Homebridge Plugin for Telegram Bots

A platform that provides configurable Telegram Bots and integrates them with HomeKit via Homebridge.

Status

Why a Telegram Bot?

This plugin enables you to send Telegram messages upon certain HomeKit events. The plugin provides a toggle switch for groups of notifications, which will send out one of the predefined notifications via Telegram to a configured chat. For example, you could set up a rule to send out a message via Telegram when a window is opened. And with homebridge-automation-switches you could even repeat that process until the window is closed.

You can also add a little fun to it, by providing many different messages in a group, which the plugin selects randomly.

The bots are non-interactive, e.g. they do not provide commands to trigger things and will not listen for messages sent to them.

Changelog

All changes to homebridge-telegram are documented in the changelog.

Installation instructions

After Homebridge has been installed:

sudo npm install -g homebridge-telegram

Example config.json:

{
 "bridge": {
     ...
 },
 "platforms": [
   {
     "platform": "Telegram",
     "bots": [
       {
         "name": "Bot name as seen in HomeKit",
         "token": "TELEGRAM BOT TOKEN",
         "chat": "TELEGRAM CHAT ID",
         "error": "Something broken. I'm shutting down.",
         "notifications": {
           "Hello": {
             "mode": "Markdown",
             "randomize": true,
             "messages": [
               "*Hi!*",
               "_Hello!_",
               "Hey mate!"
             ]
           },
           "Bye": {
             "mode": "HTML",
             "randomize": false,
             "messages": [
               "<b>Good bye!</b>",
               "<i>I'm sad to see you leave.</i>"
             ]
           }
         }
       }
     ]
   }
 ]
}

Simple style configuration will still work and can be mixed with the advanced configuration modes:
"Hello": [
  "Hi!",
  "Hello!",
  "Hey mate!"
]

The platform can provide any number of bots that have to be predefined in the homebridge config.json. Each bot supports the following attributes:

Attributes	Usage
name	A unique name for the bot. Will be used as the accessory name.
token	The Telegram Bot API token provided when you registered the bot.
chat	The chat ID used to send the notification to.
error	The message to send if something fails. If you do not want an error message visible in Telegram, keep this undefined.
notifications	An object providing notifications in named groups.

A switch is created for each notification group.

Configuring notification groups

Notification groups have additional configuration options if the new style configuration is used:

Attributes	Usage
mode	Specify the format of the notifications. Do not specify this for plain text notifications. Use Markdown for markdown notifications and HTML for HTML notifications.
randomize	If true, will select a message randomly. The default value is true. If you do not want random messages, select false.
messages	An array of messages to use for the button.

Creating a bot

The folks at Telegram created better documentation, than I could ever do.

Once you've created the bot you'll need to find a chat ID that this plugin should send messages to. The easiest way is to message the bot and look for the JSON dumps in the homebridge log. This also supports group chats.

Formatting Options

Please read the formatting options in the Telegram Bot API for the supported HTML and Markdown formatting options.

Accessory Services

Each bot will expose two services:

Accessory Information Service
Bot Service

BotService Characteristics

The exposed switch service supports the following characteristics:

Characteristic	UUID	Permissions	Type	Usage
Quiet	`9799244D-7E74-471F-B672-C41C262F7337`	READ, WRITE	BOOL	Stops the bot from sending messages, while this is enabled.

See HomeKitTypes.js for details.

Supported clients

This platform and the bots it drives have been verified to work with the following apps on iOS 11

Elgato Eve

Some asks for friendly gestures

If you use this and like it - please leave a note by staring this package here or on GitHub.

If you use it and have a problem, file an issue at GitHub - I'll try to help.

If you tried this, but don't like it: tell me about it in an issue too. I'll try my best to address these in my spare time.

If you fork this, go ahead - I'll accept pull requests for enhancements.

License

MIT License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

vicxyz1/homebridge-telegram