iphone (ipod touch) push notifications

[purple_motion]

I have been looking for a way to get my home automation system to notify me when something happens. I don't have a cell phone or alarm system so I think the best way would be to have the ipod Touch running all the time (locked) and then have it notify me when something happens. I believe as long as the touch is powered and notifications are on, the wifi connection will stay up and running.

It looks like there are now stand alone apps that will allow you to push whatever message you want to the iphone/itouch. I have played around with it last night and it seems to work okay.

http://www.appnotifications.com

It does cost some $$ (from what I can tell anyway). But i think the cost is lower than SMS messages if I had a cell phone.

Anyway, I have no association with the company. I just started trying it out last night so I don't know its reliablity long term. If there are other apps that work like this better/cheaper let me know. This seems like the cleanest & low cost way to get notifications in the absence of: cell phone, home audio distribution, alarm panel, etc....

MD

 

[jaymartin]

If you already use Growl (for the Mac or Windows), then you should try out Prowl ($2.99). It's quite reliable (at least I've not had any problems) and because there are many apps that are already Growl aware you have a lot of options. Even if you don't currently use Growl you should check it out - it's been out there a really long time so it's quite stable/mature.

NOTE: I'm not affiliated with any of the Growl projects either, just a fan... B)

 

[electron]

Growl is great, I rely on the Windows version big time.

 

[purple_motion]

Hmm... it looks like Prowl has the same idea as the AppNotify. From what I can read on their web page (quickly for now -- i will read more tonite) there is an API that will allow a perl script to send a notification to the iphone. This would work for me as well. Pricing seems similar $2-3. I can't use Growl as my main automation machine is Linux based.

It looks like it might be more stable than AppNotify (which might be a newer project).

 

[roussell]

I've used the following code on linux for a while to send Growl notifications to our Macs, I can't take credit for the code - Google found it but I don't remember where. It works well and is written in P H P of all things. On Linux you'll need P H P5 and P H P-CLI installed.

Syntax is :
$1 = $ip
$2 = $title
$3 = $msg
$4 = $sticky
$szApp = "test"

So:

[p h p -q ./netgrowl.p h p $1 $2 $3 [$4] [$szApp]

(Sticky and szApp (icon) are optional)
or you can

c h m o d +x ./netgrowl.p h p

and drop the 'p h p -q' from the beginning

THe file is attached - the forum was unhappy with me trying to embed P H P code - even in code blocks... Excuse the spaces between the letters P H P and C H M O D - it took about 30 minutes to figure out how to get around the naughty words... <_<

Terry

 

[mstarks01]

I use Z-Push to push new e-mail to my wife's iPhone. Works pretty good until the occasional HTML e-mail clogs the queue for some reason.