Expanding XEP's table of emails?

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+1 here as well for the addition of flexible email rules!

 

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Just revisiting this thread after I had a false alert today on a living room PIR while everyone including myself was out of the house. I got a text message saying the alarm had gone off and it would have been really nice to have my text alert say where the zone violation was from. Hopefully ELK will address this issue and have email text as a variable like others have suggested, but in the interim, how do others handle this shortcoming?

 

[networkcrasher]

Honestly, this was one of the main reason I left the M1 and went to an Omni in my new house. I'm the only person that monitored my alarm and the e.mail alerts were key. The email features were the main blemish on the M1 for me.

 

[gatchel]

Unfortunately, if Elk responded to every ones requests they'd be out of business. While I do think the email is limited, I'm sure this will change in the future.

For those of us who own an Elk, let's hope. Maybe we'll get a nice Holiday Present...Who knows.

It could be a lot worse.

 

[Lagerhead]

. . .how do others handle this shortcoming?

Since my year-old post on this thread I have accepted that the M1 is not going to provide every possible capability and so I added outboard automation power (a Barionet described elsewhere on CT).

I use the XEP for a set of canned messages that give immediate general indication of the condition or problem. These are sent to my phone and to another separate email address. In a few cases I have programmed my attached system to send an additional message with details. At any time I can link down manually from my phone to inspect the situation.

 

[sionxct]

Hate to revive such as old thread, but wondering if there has ever been any progress on this? I just installed my first Elk M1G. Email is working, but hard to beleive in this day and age it doesn't seem to have more robust email capabilities.

 

[BaduFamily]

sionxct, on 23 Jun 2017 - 19:28, said:
Hate to revive such as old thread, but wondering if there has ever been any progress on this? I just installed my first Elk M1G. Email is working, but hard to believe in this day and age it doesn't seem to have more robust email capabilities.

I think your best, current bet is to off-load the messaging somehow.
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For example you could have something monitor the Elk M1 log looking for rule-driven output changes, and have your own table of addresses/foo living on the monitoring thing ( a mac, an Pi, etc ) to send mail.

 

[Piasa]

One clugy way to greatly increase email indication limits is to make each message a single letter, e.g.,  A, B, C, ... P.  Then have an event send several emails, e.g, B, F, and H.  You would then need your secret decoder ring to determine what BFH was telling you.

 

[thing]

You are loud and clear!

This is funny to read over 10 years later no additional email options and no hint of a new hardware version in the works.
 
Maybe Elk will finally release their system as opensource so we can fix it and develop it in ways they are unwilling or incapable.
 
So may panel bugs still not fixed so many features still not implemented.  So sad.

The only real solutions to the email notification limitations are to use a 3rd party system that interface to the Elk. The ElkM1::Control perl modules can be used to monitor and control the ElkM1. Would be nice to see an interface to Domoticz for the M1.

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

Their chief engineer (Spanky) who was instrumental in the initial M1's development, is no longer with the company.

 

[BaduFamily]

Their chief engineer (Spanky) who was instrumental in the initial M1's development, is no longer with the company.

well that explains a lot; I had just assumed the Spanky had been asked not to participate in customer forums.