batocera_notify

Update

Started working on this, but really the best approach would be something in a container like some of the other projects adding onto Batocera. This does work, but isn't the best approach.

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Built to display a window with an image and text for notifications sent from something like Home Assistant on your network.

The goal was to get something running with zero extra dependencies beyond what ships on a stock Batocera install.

• Listens for notifications over a plain TCP socket on port 65432.
• Expect messages in UTF‑8 using the format image_url;Title;Body (see client.py).
• Renders the notification using Pygame.

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Security warning

These notifications are unencrypted and unauthenticated. Anyone on your LAN can send anything to the box and whatever they send will be displayed. Only run this if you are comfortable with that.

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Installation / Usage

1 – Quick manual test

If you just want to see it work once‑off:

# on the Batocera box
export DISPLAY=:0
scp notify.py display_script.py root@batocera:/userdata/system/
chmod +x /userdata/system/notify.py /userdata/system/display_script.py

# still on the Batocera box
cd /userdata/system
./notify.py &

Now fire up client.py (or the Home‑Assistant shell_command shown below) from another machine and you should get a pop‑up.

2 – Run automatically at boot (contribution from @Selim042)

Thanks to @Selim042 for working this out and writing it up.

1. Create a tiny service script at /userdata/system/services/notifications:

   #!/bin/bash
   export DISPLAY=:0
   /userdata/system/services/notify.py &

2. Copy the project files into that same folder:

   cp notify.py display_script.py /userdata/system/services/

3. Mark everything executable so Batocera will run it:

   chmod +x /userdata/system/services/{notifications,notify.py,display_script.py}

4. Reboot (or run batocera-services restart) and the notification service will be active from then on.

Heads‑up – quirks we noticed
• The two Python files have to live in /userdata/system/services/; placing them in /userdata/system breaks their relative imports.
• Batocera complains about the “improperly named services” (because the files end in .py), but the service still works and the errors are not shown in the UI.

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Sending a notification

Using Python

client.py shows a minimal example that connects to the socket and writes one message:

# edit these first
BATOCERA_IP = "192.168.1.123"
PORT        = 65432

IMAGE_URL = "http://…/picture.png"
TITLE      = "Hello from Python"
BODY       = "It worked!"

Run the script and a pop‑up should appear on‑screen.

From Home Assistant (shell_command)

1. Copy ha_batocera_notify.py somewhere HA can execute it (e.g. /config/).

2. In configuration.yaml add:

   shell_command:
     batocera_notification: >-
       /config/ha_batocera_notify.py 192.168.1.123 65432 \
       'http://homeassistant.local:8123/local/example.png;Home Assistant;Hello World'

3. Restart HA, then call the shell_command.batocera_notification service from Developer Tools to test.