I currently do a lot of my monitoring via MQTT for my solar system etc. I currently use MQTT Alert and set up my alerts to ring my phone at top volume until silenced. But I have missed more than one alert because I don’t think the background agent is always active and it doesn’t necessarily start when I reboot the phone. While the application does “monitor” the MQTT connection, it only makes a short sound if it drops, with no followup until you notice that there was a notification and go back into it to figure out why the connection is down.
Does anyone have foolproof way of getting things like security alerts that will always trigger on the phone, without having to check the phone 10 times a day to be sure the application is on and the connection is active?
I selfhost a matrix instance just for myself and my bots. And send myself notifications to the phone client element. I can even trigger a fake VoIP phone call for really important stuff.
Notifications come through as any other message app notification. And calls do the same.
In order to get all notifications and not destroy your phone battery I found out that you need to download the google play version as you need google services for notifications.
I have some alerts like that using Pushover. You can set it to treat high priority alerts like an alarm which bypasses things like do not disturb and silence etc
And uhhh which solar system would that be, exactly?
This is my summer solar system. I like to winter in the Antares.
The one we are currently in I assume.
Proxima Centauri is pretty weird with it’s three gravitationally bound suns (Alpha Centauri A and B), who would set up alerrs for that?
/s
The latency on those alerts is a problem.
Gotta remember to enable Quantum Entanglement… Takes a lot more power, but solves the problem.
i’ve heard the accuracy is off with those… but cmon 50% still means it’s right half the time
And a lot more pre-planning.
I hear the API development for alpha centauri is pretty far behind its peer.
So we should all be using Beta Centauri?
I don’t get it either
Think galaxy not panels.
If you turn off the battery optimization setting, does it get better?
I was missing a bunch of alerts for Signal because I downloaded it outside the GPlay store (which handles waking up processes better), and I got much more reliable notifications after disabling that setting. It uses a lot more battery though, but maybe that’s worth it for you.
Mine is a Pixel running GrapheneOS, and it doesn’t seem to be on your list. My issue is that I’m not using Google Play Services, so I don’t get the benefits that it provides, one of which is managing notifications. So Signal has to manage notifications itself, which means it basically needs to always be running instead of the more typical Android model of being woken up when there’s a notification.
Or maybe it’s what you linked. Either way, I’d check that and see if it’s an easy fix.
For signal, you can look into a fork called Molly. I have Molly setup, along with molly-sockets, which allows for notifications via unified push
I use molly’s unifiedpush edition, with ntfy, and that works for me. ntfy never crashed on me yet.
also, it’s not signal that handles waking up, but firebase when you get it from the google store, none I think if you install the apk, and unifiedpush if you get molly unifiedpush edition
I’ve experimented with ntfy, it works pretty well and is selfhostable. I don’t know if it natively support mqtt though.
I can get notification to ntfy, but I’m not sure if the app is certain to blow my phone up until I notice it, which is my goal. Frankly, if I could trigger the Presidential Alert, I would do that.
I went with ntfy as well - you can set the different levels to alert in different ways and my max priority is set to always ring even if the phone is on silent. Mostly I use max prio as a find-my-phone tool, but there are real alerts that would use it.
off topic but do you know about this app for find my phone purposes?
I self host this, along with a ntfy server. Havent ever lost my phone since setting it up though, lol.
For me the gps updates appear to lag a bit, but show when I manually prompt for it.
I have Tasker running, and you can set it up to do this too. Between ntfy and Google’s version I think I’m covered already!
I just get alerts over telegram. They’re just regular notifications, but you could probably set specific notification behavior and sounds for the app?
Edit: Though that’s not a selfhosted solution. Sometimes it’s a decision between reliability and selfhosted. e.g., I went back to Tailscale from Headscale when I lost connectivity through Headscale and couldn’t figure out how to get it back.
Sometimes it’s a decision between reliability and selfhosted
This is an excellent point to keep in mind.
Using something like Telegram for notifications/alerts exposes a minimal amount of info/metadata.
XMPP could be a useful alternative, since there are numerous hosts/providers available, and it’s a privacy minded community.
I’m using home assistant, with mqtt which acts for many things and I get notification in different way depending the needs. Could be home assistant app or telegram or lighting up some light or sending voice messages to a speaker. All notifications are triggered by automations looking at states. Haven’t done it but automation could be re launched automatically until (for exemple) I press a button or responding to telegram message
Why/how did you miss the notification? Seems like a good place to start.
The application isn’t 100% likely to stay active in the background it seems. I tried to program one myself but there’s a lot of bullshit going on in background apps in Android that I’m not familiar enough with to trust that I can do any better.
Okay so you didn’t miss the notification, you didn’t receive it at all?
Pushover here, they have critical alert I think.
Use it for my nagios alert, home assistant and other command line stuff.
Super cheap at $5 one off payment and then 10000 messages per application. I have about 5 applications, so 10k*5.
If it’s absolutely critical, I would set something up to call you continuously until the alert is acknowledged.
Any suggestions for services that do that? I like the idea, I’d actually get a few different phones to ring if some of the alarms were to get triggered.
ntfy can do that too
Here’s some information on using a broadband modem, further down on sending SMS and stuff with it, maybe this helps: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Mobile_broadband_modem
Edit: Typo
XMPP is best for that IMHO.
Gotify along with an external email service. I get each notification twice, immediately
Hmm… I’m using gotify with a Ras Pi to send the alerts and I sometimes get long delays…
AFAICT it’s the phone, not the Pi, but all I can see are lots of websocket errors in the gotify client the time… are you not getting those then?
Mine works instantly on a pixel 8. There is a notification that is always active for the gotify app. I believe an always on notification is required for instant pushing with non google apps. Maybe you haven’t enabled it in the settings somewhere?
Yeah, that’s all fine - when it works, it works well… But sometimes it just seems to get caught up in an error and can’t seem to reset for a few minutes. But ok, looks like your setup’s working ok, so must be just mine. I disabled a load of Google stuff and run trackercontrol (a local VPN on the phone that blocks stuff), so maybe I’ve broken something…
I use Pushsafer for this purpose
