Notifications App, a few questions

  1. Are these triggers or conditions? For instance: If I monitor the open state of a door "only when mode is Sleep", will it alert me if a door is left open when the mode changes to Sleep?

  2. "For how long?" - Is this a delay? How long to wait after detection before sending a notification?

  3. "How frequently do you want to be notified? Only once within this number of minutes" - So if I set it to 5 minutes, does it mean it will send a notification repeatedly every 5 minutes?

Thanks!

I'm not sure if you still need these answered but I think you're overthinking this app a bit. Bending our minds to understand RM has caused permanent damage..lol.

Anyway, you can think of these more like basic ST app.

If you select when "Sensor opens" you will get notified as soon as the sensor becomes opened. Like a trigger I guess.

For how long - simply how long the sensor needs to stay open before sending the notification.
In RM speak: Delay notification (this long) Cancel on truth change.

Frequency - you won't get notifications for every event. If a new event occurs outside of the set time frame, you will get the notification. Eg. If you set this value to 10 minutes, and you open and close the sensor 100 times in 10 minutes, you will only get one notification. If you open and close the sensor again in the 11th minute, you will get another notification and the timer begins again.

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Great, that clears it all up. It's so simple I could hardly wrap my brain around it.

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I'm new to hubitat but have SMS from notifications working Except they do not appear to be limited to "Only once within this number of minutes" parameter of the notification rule. Since finding out about the 10 SMS limit per day I've written a temperature rule to give me a reading 4 times a day or once every 360 minutes. Unfortunately, I appear to get an arbitrary number of notifications sent to SMS. Any ideas what's gone wrong! Thanks for any help!. Best regards, Mike

I think I'll save you a but if unnecessary testing.
Native SMS will soon be deprecated and you will need to move to another messaging option.

You have quite a few options. Only the first will be completely free:

  • You can install the HE mobile app and send notifications there
  • there is also the built in Pushover option. Great notification app for both IOS and Android.
  • HE is adding native Twilio support if you REALLY need your notification to be SMS
  • If you are an Android user there is also a 3rd party Join API driver that I wrote. It supports both push and SMS notifications.
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There is currently a known issue with "once per day" in the Notifications app. Perhaps the same issue is happening with "once within number of minutes":

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No, there is no issue with this. There was sort of an issue about 'only once within X minutes', but that's been fixed. That issue was that it was only using X minute windows starting every X minutes of the hour, as opposed to an X minute window starting when the notification went out. There may well have been other effects from this, including mishandling of windows longer than an hour.

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On a similar train of thought, I'm trying to understand how "sensor close" logic works when it accompanies "sensor open".

For example, I have a notification setup on a contact sensor (door). I selected notification on open and on close, and I set "For how long?" to 5 minutes. Does the 5 minute delay apply to both the open and close? What I would want is for the notification to be sent after the contact is open for 5 minutes, but then notify immediately upon that same sensor closing. For gates, doors, garages, etc., that seems to be a more sensible interpretation.

Is that how it works? Or does the "on-close" notification also wait for the sensor to be closed for 5 minutes? I've read all the documentation, and it doesn't say (or I can't tell). I've tried just running tests, but I'm not sure what's hub latency versus Notifications logic. Anyone know how it's supposed to work?

If you want notifications from both open and close, you should use two different Notifiers. While it has both selections available, it is intended to be used for just one at a time. That would clarify for you what the timing means.

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But won't that notify on all Close events? My use-case (which I imagine would be typical?) is to notify on open after X minutes, then notify on close immediately. Guess RM4 is my primary option now?

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Yes, Notifier was never intended to support any logic about how it reports.