Alerts and notifications

What triggers an alert

When a camera sees motion, Stay-Home AI classifies the event on your hub as a person, vehicle or animal in about 70 ms, so you get alerts for what matters and not for swaying trees or shadows. On Plus and Pro, Porch Watch makes door cameras alert when a package is delivered and when it’s taken.

Where alerts go

Turn on as many as you like in Settings → Notifications:

• Browser notifications from the web app.
• Push on iPhone, iPad and Android once the phone apps are out (coming soon). They’ll also show on a paired Apple Watch or Wear OS watch.
• ntfy: enter your topic URL.
• Telegram: alerts arrive as messages from your own bot, with a photo if you like. See below.

Set up Telegram alerts

Telegram alerts come from a bot that belongs to you. Your hub posts to it directly, so Glimpo’s servers never see your alerts. It’s free and takes about a minute. You need the Telegram app.

1. In Glimpo, open Settings → Notifications → Telegram and tap Set up in 2 steps.
2. Tap Open BotFather. BotFather is Telegram’s official bot maker. Tap Start.
3. Send BotFather the three lines Glimpo shows, one at a time: /newbot, a name (like Glimpo Home), then a username. Tap a line in Glimpo to copy it. If the username is taken, add a few letters; it must end in bot.
4. BotFather replies with a long token (it looks like 7123456789:AAH4kX…). Copy it, go back to Glimpo and tap Paste.
5. Tap Open @yourbot, then Start in Telegram. Glimpo connects on its own and your bot says hello.

To have the whole family get alerts, tap Send to a group instead in step 5 and pick the group.

The token is like a password for your bot. It’s stored encrypted on your hub. If you ever share it by mistake, send /revoke to BotFather and set up again.

No images through anyone else

Push notifications carry only the camera name and event type. When you open one, the app fetches the snapshot straight from your hub. (Telegram snapshots are opt-in, because they’re sent to Telegram.)

Act without opening the app

Alerts have Mark seen, Star and Snooze 1 h buttons.

Modes

Switch between Home, Away and Night in one tap from the app. Watch complications and Wear OS tiles are coming with the watch apps.

• Each mode has its own alert types: for example, only people at night.
• Cameras marked Private at home stop completely in Home mode, so indoor cameras aren’t recording while you’re there.

Quiet hours and snooze

Set quiet hours for times you never want to be buzzed. Or snooze alerts for 30 minutes, an hour or until 7:00, then resume whenever you like.

Too many alerts?

• Use Home mode while you’re home.
• Narrow the alert types for that mode to people only.
• If your camera detects motion on-chip, try Detection: Camera in its settings. See Record modes and detection.