Niagara 4 SMS & voice call alerts – integration manual

Here we describe how to send SMS texts and calls (ring calls, text-to-speech calls) from Tridium Niagara 4 using SMSEagle Hardware SMS Gateway.

SMSEagle is an offline hardware SMS gateway. Therefore, no external connection to a third-party system is required. All notifications are generated on-premise and sent directly to a cellular network. This solution can be used in secure installations without Internet access. SMSEagle offers secure and reliable message processing with a built-in database for message queueing and an automatic retries mechanism.

Setup is easy and should take 10-15 min to complete.

The driver is also available via official Niagara Marketplace.

SMSEagle Setup

Create a new user in SMSEagle (menu Users > + Add Users).
Grant API access to the created user:
- click Access to API beside the newly created user
- Enable APIv2
- Generate new token (copy it for later use)
- Add access permissions in section Messages for: Send SMS
- Add access permissions in section Modem for: Make a ring call, Make a TTS (for voice alerting)
- Save settings

Niagara 4 Setup

To enable SMS alerts via SMSEagle Hardware SMS Gateway you need a SMSEagle driver for Niagara. The driver’s main purpose is to serve as a gateway to send SMS via SMSEagle for Tridium Supervisor 4, JACE8000, or JACE9000 stations (and OEM variations i.e. Centra Line, Trend, …).

1. Driver Installation

download the zip archive with driver files (the driver is free of charge).
extract the zip archive and copy all included *.jar files to your Niagara modules directory, which is typically C:\Niagara\Niagara-4.x.xx.xx\modules. For correct behavior, it is necessary to install *.jar files on the client platform (Workbench PC) and on the target platform (JACE8000 or Supervisor).
close the Niagara Workbench after inserting all the modules in the folder. Next time you start the Niagara Workbench the driver will be loaded in Niagara Workbench and immediately available for use.

2. Driver Configuration

a) connect your JACE 8000/9000 or PC with Tridium Supervisor 4 to the network
b) add new SmsEagleNetwork to your Drivers node
c) add new SmsEagleDevice to the network
d) configure newly added device

Fill in the following properties of SMSEagle Device

Enabled: set to True
Ip Address: fill in IP address or domain name of your SMSEagle device
Port: 80 (for HTTP connection) or 443 (for HTTPS connection)
Api Key: API key created in SMSEagle webGUI

Note: if you want to use HTTPS connection between Niagara and SMSEagle you must have SSL certificate correctly configured on SMSEagle device.

3. Properties of SMSEagleDevice

Every device has following properties:

To: recipient phone number (or multiple numbers separated with comma)
Group: (optional) group name defined in SMSEagle Phonebook. If you define the group in SMSEagle phonebook (it must be set as public), you may send SMS to the group of recipients
Priority: (optional) priority of SMS – value between 0-9 (9 is the highest priority)
Text: text of SMS message

Every device has defined the following actions:

Send: send SMS to recipient defined in To parameter
Send Group: send SMS to the group defined in Group parameter
Ring Call: make wake-up call (ring only) to recipient defined in To parameter
Ring Group Call: make wake-up call (ring only) to group defined in Group parameter
Tts Call: make voice call with text-to-speech conversion to recipient defined in To parameter and with text defined in Text parameter
Tts Group Call: make voice call with text-to-speech conversion to group defined in Group parameter and with text defined in Text parameter

Example configuration

Notice: Voice functions are only available to users who have purchased the VOICE add-on for their SMSEagle device.

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