Why has UnifiedPush not been implemented as an option for Push Notifications?
Some users dont want to opt signing up for 3rd party services such as pushbullet, etc. and most definitely some users dont want to opt in for google to collect their data using FCM.
It would be great if this can be integrated as an option into Android like Hass has done
As a user I want to rely on Alarm notifications without the need to expose self-hosted data notifications to 3rd parties.
I am 100% confident that should someone volunteer to implement this as an add-on and/or add it to the phone apps it would be accepted and merged.
Unlike Haas we are a 100% volunteer project. No matter how good something might be, if no one volunteers to implement it it’s not going to happen. So why has UnifiedPush not be implemented? Because no one has volunteered to do it.
I really wish i could volunteer but unfortunately my programming skills are not that good. Im just mentioning it here to create awareness for a more open source and reliable notification method, without compromising battery levels too much.
The only thing i can volunteer is that im here fully committed as a tester if anyone takes this on
The FDroid version of the openHAB app does not use FCM for notifications. It just polls the openHAB cloud server. So, there is a solution for avoiding FCM and third-party services, but there will be some lag.
If I could offer some feedback, your initial post came across more as a demand/rant than a suggestion. As I’m sure you can understand, we get a little defensive when people start with, “why aren’t you doing this obvious thing already?”
I’ve personally never heard of UnifiedPush, so you’re definitely creating awareness with me. But instead of, “are you aware of this great service,” the message I got from your first post was, “you should be aware that you don’t know what users want, but HASS does.”
Your follow-up reply suggests that you didn’t mean it this way, in which case it’s just a blind spot and no big deal. Just please be aware that we get similar posts where people really do mean “you suck for not doing this thing that I need”. So, it’s hard not to read it negatively at first glance.
I hope that makes sense to you. We’re just trying to keep things positive and collaborative around here. As Rich said, it just takes someone with the interest and skills to contribute, and maybe you’ve provided the inspiration.
Please dont misunderstand me, my English is also not that perfect. I searched as much as i could, i could not come across for anything “unifiedPush” on the forum, so in my shock to not find it i became overwhelmed in my message.
In no way am i suggesting that hass is cooler. In fact i am a newcomer here because of the fact that ive left hass and i love openHAB and the community!
Yes i know but when it comes to the FOSS client, the smallest “15min” delay setting is still too much, it would be nice to have options of less time than that at least to allow the user to choose a 1 or 2 min delay.
Apart from that, Im hoping someone with the skills can provide us with this new feature of unifiedPush
In general, polling at intervals smaller than 15 minutes tends to significantly impact battery life, and leads to apps getting labelled as battery killers.
Here’s another option for self-hosted push notifications. I didn’t mention it earlier, simply because I’d forgotten about it.
15 minutes is the smallest value that Android allows for repeated background tasks. When the app is running in foreground the delay is reduced to 3 minutes (openhab-android/mobile/src/main/java/org/openhab/habdroid/ui/MainActivity.kt at main · openhab/openhab-android · GitHub).
For me personally the delay is fine, so I didn’t look into alternatives. Note that 15 minutes is the worst case and it’s 7,5 minutes on average.
There’s also a feature request on GitHub: Support UnifiedPush as an alternative to FCM · Issue #3806 · openhab/openhab-android · GitHub Maybe someday one will implement it 