Android Notification Proxy (Binding)

More and more smarhome gadgets or services don’t offer api-access.
For example my nest-hello-doorbell has a good working face detection but no way to exchange the data with openhab.

My approach is to use an old smartphone as a notification-proxy.

Tasker pushes androidnotifications to an openhab string item.
After that tasker dismisses the notification.

That is very universal for different type of appnotifications.

But on the openhab-side it’s very experimental to cut and analyze the string.

My idea would be the following setting:

  • install an android-notification-proxy-binding
  • add a phone as bridge-thing
  • add notification-src-apps as different things
    (nest-hello-thing, hangout-thing, instagram-thing, …)
  • things have different channels, depending of the information that are extractable from the notification
  • another universal-src-thing for custom apps that don’t have any ready channels

Does that make sense?

Yes, from my point of view, it really makes sense.

It makes sense to have a generic messaging mechnism in OH and to only ever use that than those various mechanisms that come with various devices.
My favorite for that purpose is Telegram. Works for any clients, doesn’t need a (HW) bridge and even provides a simple back channel.

I don’t understand that.
I’m not looking for another notification-chanel - I’m looking for a way to bring state-information into openhab from systems that send notifications but dont support any api-access…

I guess @mstormi suggestion is to use Tasker to forward these notifications to Openhab via Telegram.

Then I think it’s a hack at best. It’s ok to use if you cannot find a different method to query state but suboptimal in terms of architecture. Tasker, a smartphone to require G**gle services … lots of dependencies on external units.
Selecting proper devices (device with a proper API) is key in the first place. But even many legacy devices can be queried/polled in one way or another using HTTP binding or other or send a HW trigger (such as your doorbell’s electric signal).

I must admit I didn’t quite catch his intention but yes, Telegram instead of Android notifications is at least one step closer to a proper solution architecture.

No doubt that a native API is the better way, but where do you see a weakness in terms of architecture?

  1. Nest camera detects a person - but the only way to get the specific name is in the notification so far
  2. tasker reads the name from the notification locally on the device
  3. tasker updates the openhab-item via the android openhab-app that already supports tasker

Where in that flow do you see telegram?

and more. As I said it’s ok to do the job but not a priceworthy architecture.

An old smartphone is not very reliable, at least from my limited experience. I used a Samsung Galaxy s5 and a Huawei p8 and after a few months of continuous use their batteries were swollen.