Email Plugin to receive email and start tasks

[e10kstarfire]

I would like to be able to control Housebot via my mobile phone.



I can go via an SMS message from my phone to Email gateway and direct email to an account that Housebot could use.



So if Housebot could access an POP3 server and act on say the Subject or Body of the email and fire off a task that would be great.

[ScottBot]

A plugin to read POP3 mail and act on it is certainly possible, but I haven't heard of any existing (yet).



If you're not a developer or don't want to go that route, you could also use the External Control plugin (separate download). With it you could run an IIS server an host the External Control COM object to send requests to HouseBot (and receive status). Then create some simple WML content to manage Housebot.

[e10kstarfire]

I used to be a programmer many years ago so I think learning Visual Basic may be easier - presumably there are scripts out there already to do this or I can use some internal function perhaps?



I will see if I can find some nice tutorials......

[ScottBot]

You could also use the VB SDK (from the web site) to create your own control. It's a little more difficult, but the finished plugin will be nicer.



The other option is to write one or more VB Scripts using the Script Device. Actually, this may not be so bad.

[e10kstarfire]

Yes, using VB Script is what I thought.



There are a few free command line POP3 utilities (one called Postie looks good), so i guess I could call this to retrieve the email and parse the output and then call an appropriate housebot task.



Sounds feasible?

[ScottBot]

Sounds feasible?

Absolutely. If you would like to share it with others, send it to me and I'll post it on the web site. It sounds like it might be handy.