Help with notifications/MQTT

C

Corvus85

Getting the hang of it
Aug 18, 2021
535
84
Australia
Hey guys,

So I think over the past year of playing around with BI that I'm confident enough to try enabling mobile notifications without it giving me 50 false positives every day.
CP.ai is working pretty well (so far) with very few positives.

What I want to do is set it up so that the cameras placed at the front of the house will trigger a notification if the below criteria is satisfied:
  • Time is past 9pm.
  • Object detected is a person.

I'm running Unraid on a separate machine which currently has an MQTT server working on it, however I don't know how to use MQTT yet.

Since my family only use UI3 to browse clips, it's probably a bit of a waste (and redundant) for all of them to buy the official BI app. Would it be possible to deliver these notifications on Telegram or a similar app? Ideally with the alert screenshot or gif.

Any tutorials of how to get this set up with MQTT (if necessary)?
 
I got tired of extreme delays or no-shows with BI alerts via SMS/text and went to Pushover several months ago. BI can tell me within 2 seconds the nature of the alert with a custom text. It's a one-time $5 fee for up to 10,000 messages per month per “application token” and its API is well documented. ==>> Send Pushover notifications with pictures and hyperlinks
 
TonyR said:
I got tired of extreme delays or no-shows with BI alerts via SMS/text and went to Pushover several months ago. BI can tell me within 2 seconds the nature of the alert with a custom text. It's a one-time $5 fee for up to 10,000 messages per month per “application token” and its API is well documented. ==>> Send Pushover notifications with pictures and hyperlinks
Click to expand...

Why would I pay $5 when Telegram is free? What does this do better than Telegram?
 
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Corvus85 said:
Why would I pay $5 when Telegram is free? What does this do better than Telegram?
Click to expand...
You're joking, right?
Having not used Telegram I can't really answer that but....
Is it safe to say that you don't know how to do it with Telegram and that's the reason for your post?
If so, why would you balk at a one-time fee that is less than what I lose in my couch cushions yearly for something that works well and what it takes to make it work for you has been handed to you on a silver platter?
 
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Corvus85 said:
Hey guys,

So I think over the past year of playing around with BI that I'm confident enough to try enabling mobile notifications without it giving me 50 false positives every day.
CP.ai is working pretty well (so far) with very few positives.

What I want to do is set it up so that the cameras placed at the front of the house will trigger a notification if the below criteria is satisfied:
  • Time is past 9pm.
  • Object detected is a person.

I'm running Unraid on a separate machine which currently has an MQTT server working on it, however I don't know how to use MQTT yet.

Since my family only use UI3 to browse clips, it's probably a bit of a waste (and redundant) for all of them to buy the official BI app. Would it be possible to deliver these notifications on Telegram or a similar app? Ideally with the alert screenshot or gif.

Any tutorials of how to get this set up with MQTT (if necessary)?
Click to expand...

You don't need to use MQTT for this. BlueIris has pretty robust "action" capabilities built it. You might want start out by sending MMS text messages to your cell phones. If that doesn't live up to expectations (ie it is too slow), then you can move on the other options. But the foundation of knowledge you build by starting with text messages will be helpful if you need to get more advanced.

Personally I have text messages sent by BI to my family's phones. I only have texts sent on motion for the front doorbell camera and the trigger is tuned so that it only triggers when someone walks onto the front porch (so not very often - which is exactly what we want - texts only when someone is actually standing at the front door). In my experience, it generally takes about 10-15 seconds to get a text which is good enough for our needs especially since that time starts when the person walks onto the front porch, not when/if they ring the doorbell. I have set this up by duplicating the doorbell camera and tuning the trigger and text actions on this duplicated camera. The "regular" doorbell camera has a less "narrow" trigger set up and doesn't trigger any text messages.
 
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Corvus85 said:
Why would I pay $5 when Telegram is free? What does this do better than Telegram?
Click to expand...
I referenced this Telegram link in my original Pushover post.

I tested the Telegram curl method and it worked fine. However, I found Pushover’s rich set of customizations (e.g., specific devices, custom sounds, emergency alerts) to be easier to understand and configure. YMMV.

I also like that my Pushover client notifications are only from Blue Iris and supporting apps. They are not interleaved with notifications from contacts, spam groups, etc.
 
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Ok so I successfully got it to work with Telegram, however I'm noticing that it's quite intermittent. Sometimes notifications are sent within 5 seconds of me walking in front of the camera, and sometimes they don't come at all (both times I've confirmed that it generated an alert).

So I guess for $5, I'll try Pushover.

However, before I download the app, would it be better to create one account for the entire household, and then manage every household member's phone as a separate device on the one account? Or separate accounts per member?

The only reason I ask is that I manage two BI servers - one for me and one for my dad's house. Sometimes he'll ask me to watch over his house when he goes on vacation.

Does the Pushover app allow multiple accounts to be logged in simultaneously? Or would I have to manually sign out/back in?
 
Corvus85 said:
Does the Pushover app allow multiple accounts to be logged in simultaneously? Or would I have to manually sign out/back in?
Click to expand...
I suppose you could try using a single account and create two application tokens, one for your machine and one for your Dad's. That would keep the notifications separate in the client app.

To only get notifications from your Dad's machine when he's away, I'd use a Blue Iris macro for the 'device' argument on all 'run a program' actions on his machine. The macro could be easily toggled between his device(s) and his+yours via a URL (HTTP interface command)... For an example of using macros (for the user & application keys), see my original post.

You could handle the device toggling without requiring any action by your Dad; however, you will need an admin account on your Dad's Blue Iris machine to send the macro HTTP command.
 
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jaydeel said:
I suppose you could try using using a single account and create two application tokens, one for your machine and one for your Dad's. That would keep the notifications separate in the client app.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I'm looking for.

So I haven't downloaded the app yet. Since I'm just working on his BI machine first, do I just set up a single account for both him, my brother and I to log into?
 
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