Mobile App's Google Dependance (Android)

[aaiyar]

@fbe7457f208e8606336b

Is there any chance that Hubitat's devs might consider making the app a little less dependency on Google in the future?

Not going to happen.

If you need SMS that works with a mail server that uses TLS, then look into @erktrek's integration, linked to below:

Email Notifications Driver using Node/sendmail on a PI

Not sure if people are interested but just created a very crude driver & Node App that allows you to send emails via a notification driver and a server running Node & sendmail. The driver just sends a simple REST post call to the Node http://[your ip]:3000/email which parses the text and uses sendmail to send out. I am using this in place of SMS alerts for now - US Cell providers have an email to txt message email address for each phone #. Again this is very crude and unsecure. Will be lookin…

Or use the built-in integration for Twilio, or @ritchierich's integration for Plivo, linked to below:

[Deprecated] Plivo SMS and Voice Notification Driver

Update 11-03-2023: Plivo no longer supports individual developers. Accounts must be created with "work" email domains and they do not support email addresses from personal domains. HE natively includes a Twilio driver that allows you to send SMS messages. Plivo is a competitor to Twilio and is a little cheaper so this might be a good alternative for the community. Please view the Plivo Pricing page for specific details. For example at the time of this post, the monthly fee for a dedicated ph…

[fbe7457f208e8606336b]

I don't need TLS support for email...my server supports plain text connections. For this purpose, that would be acceptable although not ideal. Still, I'll take a look at that discussion.

The Twilio/Plivo integration option is interesting. Not as good as email, but still interesting. I'll take a look.

Thanks for the tips.

I'm glad that these two options (GSF-dependent apps, or a hit-or-miss community email app) are good enough for most people. I just wish we could improve this single-point-of-failure model.

[aaiyar]

@fbe7457f208e8606336b

single-point-of-failure

The point of failure would be the extraordinarily rare customer who:

1. Uses an Android
2. But doesn’t want to use the Play Store

In my mind, software should be built to accommodate the needs of the majority of users. Which is what Hubitat (or for that matter, Pushover) have done.

[fbe7457f208e8606336b]

The point of failure would be the extraordinarily rare customer

Very true, although you're much more likely to get such people here, than using a product like SmartThings or Google Home.

[aaiyar]

@fbe7457f208e8606336b

although you're much more likely to get such people here

No. You're most likely to find them using Home Assistant.

FWIW, in 3+ years, yours is the first request of this nature that I'm aware of.

[rocketwiz]

@fbe7457f208e8606336b

you can outright side-load them.

Exactly my point. If you trust the APK source then that's not a problem. Me, not so much.

@lcw731

Use pushover.

Great app, love it (as it works on node red as well ). However, as it's paid, how would OP get it without the play store? Having said that both the HE mobile app and Pushover work great for me. In fact notifications come about a second faster on the HE app.

@fbe7457f208e8606336b

Despite costing a subscription fee

Nope - Pushover is a once off upfront payment.

[marktheknife]

@fbe7457f208e8606336b

Perhaps not, but SMS used to be supported, and was then removed.

That’s also not accurate. They decided they can’t keep paying for users to send SMS messages. You can still send an SMS via the built-in integration with Twilio, but you’ll have to bear the cost of sending those messages yourself.

@fbe7457f208e8606336b

subscription fee

Pushover doesn’t charge a subscription fee for personal use less than 10,000 messages per month. That’s a one-time fee per operating system.

[marktheknife]

@aaiyar

FWIW, in 3+ years, yours is the first request of this nature that I'm aware of.

It’s come up once before:

MicroG anyone?

I run CalyxOS on my Pixel 3xl phone. It's a good android-based platform for privacy minded users. CalyxOS uses MicroG to replace the google services. For those unfamiliar, MicroG mimics the location, notification, and other functions that Android apps typically obtains from google services, but is open-sourced and (again) more private vs what google offers. The vast majority of android apps run just fine using MicroG services -- but some don't. I suspect the Hubitat Android app may not beca…

[geekdaddy]

google services = significant privacy compromises. A lot of debates about whether this is important or not. However, there are a growing number of folks who have personal and societal concerns about it -- and want solutions that enable greater privacy and freedom from these platforms.

There are A LOT of apps that work just fine with MicroG and/or no services at all. Not certain why the Hubitat app doesn't play well with MicroG -- must have some dependencies on google-specific services hooks that other apps don't require. Would love to see the Hubitat team resolve this but understand they have limited resources and must focus on the ones that have the broadest impact for their users.

I presently rely on a Telegram bot for hubitat messages. Not ideal (for me) but it works well.

[rlithgow1]

If you're simply looking for an android dashboard you can try Hubitat Dashboard for Android (not made by hubitat) by @jpage4500 or @gslender 's Hubivue (www.hubivue.com)

[marktheknife]

@geekdaddy

Would love to see the Hubitat team resolve this but understand they have limited resources and must focus on the ones that have the broadest impact for their users.

I think this is what it comes down to.

This is of course a crowd that can appreciate the goal of keeping one’s personal information local when possible, and private/anonymized when local isn’t an option.

But unless there’s more of a critical mass of users clamoring for this issue to be addressed, the developers presumably have bigger fish to fry at any given time.

[fbe7457f208e8606336b]

Exactly. Thank you @geekdaddy ! It's a growing concern for a number of people, but the majority have not yet really considered the implications of integrating platforms like Google into every part of their life. Case in point, this website uses Google trackers. However, we can block those without breaking the site. That is not the case with the app. But unless users speak up about their concerns, nothing will change.

I appreciate the amount of effort required to make a change like this, as I said earlier. But I asked because I wanted to know where people's minds were at, on this topic. Now we know. Google "fan boys" will always be just that, but I hope that others will be willing to consider the implications of this decision.

---

The Telegram bot is an interesting idea. How do you implement that?

[fbe7457f208e8606336b]

I'm looking for a way the hub can communicate with me directly, in a "push" manner. I'll look into this app. It includes GSF as well, but doesn't crash as soon as I open it, so this might have a chance of working.

[rlithgow1]

Those apps are just dashboards. If you want push you need to use either pushover or the hubitat app but I know you don't want to do that. Twilo might work for you

[geekdaddy]

Here's the solution for using a Telegram Bot with Hubitat: [RELEASE] Telegram Bot API (notifications)

..and an open source Telegram client for Android that I use to receive Telegram notifications: Telegram-FOSS/Notifications.md at master · Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS · GitHub

[Alan_F]

If the main issue is notifications, you might want to look into Gotify. It's a locally hosted notification server with an Android app. I run it in Docker on a raspberry pi.

I would expect the Gotify app can probably run without Google play services since the whole purpose of the project seems to be not having to rely on cloud services, but you'd have to confirm that.

Once the server is up you can either send notifications by sending a http post from a rule manager action, or it should be fairly simple to write a notification device driver for Hubitat that talks to the server.

You need to use port forwarding, reverse proxy, or VPN to be able to connect back to your LAN to get notifications when away from home.

[geekdaddy]

FYI I recently updated my phone (prior one was getting old and tired). I switched from CalyxOS and microG services to grapheneOS with sandboxed google GMS services. For those unfamiliar, the grapheneos option seeks to improve privacy and application functionality by "sandboxing" each application as well as the google services that may be used to support it. You can also control if an app has network function or not. It's not 100% private - an app using GMS is still sharing data with google if network function is enabled but only for that app and through an anonymous google acct and VPN network. Having said that -- google is still very good at using other attributes of the service to potentially figure out more about who you are and what you do.

I digress.... Using the grapheneOS and hubitat app running on sandboxed GMS, the app and notifications seem to work properly.

[fbe7457f208e8606336b]

That does sound like a more "complete" solution. Yes, I will do some research on that, thank you!
It is a lot more involved than I had hoped, but at least it is an option.

For someone looking to run the app on a Kindle, this probably wouldn't be reasonable. But for a power user willing to invest the time, definitely possible.

[fbe7457f208e8606336b]

Valid point. If you don't mind sandboxed proprietary Google code running on your device, this is a functional option. It contains the "damage" at least, although you're right, they are quire good at identifying individuals, so I'm not certain how effective that is. Still, it's far better than vanilla, and perhaps a good compromise.