Send Pushover notifications with pictures and hyperlinks

[staind204]

Thanks for the super tutorial. I was able to get this set up very quickly with the great guide. Only change I made was to change WAN to LAN so I would get the private IP vs. Public IP.

There is something weird going on though. It seems that some of the alerts to Pushover are coming in pretty late. For example, for a trigger that has a timestamp of 9:01 PM in BI (and in the attached picture), I didn't get the push alert until 9:20 PM. For an alert that happened at 9:20 PM, I got the push alert at 9:27. Verizon is super unreliable though so maybe it's a carrier issue?

Also in some cases, the picture coming through doesn't actually have the person that triggered the motion in it (so it's either snapping a picture just before the alert or after). Not sure what's causing that as the "alert" picture in BI is correct...

Any thoughts on what could be causing these couple of issues?

 

[jaydeel]

Are you sending pushover notifications from the Trigger tab Immediate actions Action set? If so, try disabling them… the &ALERT_PATH macro may be expanding to old alert jpgs... Send pushover notifications from only the alerts tab Action set.

Are you also using email, SMS, push… actions in the Trigger tab and/or Alerts tab Action sets? If so, try disabling them…. Under specific circumstances (link), these actions create a temporary jpg image used by the&ALERT_PATH macro.

Are you using AI with the setting to use the ‘Begin analysis with motion-leading image’? Try disabling the setting.

Are you using AI without the setting 'Burn label mark-up onto alert imaged' image’? Try enabling the setting.

 

[staind204]

Are you sending pushover notifications from the Trigger tab Immediate actions Action set? If so, try disabling them… the &ALERT_PATH macro may be expanding to old alert jpgs... Send pushover notifications from only the alerts tab Action set.

Are you also using email, SMS, push… actions in the Trigger tab and/or Alerts tab Action sets? If so, try disabling them…. Under specific circumstances (link), these actions create a temporary jpg image used by the&ALERT_PATH macro.

Are you using AI with the setting to use the ‘Begin analysis with motion-leading image’? Try disabling the setting.

Are you using AI without the setting 'Burn label mark-up onto alert imaged' image’? Try enabling the setting.

I totally dropped the ball entering in my curl parameters. I had it set up in triggers -> immediate action instead of in the alerts tab. I disabled it in triggers and moved it to the alerts tab. I verified my AI settings and I did have ‘Begin analysis with motion-leading image’ on so I toggled that off.

I did another quick test and this time I got 3 alerts almost instantly. When I look at the BI alerts on the server there's only one clip though. Any idea why I'd get a burst of 3 pushover alerts?

 

[jaydeel]

Any idea why I'd get a burst of 3 pushover alerts?

Nothing comes to mind... unless you have 3 enabled curl actions! ... you're sure Immediate actions curl actions are are disabled?

 

[staind204]

Nothing comes to mind... unless you have 3 enabled curl actions! ... you're sure Immediate actions curl actions are are disabled?

You're good. I was sure but when I checked it was enabled again. I just went ahead and deleted from immediate actions so it can't get enabled again. I did a quick test and it seems to be working, I'll check it again tomorrow to be sure. Thanks again, getting this set up is huge!

 

[rdxny]

OK, so now I am having similar issue, where it worked fine previously. .I am getting pushover alert on phone every 2 minutes or so. Same alert, same jpg, just resent over and over. Alert is priority 1, not 2, in the curl setup.
I checked Trigger/immediate actions: blank.
On the alerts tab, for now I have When: Never, and "On Alert" / action set is NOT enabled and each alert I have listed is "NOT enabled".
Each camera is set to sync with camera 1 and that is where I have set this up.. .so no spurious settings in other cameras: They mirror cam1.
Yet I am still getting these alerts sent to Pushover even with all that disabled.
If I shut down Blue Iris (and shut the pc down), the Pushover alerts stop, so they aren't being generated by Pushover server or phone.
What am I missing? All this worked flawlessly till this am...

 

[rdxny]

well, I didn't find the cause, but I deleted the main camera that the others copied the alert settings from, and manually re-added all the settings, and it is now working as expected. That's good, though it bugs me to not figure out what was causing the constant triggers! But all good now.

 

[jaydeel]

well, I didn't find the cause, but I deleted the main camera that the others copied the alert settings from, and manually re-added all the settings, and it is now working as expected. That's good, though it bugs me to not figure out what was causing the constant triggers! But all good now.

Glad it's working now.

If it happens again you can search the registry for spurious entries.
Navigate to the path below, then type Ctrl-F to search for a term specific to the curl command...
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Perspective Software\Blue Iris\Cameras\CAMERA_LONG_NAME

 

[prsmith777]

Followed the first post instructions and ran into a difficulty with curl. When troubleshooting using cmd I get this error:

• Trying 104.20.43.236:443...
• Connected to api.pushover.net (104.20.43.236) port 443 (#0)
• schannel: disabled automatic use of client certificate
• ALPN: offers http/1.1
• schannel: next InitializeSecurityContext failed: Unknown error (0x80092012) - The revocation function was unable to check revocation for the certificate.
• Closing connection 0

quick google search led me to the following parameter --ssl-no-revoke which solved the problem

Not sure why I get this error but all is working now with the extra parameter.

 

[cybernetics1d]

@prsmith777, googling that error code 0x80092012 seems to indicate it's a TLS issue. It's possible you're trying to connect to Pushover using TLS 1.1 or older from the Blue Iris PC and it's being rejected by their server due to using outdated security protocols.

@jaydeel, do you know by chance if Pushover support GIF or mp4 video format file? Would it possible for us to generate 10-seconds GIF sending to Pushover similar to what Blue Iris app does? If not, I wonder if it's possible to generate 10 second clips sending it over Pushover? Just curious if you have considered this or looked at this before.

 

[jaydeel]

@jaydeel, do you know by chance if Pushover support GIF or mp4 video format file? Would it possible for us to generate 10-seconds GIF sending to Pushover similar to what Blue Iris app does? If not, I wonder if it's possible to generate 10 second clips sending it over Pushover? Just curious if you have considered this or looked at this before.

Per the API documentation (Pushover: API), I'd say not.

Here's an excerpt from the Attachments section ...

Attachments
As of version 3.0 of our iOS, Android, and Desktop apps, Pushover messages can include an image attachment. When received by a device, it will attempt to download the image and display it with the notification. If this fails or takes too long, the notification will be displayed without it and the image download can be retried inside the Pushover app. Note that, like messages, once attachments are downloaded by the device, they are deleted from our servers and only stored on the device going forward. Attachments uploaded for devices that are not running at least version 3.0 of our apps will be discarded as they cannot be displayed by those devices.

Attachment files must be directly sent to our API with your other message parameters and cannot be included as a URL or other parameter that would instruct our servers or the device clients to download the file. This is done for efficiency and for the privacy of our users to avoid making requests to non-Pushover URLs without their knowledge.

Each message may only include one attachment, and attachments are currently limited to 2,621,440 bytes (2.5 megabytes). Attempting to send attachments larger than this size will be rejected with an API error (or server error for extremely large file attempts). Any resizing of images to fit under this limit must be done on the sending side before making the API request.

 

[staind204]

I have a few pushover questions around the 10k limit per month.

1) if I "snooze" pushover alerts, do alerts still count toward the 10k limit? For example, I have people at my house for a party so I know I'll be getting a lot of motion triggers. If i dont want to eat into my 10k limit, Can I simply snooze pushover or do I have to disable motion alerts in BI?
2) how do I check how many of the 10k I have uses at any given time?

 

[wittaj]

I would assume since the alerts still show in Pushover, they would count towards the limit.

You can log in to the website to see how many you have used, but I have found it to be terribly inaccurate. One month I checked and it said I only used 4.

I created a profile in BI to turn off alerts for the reason you said - friend over or cutting the grass or what not.

 

[staind204]

I would assume since the alerts still show in Pushover, they would count towards the limit.

You can log in to the website to see how many you have used, but I have found it to be terribly inaccurate. One month I checked and it said I only used 4.

I created a profile in BI to turn off alerts for the reason you said - friend over or cutting the grass or what not.

Thanks, I was thinking of making a separate profile to accomplish this as well. Id hate to be out and waste 100s of alerts because my wife is outside or something. Does the profile have to have full administrative rights or is there some kind of a more limited access that still allows toggling motion alerts on and off?

 

[cybernetics1d]

Per the API documentation (Pushover: API), I'd say not.

Here's an excerpt from the Attachments section ...

Attachments
As of version 3.0 of our iOS, Android, and Desktop apps, Pushover messages can include an image attachment. When received by a device, it will attempt to download the image and display it with the notification. If this fails or takes too long, the notification will be displayed without it and the image download can be retried inside the Pushover app. Note that, like messages, once attachments are downloaded by the device, they are deleted from our servers and only stored on the device going forward. Attachments uploaded for devices that are not running at least version 3.0 of our apps will be discarded as they cannot be displayed by those devices.

Attachment files must be directly sent to our API with your other message parameters and cannot be included as a URL or other parameter that would instruct our servers or the device clients to download the file. This is done for efficiency and for the privacy of our users to avoid making requests to non-Pushover URLs without their knowledge.

Each message may only include one attachment, and attachments are currently limited to 2,621,440 bytes (2.5 megabytes). Attempting to send attachments larger than this size will be rejected with an API error (or server error for extremely large file attempts). Any resizing of images to fit under this limit must be done on the sending side before making the API request.

I've found this link from Pushover back 2019. It looks like they do support animated GIF. However, I googled around and it doesn't appear we can tap into BlueIris's built in API for generating that 10 seconds animated GIF it uses for the iOS push notification.

Thanks, I was thinking of making a separate profile to accomplish this as well. Id hate to be out and waste 100s of alerts because my wife is outside or something. Does the profile have to have full administrative rights or is there some kind of a more limited access that still allows toggling motion alerts on and off?

What I'd do in your situation is to go into BI settings > Profile tab and pick one of the 7 profiles and give it a name like "Limited Alerting". Set an expiration timer from 480 to 60 or 120 minutes depending how long you want this profile to stay active before it revert back to its default "Active" profile. Then within each of the Camera setting, go into Alert tabs, find the one for your pushover notification and unselected the profile 3 (or whatever number you gave it the name "Limited Alerting") and then hit OK to save the setting. Repeat for each of the camera you'd like to turn off Pushover notifications whenever the camera is in this profile.

Then whenever before you have a party or have people over that could trigger hundred of alerts from Blue Iris, you go into Blue Iris and change the profile from "Active" (if that's the default profile you're using now) to the "Limited Alerting" profile you created above. This way, BI will continue to record upon motion detection as normal so you can review clips later, but it won't alert you via Pushover while it's in this "Limited Alerting" profile.

 

[jaydeel]

I've found this link from Pushover back 2019. It looks like they do support animated GIF.

Cool.
I never looked at the old blog posts.

The API does not explicitly mention GIFs. I did do a text search before replying.

However, I googled around and it doesn't appear we can tap into BlueIris's built in API for generating that 10 seconds animated GIF it uses for the iOS push notification.

Send Ken an email requesting this.

 

[cybernetics1d]

I'll drop their support an email when I get a chance. Maybe he will consider adding it a as a feature on newer release.

 

[prsmith777]

@prsmith777, googling that error code 0x80092012 seems to indicate it's a TLS issue. It's possible you're trying to connect to Pushover using TLS 1.1 or older from the Blue Iris PC and it's being rejected by their server due to using outdated security protocols.

Perhaps, but I am on Windows 10 Ver 21H2 which uses TLS 1.2. I checked my registry and there are no settings that would suggest I have TLS 1.1 as an override default

 

[scoob8000]

After years of the ATT mms gateway giving me fits, I'm trying this route.

But my problem is I save hi res alert images and I don't want to change that. But some of my cams have alert images close to 4mb in size and over the pushover limit.

Has anyone made a script to resize an alert image before sending it? In the meantime all I can see to do is use the pushover email gateway since BI can resize for the email attachment.

 

[TonyR]

After years of the ATT mms gateway giving me fits, I'm trying this route.

But my problem is I save hi res alert images and I don't want to change that. But some of my cams have alert images close to 4mb in size and over the pushover limit.

Has anyone made a script to resize an alert image before sending it? In the meantime all I can see to do is use the pushover email gateway since BI can resize for the email attachment.

Is there any way to have the cam's "On alert" process a "Do" command that consists of a "snapshot" and have that sent to Pushover?