This tutorial explains how to send notifications to Snarl from various different platforms, such as Raspberry Pi, using the Python-based snp-send tool.
To get started you will need:
- Snarl 4.0 Beta 3 or later
- snp-send 0.5 or later
- Another device running anything that supports Python 3.2 or later
Step 1: Getting started
Firstly, make sure Snarl is installed and running and it is listening for incoming SNP 3.0 notifications on port 9887 (this tutorial assumes port 9887; you can use any available port). See this tutorial for help on getting Snarl listening for notifications.
Step 2: Configuring Python
Your notification source must be running Python 3.2 or later (snp-send may work on earlier versions of Python 3; it just hasn’t been tested on them – it will not work on Python 2.x). Installation on some common platforms is as follows:
Raspberry Pi
Raspbian includes Python 3.2 so you’re good to go!
Debian 7
Install Python 3.2 (or any later version) as follows:
- Launch a terminal
- sudo as root
- Run apt-get install python3.2
- Follow the prompts
- Exit back to your user session
OS X and Windows
Download and install the latest Python 3 release and follow the installation wizard.
Step 3: Installing snp-send
Download snp-send 0.5 (or later) and unzip into an easily accessible location, such as your home folder.
Step 4: Testing snp-send
Launch a terminal, navigate to where you installed snp-send and enter the following:
python3.2 snp-send.py -d 192.168.1.1 -b ‘Hello, world’
If you’ve installed a newer version of python, you should substitute “python3.2” with the correct version number. Also, note that the IP address after the -d parameter should be the IP address of the machine running Snarl.
You should see the following displayed:
snp-send: connecting to 192.168.1.1:9887...connected! snp-send: notification sent
And a corresponding notification on the machine running Snarl.
Debian 7 Wheezy
Raspbian
Step 5: More features
snp-send is quite sophisticated. To see all the different options it supports, enter the following in the terminal:
python3.2 snp-send.py -?
Now, let’s add an icon:
python3.2 snp-send.py -d 192.168.1.1 -b ‘Hello, world’ -i ‘!system-info’
And a sound:
python3.2 snp-send.py -d 192.168.1.1 -b ‘Hello, world’ -i ‘!system-info’ -n ‘!windowslogon’
And make it sticky:
python3.2 snp-send.py -d 192.168.1.1 -b ‘Hello, world’ -i ‘!system-info’ -n ‘!windowslogon’ -s
snp-send assumes port 9887 if one isn’t specified. However, if Snarl is listening on another port on the remote computer, you can direct snp-send to use that with the -p switch, as follows:
python3.2 snp-send.py -d 192.168.1.1 -p 4444 -b ‘Hello, world’ -i ‘!system-info’ -n ‘!windowslogon’ -s
Have fun!
