New plugin for Telegram

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@Dan thank you for your reply. This is exactly the line i edited. Not sure what was going wrong but it dit not work after editing it a few times. Now i startet with a fresh installation of your plugin and ediited it with “vim” and not with “nano” it is working now. Maybe there was a hidden character or sth. like that.

Now it is fine Thank you!

Pimatic-Telegram v1.1.8 is now available.
1.1.8 includes updating the telebot package to the current version, including changes and fixes which can be reviewed at github.
Also the feature to disable 2FA has been added to the device configuration (disable2FA - default=off)

Version 1.1.9 is now available and adds the following rule syntax:
when telegram received “command” then send [text | …] telegram to sender “whatever you fancy”

‘sender’ is a placeholder for the user sending the command identified in the predicate, and get resolved to the actual user upon execution of the action.
’…telegram to sender…’ can therefore only be used in combination with a ‘telegram received “…”’ predicate.

@Dan, thanks for this wonderful plugin!

I would like to use telegram to trigger a simple script, while also passing two variables along from the same message. So a telegram message would look like this: “keyword variable1 variable2”

Assuming there isn’t yet a way to make this work, my question would be: is it possible to change the plugin in such a way that variables can be appended to a message containing a key word?

Hello @zomer,
Great to hear you are happy with the plugin!

Can you clarify your use case scenario? Are you referring to a message sent to Pimatic from a client, or the “send telegram message…” action which sends messages from Pimatic to a client? The latter already allows for Pimatic variables to be used, although not based on a preceding keyword.

Perhaps if you describe a real life scenario on what you would like to achieve it helps to understand what functionality is needed and how to best implement it?

Hi Dan, my apologies for being so vague. I made a really simple script that calls a sed function to replace id names as they can not be replaced from the Pimatic ui. The script looks like this:

#!/bin/bash

if [ -z ${2+x} ]
then
        echo geen argumenten meegegeven 
else
        sudo service pimatic stop; sed -i "s/$1/$2/g" $HOME/pimatic-app/config.json;sudo service pimatic start
fi

So I would like to send a message to my Telegram Pimatic bot containing a keyword that calls the script and the original id name, and the id name in which it should be changed. Something like this: ¨changeid.sh oldname newname¨

Hey guys, want to ask if somebody else has the same problem as my using the TelegramReceiverDevice. I have problems with the authorization function.
Sometimes after I enter the pin I get no response from the plugin, so it is not possible to trigger a rule. When I now open the TelegramReceiverDevice in the device section of Pimatic and save it without any change the device gets recreated and with this I get the response I was waiting for and I can trigger my rules.
With the old version I hadn’t observed the behavior.

@zomer The functionality you seek is now clear. I will implement in the next version.

@ortin I do not mind to try and reproduce the error, can you post your plugin and device config (without the sensitive information obviously)

Hi Dan,
sure here you are.

}
  "apiToken": "xxxxxxxxx",
  "debug": true,
  "recipients": [
    {
      "name": "Daniel",
      "userChatId": "xxxxxxxxx",
      "enabled": true,
      "admin": true
    }
  ],
  "plugin": "telegram",
  "active": true
}

and

}
  "secret": "xxxx",
  "auth_timeout": 5,
  "stateStartup": true,
  "confirmDeviceAction": false,
  "id": "homationbot-telegram-empfaenger",
  "name": "HomationBot \"Telegram\" Empfänger",
  "class": "TelegramReceiverDevice",
  "confirmRuleTrigger": false
}

@Dan that is super kind, thanks!

@zomer and all:
Pimatic-Telegram version 1.1.10 has been released.
This version includes the new feature as requested by @zomer and logged on Github as #35 - Extend “telegram received <command>” predicate to process command arguments.

It is now possibile to include one or more variables in the action corresponding to a “telegram received” predicate. The arguments will get resolved when the keyword with arguments is sent from the telegram client to Pimatic, after which the rule action gets executed.

The predicate syntax is described below:
when telegram received <keyword> with arguments then execute "<command> \$arg1 \$arg2..."
…with arguments - informs the telegram plugin arguments are to be expected.
\$arg1 \$argN… - the placeholder variables which get resolved when the message is received. Make sure to escape the $ with a backslash character

@ortin So far I have not been able to reproduce the issue. If you have more details, or if anyone else also experiences this, please let me know.

@Dan fantastic update, thank you so much!

@dan said in New plugin for Telegram:

@ortin So far I have not been able to reproduce the issue.

Hey Dan, after I delete the old telegram plugin folder and 1.1.9 (before your update) was freshly installed I seems to work again. No idea what happend.

One more Idea for a further version. Would be nice when you make the receiver response texts like “Please provide the passcode…” and Passcode correct, timeout set to…" customizable for the user. I adapt the relevant code after each update by myself.

@ortin good to hear the issue seems to have resolved itself.
Regarding customizable text, this would be a huge effort, with limited benefit.
I am assuming you are modifying text strings to translate into another language (German?). When I have some time I’ll have a look into providing multilanguage support (Think the pimatic base code does it as well). Then I would only need users from the community to translate text strings one-off and I can incorporate in the distribution. Does that work for you?

Yes, this should work as well. Never thought that it is a big effort.

Hi @Dan i have a question about your telegram plugin. I discovered a strange problem receiving notifications over a limited or bad network connection. We have an outdoor station connected via UMTS with and a very slow bandwith about 64 kb/s.

Sending notifacations works fine all time but receiving is a problem. If we restart pimatic or reload the telegram-plugin we can trigger rules via receiving messages, but after a few minutes there is no action on incoming messages - outgoing (sending) is still working.

If i restart the telegram-receiver-device it detects all the “open” requests and triggers the rules.

I am not sure why this happens maybe it is a connection timout to the telegram-api. I tried setting the “retryTimeout” to 0 to avoid some timeouts but without an effect.

Some ideas here? Thanks!

I suspect I have the same problem as @FritzBox360, but with a normal DSL connection. After some time, Telegram no longer reacts to messages from outside.

@flop2006 does ist work if you restart/reload the telegram-receiver-device or pimatic?