
Persistent Notification Script
The script gets three fields when called: snapshot_title, snapshot_message, and snapshot_file. The service persistent_notification create expects the file to be located in “/local”, so replace “/config/www” by “/local” when using “/www/local”.
'{{ snapshot_file | replace("/config/www","/local") }}'
This is the full script:
persistent_notification_snapshot:
alias: Persistent Notification Snapshot
description: This script sends a persistent notification a snapshot
icon: mdi:email-outline
mode: single
variables:
local_file: '{{ snapshot_file | replace("/config/www","/local") }}'
fields:
snapshot_title:
name: Notification title
description: Title of the notification
selector:
text:
snapshot_message:
name: Notification body
description: Body of the notification
selector:
text:
snapshot_file:
name: Filename
description: Filename of snapshot
selector:
text:
sequence:
- service: persistent_notification.create
data:
message: '{{ snapshot_message }}<br /><br />'
title: '{{ snapshot_title }}'
The script can be called with the follow YAML code:
- service: script.persistent_notification_snapshot
data:
snapshot_title:
snapshot_message:
snapshot_file:
It is also possible to add the script to the automation through the GUI by using a service call to script.persistent_notification_snapshot.
Important: one thing to take notice of is how persistent notifications handles images. It does not imbed the image; instead, it links to the image. This means that if you overwrite the image and send a new notification, it will include the same link. To make things more confusing, the browser will cache the image and as a result it seems that each notification displays the first image saved. If you clear the cache, all the images will display the last image saved. If you delete the image, the notification is unable to display an image.
Mobile Phone Notification
First of all, apologies to all Android users, but I wrote this script with iOS in mind. It will be very easy to adapt for Android; please have a look at the original blueprint by vorion. To make up for my lack in effort, here is a template which could replace the iOS boolean input in vorion’s blueprint. Read more on using devices in templates in the Home Assistant documentation.
{{ device_attr("device_id", "manufacturer") == "Apple" }}
There are no entities associated with a mobile phone which can be used to send a notification to a mobile phone so only a device selector can be used to selected the mobile device. One of the things which caused me a lot of pain is that “device_id:” in an action can not use a template and as a result I was not able to pass the device ID to the script. As a result, the only way I could send a notification to the mobile is to use a service call which requires me to use the name of the mobile phone. I resolved it with this template. You may have to confirm that your template gives you the correct service name.
service: 'notify.mobile_app_{{ device_attr(snapshot_target, "name") | replace("’","") | replace(" ","_") | lower}}'
This is the complete script:
ios_notification_snapshot:
alias: iOS Notification Snapshot
description: This script sends a persistent notification a snapshot
icon: mdi:email-outline
mode: single
fields:
snapshot_title:
name: Notification title
description: Title of the notification
selector:
text:
snapshot_message:
name: Notification body
description: Body of the notification
selector:
text:
snapshot_file:
name: Filename
description: Filename of snapshot
selector:
text:
snapshot_target:
name: Mobile
description: Mobile phone device
selector:
device:
manufacturer: "Apple"
snapshot_critical:
name: Critical Notification
description: The notification is critical (1) or non-critical (0)
selector:
boolean:
sequence:
- service: 'notify.mobile_app_{{ device_attr(snapshot_target, "name") | replace("’","") | replace(" ","_") | lower}}'
data:
message: "{{ snapshot_message }}"
title: '{{ snapshot_title }}'
data:
image: '{{- snapshot_file | replace(''/config/www'',''/local'') -}}'
push:
sound:
name: "default"
critical: >
{% if snapshot_critical %}
1
{% else %}
0
{% endif %}
volume: 0.1
The script can be called with the follow YAML code:
- service: script.ios_notification_snapshot
data:
snapshot_title:
snapshot_message:
snapshot_file:
snapshot_target:
It is also possible to add the script to the automation through the GUI by using a service call to script.ios_notification_snapshot.
Email Notification
The last of the three scripts is the e-mail notification. This script does not contain anything exiting other than that it includes the html section which embeds the snapshot image. The html code uses the basename of the fully qualified filename passed to the script. The following template removes the folder part:
{{- snapshot_file[snapshot_file.rfind("/")+1:] -}}
To be able to send the e-mail notfication to multiple recipient, I changed the selector from a text selector to an object selector. Note that I called my SMTP integration “email” which is called using “service: notify.email”.
email_snapshot:
alias: Email Snapshot
description: This script emails a snapshot
icon: mdi:email-outline
mode: single
variables:
filename: '{{- snapshot_file[snapshot_file.rfind("/")+1:] -}}'
fields:
snapshot_title:
name: Email title
description: Title of the e-mail message
selector:
text:
snapshot_message:
name: Email body
description: Body of the e-mail message
selector:
text:
snapshot_target:
name: Email address
description: E-mail address of the recipient of the snapshot
selector:
object:
snapshot_file:
name: Filename
description: Filename of snapshot
selector:
text:
sequence:
- service: notify.email
data:
message: '{{ snapshot_message }}'
title: '{{ snapshot_title }}'
target: '{{ snapshot_target }}'
data:
images:
- '{{- snapshot_file -}}'
html: <html> <body><p><i>{{-snapshot_message-}}</i></p><br><img src="cid:{{filename}}"> </body> </html>
The script can be called with the follow YAML code:
- service: script.email_snapshot
data:
snapshot_target:
snapshot_title:
snapshot_message:
snapshot_file:
It is also possible to add the script to the automation through the GUI by using a service call to script.email_snapshot.
Snapshot Alarm Control Panel
Within my automation (blueprint) I want to control when to enable sending snapshots using the notifications. By creating a manual alarm control panel, I will use the arm_home and arm_away to enable sending the snapshots and use arm_away to send a critical notification to iOS.
# Configure a manual alarm control panel
alarm_control_panel:
- platform: manual
name: Snapshot
snapshot_critical: '{{ states("alarm_control_panel.snapshot") == "armed_away" }}'
Final Blueprint
The blueprint assumes that you have added the above scripts to scripts.yaml.
I wanted to be able to enable or disable each individual notification. The blueprint has a boolean input to enable or disable the notification and under actions I use “choose:” with “conditions:” to execute the action depending on the value of the boolean input.
input:
notify_persistent:
name: Persistent Notification
description: Send persistent notification when motion is detected
selector:
boolean:
variables:
notify_persistent: !input 'notify_persistent'
action:
- choose:
- alias: "If persistent notification is enabled send persistent notification"
conditions: '{{ notify_persistent }}'
sequence:
service: script.persistent_notification_snapshot
data:
snapshot_title: '{{ title }}'
snapshot_message: '{{ message }}'
snapshot_file: '{{ folder }}{{ filename }}'
The complete blueprint looks like this:
blueprint:
name: Send Snapshot after Motion
description: Send a camera snapshot using multiple notifications after motion has
been detected
domain: automation
input:
motion_sensor:
name: Motion Sensor
description: This sensor will trigger a snapsot to be taken and send using the notifications
selector:
entity:
domain: binary_sensor
device_class: motion
motion_camera:
name: Camera
description: The snapshot will be taken using this camera
selector:
entity:
domain: camera
title:
name: Notification Title
description: The title of the notification
selector:
text:
message:
name: Notification Message
description: Message body of notification
selector:
text:
notify_persistent:
name: Persistent Notification
description: Send persistent notification when motion is detected
selector:
boolean:
notify_email:
name: Email Notification
description: Send e-mail notification when motion is detected
selector:
boolean:
email:
name: E-mail Address
description: E-mail address to send notification
selector:
object:
notify_mobile:
name: Mobile Notification
description: Send mobile notification when motion is detected
selector:
boolean:
mobile:
name: Mobile Device
description: Mobile device to send notification
selector:
device:
manufacturer: 'Apple'
variables:
motion_camera: !input 'motion_camera'
filename: snapshot_{{ states[motion_camera].object_id }}-{{ now().strftime("%Y%m%d%H%M%S") }}.jpg
folder: /config/www/tmp/
title: !input 'title'
message: !input 'message'
notify_persistent: !input 'notify_persistent'
notify_email: !input 'notify_email'
notify_mobile: !input 'notify_mobile'
trigger:
platform: state
entity_id: !input 'motion_sensor'
from: 'off'
to: 'on'
condition:
- condition: state
entity_id: alarm_control_panel.snapshot
state:
- armed_home
- armed_away
action:
- service: camera.snapshot
target:
entity_id: !input 'motion_camera'
data:
filename: '{{ folder }}{{ filename }}'
- choose:
- alias: "If e-mail notification is enabled send e-mail notification"
conditions: '{{ notify_email }}'
sequence:
service: script.email_snapshot
data:
snapshot_target: !input email
snapshot_title: '{{ title }}'
snapshot_message: '{{ message }}'
snapshot_file: '{{ folder }}{{ filename }}'
- choose:
- alias: "If persistent notification is enabled send persistent notification"
conditions: '{{ notify_persistent }}'
sequence:
service: script.persistent_notification_snapshot
data:
snapshot_title: '{{ title }}'
snapshot_message: '{{ message }}'
snapshot_file: '{{ folder }}{{ filename }}'
- choose:
- alias: "If mobile notification is enabled send mobile notification"
conditions: '{{ notify_mobile }}'
sequence:
service: script.ios_notification_snapshot
data:
snapshot_title: '{{ title }}'
snapshot_message: '{{ message }}'
snapshot_file: '{{ folder }}{{ filename }}'
snapshot_target: !input mobile
snapshot_critical: '{{ states("alarm_control_panel.snapshot") == "armed_away" }}'
