How to make my phone ring/alert from a desktop application?

[d000hg]

I'm writing some software in C# to run on my desktop or a remote server, and I'd like the software to be able to alert me urgently of specific things whether I'm at my PC or not - i.e. it needs to make my phone beep at me
Quite an open-ended requirement and I'd welcome any suggestions how you might do this. [1]First and foremost, I do not want to write a custom mobile app. [2]And when I say I want to be notified, I mean right now, not that I'll see the notification next time I look at my phone - ideally play something loud and repeated.
[3]The other plus could be if I can make an action directly on my phone in response e.g it tells me X and asks me a YES/NO question which it will act on.

So far:

• Email seemed an easy solution, but I can't see how I make it play an insistent alarm just for one specific email contact and not all the other emails I get. I assume there are services out there that will let me trigger an SMS or even an automated phone call from a number I can then set as a contact, via some sort of API so that could be interesting. Email/SMS seems like it could quite easily send me a link as a way to perform an action, or "reply YES/NO" etc.
• I'm also an IFTTT user with a pro account, though I barely know how it works. I wondered if I could use this as the 'glue' to save some development like "when I get an email from X, play a siren".
• While I don't want to write a mobile app, is it possible something like this already exists? e.g. I install the app on my phone then configure my code to send alerts to their API and hey presto.

I'm all about minimising the work I have to put in on this one.

edit: MODs other version of this thread says "error" when I try to view... can you can nuke it?

[eek]

IFTTT will do exactly what you want - had I a similar requirement I would be using MS Flow for the same thing with something like a http trigger.

[d000hg]

IFTTT will do exactly what you want - had I a similar requirement I would be using MS Flow for the same thing with something like a http trigger.

Not come across Flow before. From a bit of looking at IFTTT the 'then' part would not be too hard but there are so many services I can't really see how I'd plumb in my "IF" from my custom code. I did see a WebHook service which talks about arbitrary HTTP requests and the like which sounds promising.

[GigiBronz]

Telegram bots. Or signal. I think there are a few implementations that you can readily use but to be frank I have not played with them so not quite sure what to expect.

you can do one for imessages as well I think.

[d000hg]

I was doing a bit of web-trawling last night and I actually wonder if using a 3rd-party SMS service might not be as good as anything. Services like this seem extremely simple to use and pretty cheap: http://api.txtlocal.com/docs/sendsms They also let you receive SMS which opens up some interesting ideas.

[Paralytic]

Hire a millennial to sit at your desk and give you a call when the specific triggers occur. There's someone on here that needs a few extra £ to boost their meagre £100K income - i'm sure she'll be interested (unless you were born before 1964).

[_V_]

Google SMS gateway API and you will find lots.

Basically you open an account, buy credits which give you so many 1000s of SMS messages. Each API call with a key will send SMS messages to any phone number or numbers

Many give a trial with a few SMS messages so you can check latency. Many of the cheap ones in far away lands have unacceptable latency.

I have used it in a number of projects to notify of things changing.

[d000hg]

Looks like they often offer WhatsApp, email, etc as well. Seems it would be simple to design my code so I can drop in different services (SMS, IFTTT, etc) to test. Or use them all... anyone remember "Woof!" or when Marty McFly got fired in the future?

[GigiBronz]

Hire a millennial to sit at your desk and give you a call when the specific triggers occur. There's someone on here that needs a few extra £ to boost their meagre £100K income - i'm sure she'll be interested (unless you were born before 1964).

These are the boomers that we love!

https://www.codementor.io/@garethdwy...rt-1-goi5fncay

[SimonMac]

I use slack webhooks, install the slack app on my phone and desktop (which I use anyway so its not "another app" for me)

And then call the webhook like this

curl -X POST -H Content-type: application/json --data {"text":"04:09:44 databaseName backups started"} https://hooks.slack.com/services/*********/*********/*********************

100% free, 100% reliable and idiot proof