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Raspberry NOAA

In config/settings.yml, setting enable_email_push: true and configuring an email_push_address will enable pushing all captured, processed images to a destination email address. This is useful when configuring services such as If This Then That (IFTTT) to accept the email with the subject and email attachment and post it to services such as Facebook, Twitter, or other locations to store your images. Below outlines how to accomplish this, with this framework installing a basic /home/pi/.msmtprc file that enables configuring a gmail account to email images with.

Note: You need an existing email address that you have full access to in order to configure sending - this configuration will use that email address credentials for sending emails from your receiver device.

WARNING: MAKE SURE YOU KEEP THE CONFIG FILE LOCKED DOWN! This file (/home/pi/.msmtprc) will contain your email credentials, and is by default written to the file system as read/write only by the pi user. This is why it's extremely important to not expose your Pi to the public internet unless you absolutely know what you're doing when it comes to security, and at a minimum, absolutely change the pi user default password to something HIGHTLY complex and hard to hack!

Configure Settings and Update

To enable this functionality, first update your config/settings.yml to set enable_email_push: true and set an email address to forward images to as email push address. Then, re-run the installer script ./install_and_upgrade.sh, which will align your environment to install dependencies and requirements, including a /home/pi/.msmtprc file that has defaults for configuring a gmail account to send emails.

Configure Email Settings

Once the installer has been run, you should see a settings file in your pi user home directory named /home/pi/.msmtprc. Edit this file for your email settings, including adding your gmail credentials for the email address you wish to use to send the image emails to your target address.

Note: that if you are running Multi-Factor Authentication (sometimes known as 2-Step Verification), you will need to obtain an App Password for your account and use this in place of your login credentials in order to allow the mpack binary to 'bypass' Multi-Factor Authentication when sending emails autonomously. Follow the instructions in this article to configure an app password for your setup and use this within the /home/pi/.msmtprc file for the password setting.

Note: This file defaults to a template to configure a gmail email account to send images. If you want to know more about how to configure this file for additional account types, see the msmtp documentation.

Since May 2022 Google have enforced 2FA. You need to setup 2FA in your Google Account setup, and then obtain an 'App Password' This app password is then used INSTEAD OF your gmail account's normal password in the '''./msmtprc''' file. Follow this video for the process of obtaining the app password: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp9B0rY6Fxk&t=138s

Testing (Optional)

If you'd like to see whether the configurations you've set are working, you can run a quick test from the command line using an exsting image (or any image for that matter). Simply run the following below, replacing <DEST_EMAIL> with an email address you want to send the email to (such as the one configured in your config/settings.yml file, for example):

mpack -s "This is a test" /srv/images/NOAA-18-20210211-205249-MCIR.jpg <DEST_EMAIL>

If all goes well, an email will be sent to <DEST_EMAIL> with the subject "This is a test" and the body of the email containing the image specified as an attachment. This indicates your configuration is ready to go and all new images should successfully be emailed to this destination!

Profit

Once the above have been performed, simply wait until your next capture occurs and you should then see an email show up in your target email address. If this is a destination service such as IFTTT that is configured to post images to a Facebook page, for example, the image should be posted to the page with text from the annotation that is built alongside the capture!

Troubleshooting

If you are not receiving emails at the destination configured, inspect the /var/log/msmtp/output.log file for errors that might be occurring. This file is also good to consult in general as it contains information about emails being sent that were successful.