Chowmain - Notification Suite

[jfh]

I thought I needed to upload the image to chuck.io have an external URL for the picture.

Thanks for the image source html reminder - I'll try that tomorrow.

But I still don't understand why using http://my server.com/picture.jpg in the URL field for the SMTP programming action works as expected and http:/chuck.io/f/long number or the upload URL variable doesn't.

[alanchow]

you do need to upload the image to chunk.io for external viewing.  I'm telling you to utilise the chunk.io image in the HTTP img tag as i assume you want to format it within the email rather than as an attachment.  Otherwise whats the point of downloading an image from your camera, uploading it to chunk.io only to redownload it to attach it to the email.  Might as well just download straight from the camera as an attachment.

[pkkaiser]

Alan, in the macro below. Only the 2nd and 4th lines will show a picture from chuck.io. The other two show a page with small white square (no image). Any suggestions since the programming appears to be the same. Thanks. 

[alanchow]

22 hours ago, pkkaiser said:

Alan, in the macro below. Only the 2nd and 4th lines will show a picture from chuck.io. The other two show a page with small white square (no image). Any suggestions since the programming appears to be the same. Thanks. 

Please don't double post.  See my answer in your other post.

[South Africa C4 user]

Is there a way to upload 2 or 3 different camera snapshots at the same time or does one need to wait 20 (or so) seconds and then take the snapshot from the second camera etc.? I have 3 cameras covering my driveway and would like to get pictures from all 3 of them when a beam is triggered...

[alanchow]

5 hours ago, South Africa C4 user said:

Is there a way to upload 2 or 3 different camera snapshots at the same time or does one need to wait 20 (or so) seconds and then take the snapshot from the second camera etc.? I have 3 cameras covering my driveway and would like to get pictures from all 3 of them when a beam is triggered...

You can probably add in multiple instances of the SMTP driver.  That will make it work at the same time

[South Africa C4 user]

9 hours ago, alanchow said:

You can probably add in multiple instances of the SMTP driver.  That will make it work at the same time

Thanks Alan... quite obvious - I feel a bit silly for not thinking of that. If it works, I can get all 3 pictures into one email and with careful coding can only trigger the email after all 3 pictures are available..

[alanchow]

55 minutes ago, South Africa C4 user said:

Thanks Alan... quite obvious - I feel a bit silly for not thinking of that. If it works, I can get all 3 pictures into one email and with careful coding can only trigger the email after all 3 pictures are available..

You'll  actually need three emails.

[South Africa C4 user]

34 minutes ago, alanchow said:

You'll  actually need three emails.

I've got it working perfectly in one email... my programming is overly complex and I realised once it was working that I am simply doing the following (but in a roundabout way):

1. Set up a variable called count which starts at 0

2. Add 1 to count under the file uploaded event on each of the 3 chunk.io drivers.

3. On variable (count) change check to see if it is equal to 3. If it is, then reset count to 0 and fire off the email.

4. Make sure the email is set up to include the pictures from all 3 drivers.

Works like a charm.

[alanchow]

1 minute ago, South Africa C4 user said:

I've got it working perfectly in one email... my programming is overly complex and I realised once it was working that I am simply doing the following (but in a roundabout way):

1. Set up a variable called count which starts at 0

2. Add 1 to count under the file uploaded event on each of the 3 chunk.io drivers.

3. On variable (count) change check to see if it is equal to 3. If it is, then reset count to 0 and fire off the email.

4. Make sure the email is set up to include the pictures from all 3 drivers.

Works like a charm.

Ah yeah that's would work.  Thought you wanted it as an attachment.

[South Africa C4 user]

1 minute ago, alanchow said:

Ah yeah that's would work.  Thought you wanted it as an attachment.

I'm still a standard grade user and have not (yet) played with attachments!

[alanchow]

UPDATE: 

A NEW DRIVER HAS BEEN ADDED TO THE NOTIFICATION SUITE!! 

Introducing the pushsafer notification service. This premium notification service provides the only notification service for Control4 compatible with Windows 10 Mobile and Tablet devices. It also provides built in uploading of camera snapshots directly to the pushsafer service for viewing on your IOS, Android, Windows 10 devices. 

http://www.chowmain.co.nz/pushsafer-driver

             

[alanchow]

 

The Chowmain Notification Suite for Control4 allows dealers to program email and push notifications easily without the need to subscribe to any subscription based service.

This driver was one of the first drivers we developed at Chowmain and over the years we have added plenty of functionality to it making it the best way to notify customers of events in their home.

The driver is now 5 years old and we are now at the stage where we feel that we can give more to our customers by making the driver cheap enough that it can put into every project.

As such we are proud to announce that we are reducing the MSRP price permanently of the Chowmain Notification Suite for Control4 by a whopping 50%.  This is down from $100USD MSRP to $50USD MSRP.

For more information about the Chowmain Notification Suite please see link below.

https://www.chowmainsoft.com/notification-suite

[eggzlot]

@alanchow or @Andrew luecke

I have not used this driver in a long time but I have a use case now for wanting to use SMTP driver to send some emails.

On your website when I click on documentation I just get an access denied notice with lots of characters and the URL is:

https://chowcdn1.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/documentation/CONTROL4-Notification_Suite/Chowmain - Deviantsart Driver Installation Guide.pdf

 

I am basically trying to set up Gmail to send an image.  Any details you can share on the settings for the SMTP driver (I followed generic examples on the internet using SSL/465 but nothing is working) and how to tie in ChuckIO to upload the image (my dealer already created a snapshot of the camera in C4 so I can access that or use something else if needed)

Thanks in advance

[alanchow]

On 5/29/2022 at 3:45 AM, eggzlot said:

@alanchow or @Andrew luecke

I have not used this driver in a long time but I have a use case now for wanting to use SMTP driver to send some emails.

On your website when I click on documentation I just get an access denied notice with lots of characters and the URL is:

https://chowcdn1.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/documentation/CONTROL4-Notification_Suite/Chowmain - Deviantsart Driver Installation Guide.pdf

 

I am basically trying to set up Gmail to send an image.  Any details you can share on the settings for the SMTP driver (I followed generic examples on the internet using SSL/465 but nothing is working) and how to tie in ChuckIO to upload the image (my dealer already created a snapshot of the camera in C4 so I can access that or use something else if needed)

Thanks in advance

Due to security enhancements Gmail no longer supports less secure apps

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6010255?hl=en

As such you should utilise another SMTP server to handle your outbound mail.  Most ISPs provide free email accounts so i would try your ISP first before other sources.

[eggzlot]

3 hours ago, alanchow said:

Due to security enhancements Gmail no longer supports less secure apps

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6010255?hl=en

As such you should utilise another SMTP server to handle your outbound mail.  Most ISPs provide free email accounts so i would try your ISP first before other sources.

Thanks Alan

can you share the pdf instructions for the notification suite as the link on your site isn’t working 

[Andrew luecke]

15 hours ago, eggzlot said:

Thanks Alan

can you share the pdf instructions for the notification suite as the link on your site isn’t working 

Our website engineer has fixed the links: https://chowmain.software/drivers/control4-notification-suite under documentation 

 

[eggzlot]

16 hours ago, Andrew luecke said:

Our website engineer has fixed the links: https://chowmain.software/drivers/control4-notification-suite under documentation 

 

Thanks Andrew

I decided to use the internal C4 agent + Chunk.io to send the image I need.  That said it was really easy to follow the instructions and get 1 set up, but if I go to set up a 2nd email/different image, the first one will not work anymore.  Is it possible to have multiple unique emails with different camera snap shots or is that not possible?

I have multiple Chunk.IO drivers in the project and tried to separate each email/camera image to its own instance but it is not working

Edited June 1, 2022 by eggzlot

[alanchow]

10 hours ago, eggzlot said:

Thanks Andrew

I decided to use the internal C4 agent + Chunk.io to send the image I need.  That said it was really easy to follow the instructions and get 1 set up, but if I go to set up a 2nd email/different image, the first one will not work anymore.  Is it possible to have multiple unique emails with different camera snap shots or is that not possible?

I have multiple Chunk.IO drivers in the project and tried to separate each email/camera image to its own instance but it is not working

You should be able to use mulitiple instances if you need simultaneous emails.  If however you can stagger them then you can just use one.  The service used to be chunk.io but now utilises our servers.

If you have issues please raise a ticket or call us for support.

[eggzlot]

10 hours ago, alanchow said:

You should be able to use mulitiple instances if you need simultaneous emails.  If however you can stagger them then you can just use one.  The service used to be chunk.io but now utilises our servers.

If you have issues please raise a ticket or call us for support.

So should I not be using chunk.io but another driver in the suite?

any images or steps to triggering multiple images would be helpful 

[South Africa C4 user]

I use chunk.io and create multiple images (via a single instance of chunk.io) and put them all in one email (c4 email agent).

[eggzlot]

2 hours ago, South Africa C4 user said:

I use chunk.io and create multiple images (via a single instance of chunk.io) and put them all in one email (c4 email agent).

can you share the steps or some screen shots?

the first situation: water sensor detects water > send two images

the images can be in the same email or two different emails that are sent back to back, with a 5 second delay, with a minute delay, whatever...

[South Africa C4 user]

48 minutes ago, eggzlot said:

can you share the steps or some screen shots?

the first situation: water sensor detects water > send two images

the images can be in the same email or two different emails that are sent back to back, with a 5 second delay, with a minute delay, whatever...

To get multiple urls for cameras.  I started off by having 3 Chunk.io drivers and using a variable that I added 1 to as each url was created (as they did not always finish in the order they started) and then I would send the e-mail once the variable reached 3.  This worked but was cumbersome and not very scalable / flexible.

I then changed my methodology as follows (but you need access to Pro for this - fortunately my dealer is very helpful).  I now use multiple While loops one after the other in my code to create the URLs. Essentially, I call chunk.io and run a while loop with a delay of 1 second in the loop (I should probably change this to 500ms or less as I programmed this years ago before I had a CA10).  The loop stops when a variable changes to tell me that chunk.io has created the url.  Then I move on to the next while loop. Essentially this involves 3 lines for each url creation and then one line sending the e-mail after each of the while loops has finished.  

Hope the above makes sense and helps.

[South Africa C4 user]

The code is essentially as follows.

Create a Boolean variable called URLcreated.

In the ChunkIO Driver, when the URL is created (I seem to recall this is on file create or something like that):

URLCreated = true

 

Main code:

URLcreated = False

Call ChunkIO to create a URL

while URLcreated = false

        Delay 1 second

URLstring1 = URLfromChunkIO

 

URLcreated = False

Call ChunkIO to create a URL

while URLcreated = false

   Delay 1 second

URLstring2 = URLfromChunkIO

etc.

You now have 2 URL strings for use in your e-mail which can be sent as the next line of code... you can create as many of these as you want.

The while line of code can only be put in by a dealer and is dangerous because it can hang your system.  I successfully hung my system once with a while command and had heart failure for a few hours...  In the above case, the system will keep issuing a delay 1 second command forever if URLcreated is never changed to True... Not nearly as serious as what some while loops can do...

[ControllAll]

After using just text with Pushover for many years, I decided to try and get security camera images in the Pushover messages as well. It works, in the sense that I get the notification on the phone, and it has a link to the image, and when I click the link (or have the Pushover client auto-open the link), I see the image. However, I was expecting the image to be integrated into the Pushover message, as per this blog post: https://blog.pushover.net/posts/pushing-images-with-pushover-30

Is this possible with the Notification Suite Pushover driver?