NxBot

A Telegram bot, paired with Nx Witness, providing motion-event and on-demand camera snapshots.

This project accompanies a blog post outlining the concept and implementation details of this bot.

The Wiki contains helpful guides for setting up Telegram and Nx Witness to work with NxBot.

Docker

NxBot is made available as a Docker container. It's packaged as a standalone binary, see Dockerfile for build the process.

Usage

docker create \
--name=nxbot \
-e NX_IP_PORT=<nx-server-ip>:<port> \
-e NX_USER=<USER> \
-e NX_PASS=<PASS> \
-e HTTP_IP_PORT=<http-ip-port> \
--expose <http-port> \
-e TG_TOKEN=<telegram-bot-token> \
-e TG_USER_WHITELIST=<whitelist-ids> \
-e TG_GROUP_WHITELIST=<whitelist-ids> \
-e TG_MOTION_RECIPIENTS=<recipient-ids> \
jacknx/nxbot

Parameters

All parameters are required, except for TG_USER_WHITELIST, TG_GROUP_WHITE_LIST and TG_MOTION_RECIPIENTS. It is, however, highly suggested that you use these lists, as refusal to do so leaves your bot open to the public.

• -e NX_IP_PORT= - The IP and port of the Nx Server. The port is typically 7001, on a standard install
• -e NX_USER= - The user account to the Nx Server. Any account with desired bot accessible camera access
• -e NX_PASS= - The password for the above user account.
• -e HTTP_IP_PORT= - The IP and port the container listens on for motion events. Typically the IP will be 0.0.0.0 or left blank, for all interfaces (e.g. ":8012")
• --expose <http-port> - It's required to expose the above in typical Docker systems. Alternatively you can use the -p <port>:<port> syntax if desired
• -e TG_TOKEN= - The Telegram Bot token See the Wiki for help setting up a Telegram Bot
• -e TG_USER_WHITELIST= - A list of Telegram users IDs allowed access to use the bot See the Wiki for more help
• -e TG_GROUP_WHITELIST= - A list of Telegram group IDs allowed access to use the bot See the Wiki for more help
• -e TG_MOTION_RECIPIENTS= - A list of Telegram users or group IDs to receive motion event messages See the Wiki for more help

Running the bot

Starting NxBot:

docker start nxbot

You can see status and any potential errors with the bot by accessing its log:

docker logs nxbot

You may find errors or warnings pointing out issues with the above environment variables or invalid credentials to Nx and/or Telegram.

When successfully started, the bot will report:

Starting Nx Telegram Bot and motion HTTP server

Info

• To monitor the logs of the container in realtime: docker logs -f nxbot
• There's a dedicated blog post over on Medium about this project
• Detailed information about NxBot and for help setting up Telegram can be found on the Wiki