Push notifications on OmniPRO II

tigers

Active Member
I'm continuing my experiments with Arduino and the OPII (think I'm going to call it "HAIDuino" - not great imagination... :D ), and I came up with an interesting result: push notifications of events directly on the Phone. The setup may be a little hard - but I can help with that - and the operation is fully automatic and quite simple.
 
What is needed:
  1. An Arduino (from 5$ (chinese clones of the Nano) to 30$ for the original);
  2. an Ethernet shield (again, 10$ for the clones);
  3. a TTL to serial converterl module (10 $ - avoid the cheaper ones that didn't work properly);
  4. a cable to connect the converter to the serial on the OPII (which is RJ11 - not quite standard for serial) - the cost varies from 0$ using an old phone cable (just check it is the 4 wires version - some have only 2) to 10 $ ore more if you buy an official cable;
  5. Some minimal programming skills (but I can help with that);
Grand Total ranges from 25$ to 45/50$, which is not bad specially considering that you can do even more than that with the same setup (I pull weather data from the internet and store it in the HAI, or you could even put up a web server to communicate to and from the HAI via internet).
 
Any Arduino will do even the basic version like the UNO or the Nano will but the UNO is easier for mounting the ethernet shield. I experienced problems in making the Leonardo work with the Ethernet shield so I won't recommend that even if it has an extra hardware serial on board, which may be easier for communicating with the HAI.
 
Once everything is built, you just have to setup the HAI to send a message thru the serial port on event you want to push. The Arduino will read the serial message and send a call to the API of a pushing service (I used Pushingbox www.pushingbox.com together with Pushbullet, that is free under iOS, but there are others available for Android or Windows phone as well), that will forward it to the phone.
 
Now I get a push notification every time someone rings the doorbell, complete with a picture of who rang, together with other mixed messages - you can setup as many as the push service will allow you to.
 
It should also be possible to read values form the OPII and pass them on to the message system, but I'm still working on that.
 
If someone is interested I can help with the setup.
 
Neato Tigers!  Have you left the Arduino plugged in to the HAI panel testing it in vivo? 
 
How about "HAI-Er-Duino" in stead of "HAIDuino"...more syllables?
 
Yes, the arduino has been constantly plugged form the end of July until now and constantly sending the energy meter readings to a flag in the HAI central AND sending the same value on Emoncms for logging and graphing, and also collecting data from some remote temperature sensors via RF.
I am planning to use the SD card onboard of the Ethernet shield for the future, but right now is not a priority.
 
Also I'm now starting to work on a remote panel with a 2.2" TFT color screen to show various data in a more understandable way (a screen with all temperatures with colors based on distance of the temperature from the current setpoint, a sum up of the energy meter, the rain forecast and the garden sprinkler system, etc.).
 
Also thinking of starting a blog with everything I came up with but I lack the time at the moment.
 
I look forward to reading your blog.
 
Yup; here I configured my OPII to utilize the microuter in / out NICs.  That said I updated the firmware with many changes to it such that I had to start all over; which was a PITA; well and I lost connectivity to everything on the "other" side.
 
I make an issue; but it wasn't really that big of a deal; lost IP connected stuff for a short time while I reconfigured the IP's and rules sets. 
 
I have (actually provided by a CT user here) data logger which uses mysql onboard or remotely to store data.  It does do that push thing and email notifications thing.  I've been using mysql now on a bunch of stuff (well like xbmc for one).
 
I did for a while pay attention and did that whole graph thing with the data.  After a while though lost a bit of interest in it...well except for my lighting rate graphs stuff.
 
BTW ; tigers; I have brought up creating a section here on the CT forum relating to that sort of stuff.  More than just the HAI connectivity but rather the use of hardware connectivity whatever it is to tiny devices.
 
It could be something like using the Arduino to connect to temperature sensors, X-10 serial interface or UPB interface or whatever.  It seems to be a common thread these days and it would be neato to post here on the forum.
 
Much of it today is a wholly owned part of DIY automation.
 
The mySQL thing is quite interesting, I have a Synology NAS always on that could run something like that I think, and it will be much more reliable than storing data on the internet (also because my connection is poor).
 
For the graph you are right, They are useless... Until you need them and then suddenly you wish you had logged everything...
 
Also I forgot to say that right now I am also logging (since the end of July again)  the temperature data of all the rooms on EmonCMS, and this is another very interesting use of the HAIduino. I also believe there are many interested, but it's not so easy to make it work at first. Now that I have done much of the effort I think many people would find it interesting and we could pull out more out of it, so the new section will be a very good thing.
 
Yeah you can run sql on just about anything these days.  I "use" the default instances running already on a bunch of boxes.  Its just adding another database to the engine already running.
 
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