Not prompted to enter SMS phone number?

I'm a new Hubitat user. I'm setting up a water sensor in Safety Monitor. I can enter text for a message, but I don't get prompted for a phone number. I looked all over for a phone setting, and then see in the docs that I should be prompted for it, which is not happening.

I believe that sms has been retired. You can use push notifications, though. The HE app has one and also a lot of people use pushover. It costs, but only 4 bucks and works great. there are a few other push notification apps too. Not exclusively those two.

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And welcome to hubitat. I hope your experience is smooth.

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Our documents are not up to date. See this post: Changes to SMS notification service

I am new to Hubitat so I never used the native SMS interface. Last weekend I setup the Twilio interface and it works very well. I get a text within a second or two of the trigger. Good luck.

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@aab64feadddf215e92f7
@ca01

If you have an RPi or something that can run sendmail and node, there's a great integration from @erktrek that lets you send all the SMS notifications you want through your cell providers email-to-sms gateway.

I've been using it for the last 3 months. Works really well!

Thanks to everyone for a lot of good info.

I know I'm going to really enjoy Hubitat. I'm starting automation with a blank slate. My previous house had a earlier set of X10 switches, with Insteon added in. So, having a customizable local hub with all the choices in devices is like being in automation heaven.

@aalyar - I'll be adding an RPi in a phase 2, and will definitely try integrating sendmail. I've used that previously in PC apps.

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Yeah, I ran into this issue last night after adding my 1st device (water sensor). Native SMS was one of the reasons I bought my Hubitat. Now I'm looking into whether I want to use Twilio or the Hubitat mobile app. Does anyone know if the latter installs a service on Android that is always listening for alerts?

It does. That being said, if you have a Raspberry Pi (or anything running Linux that is always on), there is a community integration that permits SMS notification.

I've been using it for about 5-6 months for all my notifications from Hubiat and it has never failed. And there's no limits on the number of messages that can be sent per day.

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For what it's worth, I really like Pushover. It costs about $5 for a one time purchase, and you get 7500 notifications per month. I use an obscene number of notifications for all kinds of stuff, and top out at about 800/month.

You set up their app on your phone, they give you an API key that you enter into the app on Hubitat (one of Hubitat's built-in apps). And, yup, it always listens for incoming notifications. The delay between notification from the hub to the device is tiny -- nearly instant -- of course that will depend on having decent network and phone signal...

The thing that I REALLY like about it is that you can send "normal" notifications as well as "priority" notifications. The priority notification can be set to use your phone's "Alarm" channel, over-riding your phone's "do-not-disturb" hours so that if you have alarm conditions, they can wake you up, or interrupt your meetings.

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So, there's a built-in Pushover app?

Given the choice between using Pushover and the Hubitat mobile app to receive alerts/notification, which option are most users selecting?

Pushover is more versatile. And not exorbitant in cost.

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Hubitat doesn't collect data on us, so I'm not sure anyone really knows. :slight_smile: Lots of people use Pushover both because it was an option long before the (relatively new) mobile app existed and because it provides more features (priority notifications). I just use the Hubitat mobile app because it's free and does all I need (and before that, I pushed them to the SmartThings app via Other Hub, which I'd now probably use HubConnect for...but again, no need).

You can certainly start with one and try another if you like it better.

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I like the mobile app so far but haven't yet set it up as a notification device. I'll probably do that tonight and try it out.