Issue with Rules and email Notifier

WebThings
#1

I have several issues issues with a pair of rules that I set up. The first rule seems OK. It activates if my front door is opened and my phone is not present. It kicks off a 10 minute timer (that duration usually allows the Presence thing to detect my phone).

The second rule activates when the timer elapses and again my phone is not present.

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The issues are

  1. The first issue is that it doesn’t seem possible to configure the Email Sender. If I click on the triangle at the bottom right corner, it disappears. Click again and it appears again. I’d like to be able to configure one of the other actions that the notifier provides.
  2. The email sent out has absolutely no body, so my mail clients can’t handle it it. Frequently but not always the message flashes onto the screen and then vanishes.
  3. It seems quite hit and miss miss whether the rule triggers at all. A couple of times, after I expected the rule to trigger, I opened the rule to edit it and the mini email gets sent.

I’m running the gateway on a Raspberry Pi 4. I’ve checked the rules in Windows Firefox and Chrome and iPad Safari. My mail clients are MS Outlook and iPad email.

#2

I don’t have an answer for your issue, but I am curious as to how you are doing Phone Detection. Care to share?

#3

I’m using the Network presence detector add on, with Arping checked and a manual installation of Arping on the Raspberry Pi

With this, in the vast majority of the cases, my phone’s presence is detected within 10 mins. I have the settings to remember presence for 45 minutes as that seems the best compromise to avoid false absences.

#4

Nice. Thanks for the info. I would like to try something like this myself.

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#5

@chas_iot You’ll want to use the “Email Sender Notification” block, rather than “Email Sender”. Then, you can configure it.

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