Ask HN: Simple developer-friendly chat app for home automation?
I have various small projects and home automation systems that I want to be able to invoke remotely and receive alerts from, without setting up a web server and UI.
I used to use Notify17 for receiving alerts, but since this shut down I've been forced back to email, and am now looking for a solution to cover both receiving alerts and sending basic commands.
These are the options I've considered already:
* Pushover - Fine for receiving alerts, multiple recipients supported. No options to respond to them.
* Telegram - Sending + receiving. Might be a bit heavy for my use case, and would be better not having the bot publicly accessible. Also makes managing notifications (DND etc) more difficult when also receiving human messages.
* Gotify - No iOS app.
* Prowl - Most likely candidate for receiving notifications at the moment unless I find a duplex option
* Now Push - Looks promising, but too early to start developing on
* Threema - Ideal, but relatively expensive ($70 setup + $0.05/msg + $0.05/img)
Essentially what I'm looking for is an app with a chat-like UI which converts messages to a webhook, and allows me to send responses via an API. Ideally preshared key auth, no OAuth.
On a related note, if anyone else is missing Notify17 and thinking about building a replacement I'd be willing to pay up to $15/mo for a tool that ingests webhooks, allows me to reformat the response with a templating language and sends notifications to my phone. As long as you only want to message just a few contacts, Threema has an unlimited plan for a limited number of recipients (15ppl/~5€pm - https://threema.ch/en/broadcast/pricing). Only the gateway service you listed is quite expensive. IFTTT is less than $15 a month and will allow you submit notification data via a webhook, reformat it with a template and present the notification on your phone. An existing IFTTT integration might also meet your need for data flow the other direction. I use Telegram for automations like sending a message to my phone when a task on the computer ends. WIsh Whatsapp had it so I could send it directly to my colleagues.. you can always try developing your own plugins for slack or discord, maybe there’s already something for you: Rocket.chat could be workable. I did experiment with usinging it with a bot that could call an API. Slack?