You can control your lightshow via SMS commands sent to a Google Voice account. You can also configure access levels to the various commands to different groups of users. To enable SMS control of your lightshow, do the following:
Override the sms::enable configuration setting to True.
Add in the cell phone #’s for access control in the sms configuration.
Run the check_sms.py script one time to generate a default configuration file for Google Voice:
sudo python py/check_sms.py
Edit the file /root/.gvoice and add in your Google Voice account username and password:
sudo pico /root/.gvoice
Also, it turns out that the google voice integration (i.e. sms control) we are currently using relies upon “less secure” login standards and google has disabled access to these by default, so you’ll have to enable “less secure login” to use this feature — see info on how to do this here:
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6010255
That’s it – now when you next start your show with the start_music_and_lights script, SMS commands will be enabled! Start by sending a text with “help” to get a list of supported commands!
It won’t work for me. I did everything the tutorial said, but when I send help to my google voice account, I get nothing back.
There was a bug in the documentation that I just fixed – it could be your issue. Namely that for overriding the configuration file you need to use a file overrides.cfg in the same directory as the defaults.cfg file:
http://52.89.57.254/software-configuration/
The code used to pull from /home/pi/.lights.cfg but no longer does in version 1.3.
is “username” the google email address, google voice phone number, or linked phone number?