Daily alert

Every evening, between 6:30 and 7:30 pm India time by default, Helio sends one Telegram message with today's units and anything that needs a look. It comes from the Helio Solar bot, so there's nothing to build.

Connect in two steps

1. On your dashboard, open Daily alert → Connect Telegram and press Start. The Helio Solar bot replies with your connect code.
2. In Vercel, open your Helio project → Settings → Environment Variables, add TELEGRAM_LINK with that code, and redeploy.

Then tap Send a test alert. That's it: the daily schedule is already in vercel.json.

What it says

The same sections in the same order every day, so you can read it at a glance. Lines only appear when there's data for them.

☀️ My Rooftop · Mon, 19 Oct
21.4 kWh today · ⚠️ 1 thing to check

Generation
• 3.96 kWh per kWp of panels
• Expected 21–23 kWh for clean panels in today's sunshine
• Yesterday 22.0 kWh, today 3% lower
• This month 401 kWh so far

Health
• Yesterday was good: 96% of a good day for its sunshine
• Panels: looking clean, within 3% of how they did after the last rain or cleaning

Grid
• Voltage 236–259 V, highest at 12:40 pm (standard limit 253 V)
• Above the limit 2 times, about 1 h 50 min in all; longest 11:05 am–12:45 pm. Inverter kept running
• Frequency 49.91–50.08 Hz, normal

System
• Inverter: Normal, hottest 61 °C at 1:20 pm
• WiFi stick: reported until 6:05 pm, every 5 min
• Alarms today: none

To check
• Grid voltage was above 253 V for about 1 h 50 min (peak 259 V). Ask your electricity company to check the supply voltage.

To check lists only things you can act on:

• data stopping during the day, or no data at all (the WiFi stick going quiet after sunset is normal and isn't flagged)
• no units on a sunny day, or yesterday scoring low for its sunshine
• cleaning recommended
• grid voltage above or below the standard range, frequency out of range, output stops and likely trips
• the inverter reporting a status other than normal, and inverter alarms raised today

These are the same checks as on the dashboard. See Health and inverter checks.

How the Helio Solar bot works

• Your connect code holds your Telegram chat id plus a signature only the bot can make. It lets your Helio message your chat and nothing else.
• Your Helio sends the finished message to the bot's relay at helio.rishishah.in, which passes it straight to Telegram. The relay stores nothing: no database, no message log.
• The message contains your plant's name and readings. Your ShineMonitor login and dashboard password never leave your Helio.
• To stop: remove TELEGRAM_LINK and redeploy, or block the bot in Telegram.

Prefer your own bot?

If you'd rather nothing passes through the relay:

1. In Telegram, message @BotFather, send /newbot, and copy the token.
2. Send any message to your bot, then open https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/getUpdates and copy chat.id.
3. Add TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN and TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID in Vercel instead of TELEGRAM_LINK, and redeploy.

Settings

Variable	What it does
TELEGRAM_LINK	Connect code from the Helio Solar bot
TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN, TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID	Your own bot instead
ALERT_ONLY_ISSUES	true to send only on days with something to check
CRON_SECRET	Optional. When set, only Vercel's scheduler (which sends it) can trigger the daily job
APP_URL	Link added to the message; default is your Vercel production address
TELEGRAM_RELAY_URL	For forks running their own relay

Without CRON_SECRET, the daily job accepts only requests that identify as Vercel Cron and runs at most once every 20 hours. The worst a fake call could do is send you your own summary early. Set CRON_SECRET to rule that out.

Changing the time

The schedule is in vercel.json: "0 13 * * *", 13:00 UTC. Times are in UTC, so change the hour for your time zone, for example "0 17 * * *" for around 6 pm in Berlin in winter. On Vercel's free plan a job runs once a day and can start any time within that hour, so 0 13 means 13:00–13:59 UTC, 6:30–7:29 pm in India.