Home Assistant Integration

[APT256]

Hello,
I have all of the hardware working and integrated into Home Assistant. My issue is that I have never used HA before this and am trying to figure out out to get notifications to/from the mbox sensor. I see the integration scripts, but I am not sure where they go. I tried putting them in the configuration.yaml file, but it appears that you can only have one alias definition there? Anyway, I was wondering if there is any documentation on actually setting up the notification in HA and maybe even an example dashboard?

[PricelessToolkit]

Hi, With the sensor are you using Capibridge or Lilygo?

[APT256]

Capibridge... Both devices are showing up in HA:

I just don't know enough about HA to setup notification and dashboards. I have been playing with it, but the dashboards don't look very useful and I have had no luck with the mailbox notifications.

I realize this is not an issue with your h/w or s/w and is due to my lack of understanding how HA is configured. I was hoping someone in the group happened to have documentation on how they had setup HA to use both Capibridge and the mailbox sensor.

[PricelessToolkit]

You need to create only 2 automation for MailBox sensor,

I think screenshots will help you

1. Notification when status is changed

2. To dismiss notification "reset the status"

[APT256]

Finally got this working. First, at least on IOS devices, the audio file has to be in wav format. Next, you have to upload it to your Apple iCloud account (you can do it locally via iTunes, but I think using iCloud is easier). Next, launch Home Assistant on your IOS device, got settings, Companion App, Notifications, Sounds, and select "Import custom sound". From here, drill down to the wav file that you uploaded earlier. Now, restart Home Assistant and go back the the "Sounds" setting again, You should now see your custom wav file listed. Next, you need to modify the Notification that you created in your instructions. Here is what mine looks like:

url: /lovelace/home
persistent: true
importance: high
channel: MailBox
tag: mailbox
actions:

• action: received
  title: I got the mail
  attachment:
  url: >-
  https://1drv.ms/u/c/2aaccc8dd89957d7/EbRTQ_Gje_dCsm-K63dOVR4BFtBfO8p1onE6LKA1aa5hzQ?e=kWJhwf
  type: audio/aac
  push:
  sound:
  name: youGotmail.wav
  critical: 1
  volume: 1

I think I have extra "stuff" in my notification, but it works and I'm afraid to mess around with it. Obviously, my custom wav file is the "You've got mail" clip from the movie You've Got Mail. Anyway I get both the message notification and the audio notification. I am curious what the "attachment" section is for?

[PricelessToolkit]

When you asked "Do you know if there is a way to make an audio notification on a remote device?" I assume that you mean some sort of speaker. I don't know about IOS devices, but on Android, it is easy, you can set different sounds for different notification channels. Attachment is for sending images with notification, like in the video.

image: /media/local/notify/mailbox.jpg

[APT256]

@PricelessToolkit One last question I hope. I looked up the documentation for the automations, and I think I have valid code, but I am not receiving the jpg file. Here is the full code for my automation:

url: /lovelace/home
persistent: true
importance: high
channel: MailBox
tag: mailbox
image: /media/local/notify/uvgotmail.jpg
actions:

• action: received
  title: I got the mail
  push:
  sound:
  name: youGotmail.wav
  critical: 1
  volume: 1

Now, if I open a terminal window, I can verify that the file structure reference in the code is valid:

[core-ssh notify]$ pwd
/media/local/notify

[core-ssh notify]$ls -hal
total 36k
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K Jan 16 14:35 ,
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4.0K Mar 4 08:41 ..
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27.7K Jan 10 16:20 uvgotmail.jpg

Here is the actual notification banner I get on my phone:

Since the actual jpg has full rights allowed to it, I don't think that is the issue. It looks like the little square on the right is an error message, but it is cut-off and distorted. I'll keep digging through the documentation.

v/r
Jon

[APT256]

NM... I just figured it out. The whole imaginary "local" drive was messing up the code. I ended up just putting the jpg into the /media/ folder and referring to it in the code as: /media/local/uvgotmail.jpg fixed it. The notification is now working perfectly! Thanks so much for putting up with me on this. I can't wait to pick up a couple more of your projects and start working on them. Hopefully I won't be bothering you as much with them as I did with this one ;-)

[PricelessToolkit]

I'm glad everything worked out. Thank you for supporting my work!