Hi. Sorry to weigh-in on this old topic, but I've wanted to get an Omni Notifier board for years, and one finally popped up on eBay that I got at a good price.
First, for everyone on this topic: you're right! The HAI (Leviton) Notifier board is probably the worst implementation of an email client I have seen. No [exposed] logs to see what errors the board has encountered. No messages. Instructions basically tell you to see if you got a test e-mail. Really.
While I don't have the code or logs to trace, I can only assess anecdotally the root cause of the problems I encountered. However, my solution was a behind-the-firewall SMTP relay that authenticates and sends to an external SMTP server with full encryption.
The notifier board is, at best, a dumb appliance. SSL settings do not consistently work. Leviton Cloud selection of the Omni board throws an error (although I did get an update directly from Leviton that addresses that issue after I'd applied the above-mentioned solution). So, I punted.
Knowing the architecture was built for non-secure SMTP using port 25, here's what I did:
1. I set-up an SMTP server (you could use a Raspberry Pi, if you wanted to) in my private network and configured it to answer on port 25 w/o SSL.
2. Using my firewall, set specific source/destination (another problem with the Omni Notifier board is it's DHCP -- you can't manually set the IP) based on reserving the DHCP IP address for the Notifier's MAC address. The firewall allows port 25 between the Notifier and my SMTP server only on the private network. And, it logs the traffic through a proxy. I won't discuss the firewall I have (for obvious security reasons, but suffice it to say it's a "pro-sumer" style firewall).
3. Configured the Notifier to send messages on port 25 to the SMTP IP, no SSL.
4. The SMTP relays messages w/in 30s of send to the external, secure, SMTP server.
This works like a champ. Regular, consistent, and trustworthy.
Hope this helps. Although not an elegant solution, a sufficient wrapper for terribly old and badly-implemented technology.
First, for everyone on this topic: you're right! The HAI (Leviton) Notifier board is probably the worst implementation of an email client I have seen. No [exposed] logs to see what errors the board has encountered. No messages. Instructions basically tell you to see if you got a test e-mail. Really.
While I don't have the code or logs to trace, I can only assess anecdotally the root cause of the problems I encountered. However, my solution was a behind-the-firewall SMTP relay that authenticates and sends to an external SMTP server with full encryption.
The notifier board is, at best, a dumb appliance. SSL settings do not consistently work. Leviton Cloud selection of the Omni board throws an error (although I did get an update directly from Leviton that addresses that issue after I'd applied the above-mentioned solution). So, I punted.
Knowing the architecture was built for non-secure SMTP using port 25, here's what I did:
1. I set-up an SMTP server (you could use a Raspberry Pi, if you wanted to) in my private network and configured it to answer on port 25 w/o SSL.
2. Using my firewall, set specific source/destination (another problem with the Omni Notifier board is it's DHCP -- you can't manually set the IP) based on reserving the DHCP IP address for the Notifier's MAC address. The firewall allows port 25 between the Notifier and my SMTP server only on the private network. And, it logs the traffic through a proxy. I won't discuss the firewall I have (for obvious security reasons, but suffice it to say it's a "pro-sumer" style firewall).
3. Configured the Notifier to send messages on port 25 to the SMTP IP, no SSL.
4. The SMTP relays messages w/in 30s of send to the external, secure, SMTP server.
This works like a champ. Regular, consistent, and trustworthy.
Hope this helps. Although not an elegant solution, a sufficient wrapper for terribly old and badly-implemented technology.
