Hopefully, @Tony763 will see this.
Through my reading, it seems like the original Home Assistant skill would still be able to treat Mycroft as a notify platform, where it’s not possible on the Mark 2. I can’t tell if this skill linked here, is the original version or the new version:
Further reading makes it seem like the original skill is no longer maintained, but that repo has activity from the past couple of weeks. So maybe it’s being maintained again?
My overall goal is to migrate to Open Voice OS, and use the original skill if I have to for continued use of the notify platform.
I definitely would appreciate some clarification.
HI @nerlins, repository You mentioned is original HA skill used with Mycroft. It is maintained for a long time by @gez-mycroft and @stratus but when Mark II started it’s incoming, things get complicated (all focus was put to Mark II) so we had to wait for ours PRs to be checked and approved. Lots of breaking changes / bug fixes took too long time. Not mentioning highli outdated version of HA skill in marketplace so most people did not get hands on stable experience (only when clonning skill from github) No blame here, lot of presure was placed on one person. Overaly it was a pleasure experience as I learned a lot and was able to get to know few awesome people.
For Ovos You will have to use their implementation https://github.com/OpenVoiceOS/ovos-PHAL-plugin-homeassistant
For Neon this one :https://github.com/mikejgray/neon-homeassistant-skill
For notify plugin, I can’t tell if it will work with those two as it connect directly to bus. Full Rewrite will likely be needed. (If not for functionality then for different licensing used).
hi @nerlins I have shared maintainership of the HA skill. I am still around and reviewing PRs. I haven’t done any commits of my own for some time, but I am happy to continue to review incoming requests from the community
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I appreciate both of you for responding.
I’m going to begin hardware acquisition, 3D case printing, and other stuff for a brand new Open Voice OS setup. I’m going to continue using my OG Picroft with AIY kit until I can confidently pull the plug. I won’t be able to do much until I have the OVOS hardware setup, and the system installed. I would love to assist in any way I can to enable the notify function. Notifications and commands from Mycroft to Home Assistant is 90% of my usage of Mycroft.
I’m not much of a coder, but will gladly help. The creator of the PHAL plugin is also expressing desire to assist in adding that function.
@stratus sorry to pull you out of your 3-year slumber 
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I use the build in Mycroft Configuration in Home Assistant for notifications on my Mark II and it works fine running OVOS on the Mark II
Right. If you run the default OS on a Mark II, it wouldn’t work. This is the original skill, which works/ will be deprecated in OVOS after a couple of OS core versions. This was confirmed in the Element chat. The skill will have to be rebuilt, or functions added to the PHAL plugin for notifications. The message bus that Home Assistant communicates on to Mycroft is technically unsafe. The security risks are documented through a test on GitHub somewhere. I have my current Picroft locked down heavily with UFW firewall. Once I get my hardware built for OVOS I will be assisting any way I can, to make sure the Home Assistant integration continues to work; as it always has with the original skill and configuration.
Hey folks - wanted to chime in with some updates. First of all, to use the OVOS/Neon implementation, both the PHAL plugin and the neon-homeassistant-skill linked above must be installed. If you’re using the Neon Mark 2 image that’s all taken care of for you, or current documentation for installation of both is on the neon-homeassistant-skill README.
Next up, since there’s been some interest from the community (including myself!) in making sure Notify works with OVOS/Neon, I started a rewrite of the integration. There are some dependency conflicts between Home Assistant and the current requirements but I’ve let the OVOS developers and maintainers know. It’s on their radar to bump the last requirement so we can submit that PR to Home Assistant and get everything moving again.
I’m not the creator of the PHAL plugin, but I’m a volunteer maintainer on it now, and everything I’ve heard makes me believe that Home Assistant will be getting first-class support in future versions of OVOS (and by extension, Neon). I’m finishing up a refactor to move all the Home Assistant-specific logic from the skill into the plugin, which will go into the CommonIOT framework that’s one of the next big roadmap items for OVOS. There are a couple of new features to help bring it closer to parity with the original HA skill (which I still run on my Picrofts!), including support for running Scenes and Automations, and passing requests directly to the Home Assistant Assist API.
All this to say I’m aware that the new skill is lacking some things from the original, but we’re working to bring it to full parity, and add additional features. Collaboration is absolutely welcome. Please feel free to reach out/submit PRs/raise issues.
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This is fantastic! I’m sure a lot of people will benefit from this. I have the hardware coming in from ebay, so I am eager to install/ upgrade to OVOS and help out.