Xfinity Mobile/Verizon Shutdown of Email to Text Options.

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weigle2

IPCT+ Member
Dec 30, 2016
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Somewhere in the space/time continuum
Xfinity mobile customer here using BI 6, and now I am not able to receive SMS texts from Xfinity mobile. In BI all that was needed was an email address that would allow you to set up Alerts using Email/SMS. This no longer allows sending of email to text messages and have them converted by the carrier to text to be received by your mobile phone. Well, as of a couple of days ago, I now get a message (via email from comcast.net) of a Permanent error. Most carriers are shutting this feature down in the future. I have tried to set up Push, and the BI help files are of no use. I order to get a Mobile Device set up in BI you need to run through the Remote Access Wizard and of course this allows for incoming connection via Port 8334. For security reasons, I don't want anything incoming, unless it's via VPN.

1) Tried using the Pushover app and am unable to set it up as an email in BI. Pushover allows you to send to a unique email address provided and they will convert it to a SMS/MMS message sent to your phone.
2) Remote access wizard in BI requires Upnp, obviously unacceptable.
3) Anyone using an app like Whatsapp, Signal, Telegram, etc. for text messaging from BI 6?

I think my next step will be trying to set up Curl using Jaydeel's thread that looks like it may work.

J

Thread 'Send Pushover notifications with pictures and hyperlinks'

I've figured out how to send Pushover notifications with pictures and hyperlinks from Blue Iris Actions without using external scripts.

This approach uses curl and the Pushover API, and provides functionality similar to that recently described for Telegram <link>.

EDIT (5/16/2022) - For those who prefer a TLDR version of this thread, I’ve appended a copy-paste-ready API Reference section, and a Testing section to the end of this post. I’ve also added links to key topic posts that have appeared later (e.g., custom sounds, emergency...
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If anyone has a relatively easy method of sending SMS/MMS texts I am obviously open to suggestions.

PS: I did set up a gmail account that somehow routes to xfinity and I am able to receive a text with image, but instead to taking only seconds like it used to, it now takes 5 minutes or more to receive.
 
jaydeel said:
Set aside some time to implement the pushover via curl method and you won't look back. It's fast, highly customizable, and rarely fails.
Click to expand...
Spot on. I set it up yesterday and was amazed at how well and how easy it was to do. Many thanks for your work on this. I'd have to say I don't receive the notification quite as fast as I did with Xfinity/Verizon Mypixmessages.com method, but it's dam(n) close!
I would like to find a way to get more than 1 image. The SMS/MMS method allows you to specifiy how many images you can get.

Oops, only the email notification allows multiple images to be sent, not SMS/MMS.
 
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If you want multiples images, you might try my BI_gif_tool Powershell script. It sends a GIF attachment composed of all the AI-processed images in the AI DAT file.

My use case: On confirmed alert events, I typically execute both the curl Action and the Powershell GIF Action. This results in two notifications per alert. The curl Action is fast, ensuring no delay. The Powershell Action is slower but offers more context. With this pair, I rarely find it necessary to seek context by using the UI3 hyperlink.
 
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