I do a lot of Raspberry Pi projects – often creating them in one place and using them in another. While it is easy enough to use SSH, VNC or HTML to access a device, if it’s being moved from one network to another, it can be challenging to know its ip address. Sure, you may be able to log into a local router and look it up, but I thought it would be easier if I just had the RPi email me with its current ip address.
Thankfully, Cody Giles created a tutorial on elinux.com outlining how to do this. His Python script runs on the RPi on startup, finds its ip address(es) and then emails this information to a predetermined address. I started with his code, but ended up changing it to meet my needs. My version sends an email, but also sends the Pi’s IP addresses as a Telegram Chat message.
In order to allow a Python script to send email through a Gmail account, you may need to enable an “App Password” for your sending account.
Step #1: Create the Python Script
Copy the following and paste it into a text editor. You must change the ‘to’ address, as well as the ‘gmail_user’ and ‘gmail_password’ for the sending account in the lines below the pound sign lines about 25 lines from the top. Save this file as a python script in the home directory named startupNotifier.py.
# Written for Raspberry Pi, but likely works with other Linux versions.
# Send device IP addresses via Telegram and email on startup.
import subprocess
import smtplib
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
import datetime
import smtplib
import requests
from requests.structures import CaseInsensitiveDict
import sys
import os
import time
time.sleep(10)
# Retrieve interfaces and IP addresses.
arg='ip route list'
#Run 'arg' in a 'hidden terminal'.
p=subprocess.Popen(arg,shell=True,stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
data1 = p.communicate() # Get data from 'p terminal'.
# Uncomment these 4 lines for troubleshooting
#print(' ')
#print('data1[0] = ')
#print(data1[0])
#print(' ')
# Split text block into lines.
ip_lines = data1[0].splitlines()
# Get device hostname
hostname = os.uname()[1]
message = 'IP Addresses for '+hostname+':\n'
# Find the interface names and IP addresses.
# Each line looks something like:
# b'default via 172.31.1.1 dev eth0 proto dhcp src 65.108.91.248 metric 100 \
# Interface is between 'dev' and 'proto', IP address comes just after 'src'
for l in ip_lines:
if ('link' in str(l)):
temp = str(l)
print(temp)
print(temp.index('dev'))
print(temp.index('proto'))
print('temp = ' + temp)
tempmsg01 = temp[int(temp.index('dev ')+4):int(temp.index('proto ')-1)]
tempmsg02 = temp[int(temp.index('src ')+4):int(temp.index('src ')+19)].replace(' ','').replace('m','').replace('e','').replace('t','').replace('r','').replace('i','').replace('c','')
print('tempmsg = ' + tempmsg01 + ': ' + tempmsg02)
message = message + tempmsg01 + ': ' +tempmsg02 + '\n'
################################ Send Telegram message
token ='<YOUR TELEGRAM TOKEN>'
url2 = f'https://api.telegram.org/bot{token}/sendMessage'
data = {'chat_id': '<YOUR CHAT ID,', 'text': message}
requestText = requests.post(url2, data).json()
print(requestText)
#Create the text, subject, 'from', and 'to' for the email message.
to = '<The email address you want to send to>'
gmail_user = '<Gmail address of sending account>'
gmail_password = '<Sending account's app password>'
smtpserver = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com', 587)
smtpserver.ehlo()
smtpserver.starttls()
smtpserver.login(gmail_user, gmail_password)
today = datetime.date.today()
msg = MIMEText(message)
msg['Subject'] = 'IPs for '+hostname+' - %s' % today.strftime('%b %d %Y')
msg['From'] = gmail_user
msg['To'] = to
################################# Send the email
smtpserver.sendmail(gmail_user, [to], msg.as_string())
#Close the smtp server.
smtpserver.quit()
Step #2: Make the script executable.
Using Terminal, navigate to the home directory and make the script executable.
cd ~
sudo chmod +x startupNotifier.pySetp #3: Run the Script on Startup.
We’ll add a line to the crontab to run the script whenever the device reboots.
crontab -eAdd the following lines to the crontab
@reboot /usr/bin/python3 /home/admin/Desktop/startupNotifier.pyNow, reboot the Pi and in about a minute, you should receive an email and Telegram message with your device’s IP address.