Secondary notification for Notifier when condition cleared

📢 Feedback Feature Requests
1

I was wondering if it would be possible to add a secondary notification text that would be sent when an initial notification condition is cleared. For instance, If I have a notification set to send "Garage door is open" when it has been open for some number of minutes, I would love to also be able to receive a message when the door is subsequently closed.

Notifier seems to already monitor the for the clear condition to be able to cancel repeating notifications, so hopefully this isn't too far of a leap. I'm currently doing this in RM, but have been trying to move as many of those rules out as possible.

Thanks!

2

I was going to suggest a separate instance of Notifier for the opposite event, but I see now that you might want RM to handle the notification only if the other condition remained true for long enough. :thinking:

3

You can get notified as to both open and close events. And then use %value% in the notification to say which event it is. But, with the delay specified that would apply to each event.

You know you can just use two Notifier app instances, one for open with a delay, and the other for close without a delay.

4

The problem with that is that I only want to know that the garage door has been closed if it had been opened for more than 10 minutes. I don't need notifications every time it closes.

5

Yep, I only want the secondary notification if the time delay for the initial notification has been met.

6

This is clearly in the domain of Rule Machine, not Notifier. Adding more logic to Notifier just turns it into mini-Rule Machine...;

7

I understand wanting to limit scope creep in order to prevent over-complication of these specialized apps, but is it really adding more logic? Notifier already monitors for the clear condition in order to "Stop repeat upon next event." All this would do is allow another notification to go out when that clear condition is triggered.

8

It adds more UI, and logic. It's the UI feature creep that is the real issue. Adding "another notification" means doubling up the notification UI. It just never stops...

9

Ok, thanks for considering.

10

In case you're wondering how to do the whole thing in RM or have looked at "old" examples, I think the below would be a relatively simple way to do it:

Trigger: Contact closed

Actions:

IF (Private Boolean is False) THEN
  Set Private Boolean True 
  Notify "%device% has been closed"
END-IF 
Cancel Delayed Actions
Wait for events: Contact opened
Delay 0:05:00 (cancelable)
Set Private Boolean False
Notify "%device% has been open for 5 minutes!"

If you want the "repeat" functionality from Notifier, it gets a bit more complicated, but not too much. I always recommend this post from Bruce with examples of how to do repeated notifications in RM.

11

Thanks. My current garage door rule is still running in RM3 and is working fine.

Just out of curiosity, though. Wouldn't this rule still send a notification if the door was closed within the five minute window since it is only triggered on an open command? As I read it, there is no way that a close would cancel the delayed actions.

13

Whoops, fixed. But now I'm not sure I like it better than other examples you may have seen. :thinking: