HACKER Q&A
📣 0x62

Simple developer-friendly chat app for home automation?


I have various small projects and home automation systems that I want to be able to invoke remotely and receive alerts from, without setting up a web server and UI.

I used to use Notify17 for receiving alerts, but since this shut down I've been forced back to email, and am now looking for a solution to cover both receiving alerts and sending basic commands.

These are the options I've considered already:

* Pushover - Fine for receiving alerts, multiple recipients supported. No options to respond to them.

* Telegram - Sending + receiving. Might be a bit heavy for my use case, and would be better not having the bot publicly accessible. Also makes managing notifications (DND etc) more difficult when also receiving human messages.

* Gotify - No iOS app.

* Prowl - Most likely candidate for receiving notifications at the moment unless I find a duplex option

* Now Push - Looks promising, but too early to start developing on

* Threema - Ideal, but relatively expensive ($70 setup + $0.05/msg + $0.05/img)

Essentially what I'm looking for is an app with a chat-like UI which converts messages to a webhook, and allows me to send responses via an API. Ideally preshared key auth, no OAuth.

On a related note, if anyone else is missing Notify17 and thinking about building a replacement I'd be willing to pay up to $15/mo for a tool that ingests webhooks, allows me to reformat the response with a templating language and sends notifications to my phone.


  👤 phirdev Accepted Answer ✓
As long as you only want to message just a few contacts, Threema has an unlimited plan for a limited number of recipients (15ppl/~5€pm - https://threema.ch/en/broadcast/pricing). Only the gateway service you listed is quite expensive.

👤 tssva
IFTTT is less than $15 a month and will allow you submit notification data via a webhook, reformat it with a template and present the notification on your phone. An existing IFTTT integration might also meet your need for data flow the other direction.

👤 swah
I use Telegram for automations like sending a message to my phone when a task on the computer ends. WIsh Whatsapp had it so I could send it directly to my colleagues..

👤 livinglist
you can always try developing your own plugins for slack or discord, maybe there’s already something for you:

https://slack.com/apps

https://betterdiscord.app/plugins


👤 gidorah
Rocket.chat could be workable. I did experiment with usinging it with a bot that could call an API.

👤 joshu
Slack?