I had signed up for Pushover a year or two ago but didn't use it as I was using Verizon's email-to-text gateway via a couple of integrations. It was just easier not having to coax family members to install "another app" (with much rolling of eyes and sighing like they were being asked to dust the back yard) to receive laundry and other chore notifications they mostly didn't want anyway.
Things were working well w/the texting, but recently Verizon has done something (not sure if intentional or not) that has significantly messed up their email-to-text gateway for me. I was having 24 hour and longer delays from email sent to text arrival. VZW support put in a ticket for me but nothing changed, so I was kind of pushed into using Pushover.
Have to admit after using it for the past week or two, it is:
Super fast - notifications arrive immediately - I open a door and the notification hits my phone immediately
Very reliable - haven't missed one yet
Extremely configurable - lots of options I'm not actually using yet, waited to be sure I was happy w/it. I am, so will commence w/some tweaking.
Now I just need to borrow my wife's phone for a few minutes to slip the app onto it so I can resume jabbing her w/notifications when she leaves her laundry in the washer or dryer, or leaves windows in the office open when we go to bed.
I do think custom sounds is the one I need to focus on first - different notification sounds for normal stuff (laundry's ready, doors opened), vs. warnings about potential problems (doors open too long, leaks, etc.).
But only if she is willing to install/use the HE mobile app. That was a complete non-starter, she removed the HE app the day after I installed it. She's not a big fan of home automation generally, and she found "...all that stuff in the app..." confusing, since she never needed it or wanted to use it. That's in part why I was using texting via the email-text gateway.
I do think that Pushover will win her over, as it only does notifications, I'll be able to send cooler and presumably clearer looking notifications (color, bold, etc.), I can put a Pushover widget on one of her side-screens so she can swipe over to read notifications easily, and I can customize the notification sounds to her preferences. Hoping for a win...
Wow, my VZW text alerts stopped working a few years ago and when I called about it they said it hadn't been working for years before that as the servers were decommissioned that did that. And they couldn't understand why mine had worked for several years past that time. That's in Ohio. Oddly it had stopped for a quite a while and then started working again and eventually stopped working totally. I definitely miss that.
I'm mostly using the Sonos integration for my notifications but of course that only works around the house. I do run the pushover as well and probably need to look into using it a little more effectively. Did not get into The Voice stuff with it
