Alarm and Shutdown v1.3

What’s new?

First off, version 1.3 is now much more easier to setup and have more options regarding notifications.
  • Long awaited feature – notifications via popular messenger apps is finally here! Now, aside from emails, you can get notified via Telegram and Viber.
  • Email setup is now requires to fill only one field instead of that user/password/smtp/port/ttl jibber jabber. Just set up your inbox address and you good to go. Multiple addresses (up to 3) are now supported!
  • Linux version is now supports Sleep shut-down type
  • Linux support was improved. Shut-down now works in Debian as well
  • Also, new original notification sounds replaced previous ones. It’s mostly due to legal reasons, but the ability to set up your own jingle is still here.
  • Minor change: checkbox that enables notifications and shut-down timer in addons’ panel header now doesn’t save its’ state. It is convenient to prevent accidental shut down action when you render your scene next time and forgot to disable Alarm and Shutdown
  • Countdown till shut-down now displayed in the status bar.
  • Email message is now formatted as an HTML text. Looks dandy.

Installation

Once you’ve downloaded .zip archive with the addon from the product page, you have two options to install it.

First one is to open User Preferences, go to Addons tab, hit “Install…" button and in the file browser navigate to the .zip archive, select it and press “Install addon".

Important note for Windows users! If your Blender installed on the system disk, you have to launch Blender with admin privileges prior to addon installation. Otherwise OS wont allow Blender to write addon files to the disk!

Second way: open you Blender installation folder, then go to “2.xx/scripts/addons" (for example, my full path looks like this “C:/Program Files/Blender Foundation/Blender 2.82/2.82/scripts/addons"). Then simply unpack ZIP archive into this folder. Finally, it should look like this

Setup

If you’ve installed the addon properly, it should appear in the addons list, in the “Render" category

To enable it, just hit the checkbox left from the name. To see the settings, press the little triangle left from the checkbox

Here you can set up a path to your custom sound file (be sure to uncheck “Relative" checkbox in the file browser. This is important).

“Email address" field is pretty self explanatory. Just type in your email address, to which you want to recieve notifications. You can set up up to three addresses, separating it with comma. This feature might be useful for studio environments, when you want to notify you colleagues or supervisor about render completion.

Next stop – Telegram chat ID. You need this ID to tell Telegram to whom you want to send a notification. To obtain it, open your Telegram client (desktop or mobile) and in the “search" field type in “AlarmAndShutdown". In a moment you’ll see a bot account, probably the one and only in the search results

Click on it to start a chat. In the chat window click on the “Start" button or type in “/start" to start a conversation with the bot.

In a moment, you’ll get a welcoming message from the bot. This message contains your Chat ID

Now simply copy and paste it into the addon settings “Telegram chat ID" field. Done! You’re ready to recieve notifications via telegram.

Viber setup is almost the same, except that you can’t find the bot via search. To get the contact you have to open you Viber app on your phone, go to “more" tab and hit that little button with QR code icon in the top-right corner.

Then scan this QR code

Once you start a chat with the bot, you’ll get a welcoming message, same as with Telegram. There will be your User ID.

Just copy and paste it into “Viber ID" field in the addon setting. You are now ready to recieve notifications from Viber! Simple as that!

Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel, by sending a message to the bot.

Setting

Now let’s take a look a the addons’ panel in Render Output settings.

First off, to enable all the features, you have to check the checkbox at the panel header. Then, from top to bottom: you can choose from four stocked notification sounds or your custom one.

Well, volume slider is pretty self explanatory. Little button with speaker icon allow you to test chosen sound type and volume.

Then you can select desired shut-down action type from: Power off, Sleep or Restart.

On Windows systems “Sleep" mode actually sends your computer to hibernation, so make sure it’s enabled in your power management settings 

Timeout parameter allows you to set delay in seconds before shut-down action. If its’ value greater than zero, once your rendering completed, a big button will appear under the notification checkboxes. It will allow you to abort shut-down action before timer ran out.

Next three checkboxes, obviously allows you to enable desired type of notifications.

If you set your email and ID fields correctly (see “Setup" section), once your rendering completed, you’ll instantly get notifications via desired platform

Email notification usually takes a moment to deliver. If you still don’t get your notification mail after a while, check you “spam" box. It will most likely end up there.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Q: Version 1.2 Beta is free. Why v1.3 is paid now?
    A: For the end user convenience, in v1.3 notifications were completely revamped and now heavily relies on a stable dedicated web-server. And, unfortunately, good server need some paid maintenance by third party. This fairly symbolic fee will ensure stable functioning of the addon. Also, it will surely keep me motivated to keep this addon up to date and add new features. And last but not least – half of my revenue for this addon will go straight to Blender Foundation!
  • Q: What about compatibility? Which OS does it support and which Blender versions?
    A: 
     2.7x, 2.8x v and 2.9 versions of Alarm and Shutdown v1.3 were thoroughly tested on Windows 10, Linux Ubuntu 16 and Linux Debian 10 systems. All the features works fine on these systems. Blender versions used in testing: 2.78, 2.79b, 2.80, 2.82a, 2.83, 2.90 (latest at the time). Given Blender API release logs, it SHOULD also work in Blender 2.76.
  • Q: I’d really love to get notifications via WhatsApp or Facebook. Any plans?
    A: I really wanted to add WhatsApp and Facebook support but, unfortunately, these platforms have closed API. But in the future release I’m planning to add Discord notifications