[SOLVED] Best way to send SMS

Have you tried “Pushover”?
Once off payment required per app installation on your phone, then send push notifications via the Pushover extension

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Daniel has been pretty clear that he wants SMS and nothing else.

Yeah, while I use Pushover myself and it does an excellent job of logging events I have to admit it is a bit patchy on sending alerts to the phone. If you have the app open sure, but otherwise bit hit n miss.

In that regard perhaps SMS is the most likely to always alert (though even phone calls and SMS on my phone sometimes bork until I reboot it - Oppo R7plus)

I use PushOver and it’s reliable for me (Android App). I know Daniel just wants SMS but PushOver can be configured for different notifications (sounds) there are high prio messages usable for more important notifications (e.g. door open = important, washer ready = not important).
For users besides Daniel :wink: I recommend looking at pushover. Price was something like 5€ per account for the App (one time).

Yes Pushover works well for me on iOS and is worth the one time fee.
As hardware to gsm gateway is not an option here one will always be internet dependent, another layer of potential failure.
Only options for SMS delivery will require an SMS gateway service.
I have used " Text Local" in Ireland and works fine using PHP script.
AWS is another good option as it’s pay per text, no front loading of account needed

@DanielMalmgren I’m curious why you dismiss the email to SMS gateway so quickly. It seems to be a fairly good fit for you from what I can tell. You have a rule, it sends an email, the email gets converted to an SMS (usually for free and unlimited) and it gets delivered to whatever mobile number you send it to.

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Well, this would have been my next choice if I couldn’t get the first choice working. The problem I see with this is the delay it imposes, ie it could take some minutes for a mail to get routed to the correct place, whereas a call to a web api is instant. Most of the time those minutes doesn’t matter, but they just seem unneccesary :slight_smile:

I’d use twilio and iftt … you can program your Raspi to also utilize node red to subscribe to OpenHAB and send SMS messages

I’m also interested in this… and I have gotten equally far with my setup … I also use the exec-biding to send a http-request with curl to a service-provider…including a string that’s going to be the message.
thing:

Thing exec:command:sendsms [command="/etc/openhab2/kommandon/sms.sh %2$s", autorun=true, interval=0]

Item:

String smstext "[%s]" {channel="exec:command:sendsms:input"}

In karaf I can do this:

smarthome:send smstext 'testing%20sending%20a%20message'

that works…but not if I use double quotations: “string to send”, only when using simple: ‘string to send’

but when using it in a rule I get no function at all:

postUpdate(smstext, "string")  //does not work
postUpdate(smstext, 'string') //does not work

… can anyone help me ?

What is ‘smstext’, is it an Item? How you have configured it might just be relevant.

If you want some binding to act when an Item is sent something, you send it a command

sorry I have updated my previous post now…

If you want some binding to act when an Item is sent something, you send it (the Item) a command.

myItem.sendCommand("Some String")

Works!!

smstext.sendCommand("sending%20a%20message")

did the trick! Thanks a lot

Yall are making this waaaay too difficult. Most carriers provide an email to sms gateway, for example Verizons is 6digitphonenumber@vtext.com, like 8005551212@vtext.com Problem solved.

Here’s a list of some of the gateways: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-send-e-mail-to-sms-text/

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Agreed, that’s what I use. Sending email is easy on OH and the mobile provider does the hard part.

I’m with O2 and they charge per message but it’s cheaper than signing up to a different service. I haven’t noticed a delay but even if there is one it will be way less than the time it would take to get home and sort out whatever the alert is about.

I think I suggested that 20 post before…guess that’s not an option the OP wanted. :stuck_out_tongue: