APNT-76 - Using Notifications in Fibaro Home Center

This guide shows how to use notifications in the Fibaro Home Center 2 (HC2) and Home Center Lite (HCL).

The Fibaro Home Center can send email, SMS (text) and Push notifications when particular things happen in your system. These can include confirmation that particular actions have been completed, that sensors have been tripped or that the system has detected something serious like smoke or flood.

Notifications are setup separately in the Home Center so that the same notification can be used by several scenes.

Creating Notifications in Fibaro Home Center

To do this you need to ensure that HC is configured with your correct information as follows:

User Information - Set your email address and mobile phone for each user in the Home Center's Access Control Panel
Mobile Phone - Set your mobile phone number and buy SMS credits in the SMS Panel
Create Notifications - create various notification messages in the Notification panel
Devices - notify you when device status changes
Scenes - use the notifications in scenes

User Information

Each Home Center user account can have a separate email address and other details.

Go to the Panels > Access Control Panel
Select the account you wish to update (or create a new one)
Enter the correct email address (and other information)
Click the blue 'Save' button on the right-hand sidebar

Figure 1: Setting the User email in Fibaro Home Center

Select which mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, Android) can receive 'Push' notifications
In the Access Control Panel scroll down to the Mobile device list
Select the mobile device to accept Push notifications from Home Center
Note: Mobiles appear in the list after they have been used to access Home Center
Click the blue 'Save' button on the right-hand sidebar

Setting the User email in Fibaro Home Center Figure 2: Setting the Mobiles devices for Push notifications in Fibaro Home Center

Mobile Phone Number

You can set a number of authorised phone numbers - each can be used for different notifications.

Go to the Panels > SMS Panel
Enter the Mobile Phone Number you wish to use
Click the 'Add' button
Click the 'Top-up' button to buy SMS credits
Note: The SMS service is currently only available in Poland (May 2014) - Fibaro do plan to expand this but there's no ETA for now. In the mid-time consider using our workaround.

Figure 3: Setting the mobile phone number and buying credits

Create Notifications

You can create as many notifications as you wish, and each one can be used by a variety of scenes.

Go to the Panels > Notifications Panel
Give the notification a 'Title'
Enter the text or comments you would like to receive in the SMS, e-mail, and Push boxes
Click the 'Save' button
Note: You MUST add content to all three boxes, even if you're only using one type of notification'

Figure 4: Creating the notification messages

Using the Notification

Once you've setup the notifications, you can use them to notify you when a devices status changes or in scenes.

Use the Notification with Devices

The notification can be used to alert you when a device's status changes. The notification can be triggered differently for different types of device, such as On, Off, Status change, Breached, Unbreached (released).

To set the device notification:

Go to the device's 'Advanced' tab and scroll down to the 'Notify me' section
Choose the notification type (email SMS..)
Select the correct Notification from the drop-down menu
Click the blue 'Save' icon on the right-hand sidebar
Figure 4 shows a device notification that sends an email when the device is turned on.

Creating the notification messages Figure 5: Device configured to send an email when the TV (Wall Plug) is turned On

Use the Notification in Scenes

You can easily use the notification in a scene by selecting it in the Home Center's Scene Builder.

Create your scene - see APNT-61: Creating Scenes in Fibaro Home Center for more information
When adding a 'block' - select Notifications from the drop-down menu
Select the correct Notification, Delivery Method (SMS, email..) and User
Click the 'Save' button
Figure 5 shows a very simple scene that emails the user when rain is expected