synology sms relay

This is a simple nodejs server which acts as an SMS relay for Synology DSM SMS notifications. When it receives notification requests, it runs a custom shell or nodejs script, passing the notification message to it.

The Why

Inspiration was drawn from the fantastic synology-notifications project. I used it for a while with great success, but I have now moved away from Slack to pushover (as it suits my needs better) and needed a way to relay the notifications from Synology to pushover. Pushover offers a way for me to send an email to my account's address which will get converted to a notification, but it shows up as "Email gateway" with an envelope icon, so my OCD suffered immensely 😄, until I decided to create this. It allows me to create an app (in Pushover) with any icon, and - using a script - customize the notification as much as I want.

The How

The deployment of this app is very simple (assuming you're familiar with Docker and have it up and running). The setup in Synology's DSM is, also simple, but to make it easy for you, here it is:

docker-compose

1. Create a docker-compose.yml somewhere and paste this:

---
version: '3.7'
services:
  synology-sms-relay:
    container_name: synology-sms-relay
    image: tborychowski/synology-sms-relay
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    volumes:
      - ./script.sh:/app/script.sh

2. Create a script.sh file in the same directory and make it executable:

echo "#!/bin/sh" > script.sh
chmod +x script.sh

3. Run it!

docker-compose up -d

It doesn't have a UI so you won't see anything, it accepts any verb (we'll use POST in this setup), so to test this just paste this URL in your browser's address bar:
http://localhost:3000/?text=Hello%20world&=

If that works - move on to setting up Synology.

Synology SMS notifications

1. Open your DSM
2. Go to Control Panel > Notifications > SMS
3. Check Enable SMS Notifications
4. Click Add SMS Provider
5. Enter Provider name, e.g. "sms-relay"
6. Enter SMS URL: http://<ip address of your server, where synology-sms-relay is running>:3000
7. Enter HTTP Method: POST
8. Click Next
9. On the Edit HTTP Request Header page just click Next, as we don't need any headers.
10. On the Edit HTTP Request Body page we need to add 2 values:
    • message with the value of hello world (DSM requires this value to not be empty)
    • phone_number with the empty value (we're not going to use this, but DMS requires the field to exist)
11. Click Next
12. On the last screen - Select the corresponding category for each parameter - assign the categories:
    • message to Message content
    • phone_number to Phone number
13. Click Apply
14. Enter some random numbers in the Primary phone number fields.
15. Done!

You can test the notification by clicking: Send a test SMS message.