❇ open-wa

[smashah]

Problem/Motivation

(Why the issue was filed)

Further to the conversation on discord. I am opening this issue to request that an open-wa [0] add-on be introduced to the official home assistant repository.

I did a preliminary search for "Whatsapp" on the community [1] forum which clearly shows that there is an explicit need from the community for such an addon. This add-on would better than other workarounds mentioned in the forums because:

• It will be self-hosted and therefore more secure than using 3rd party workarounds
• The add on will give the ability of the user to send more than just messages (videos, location, links, images, stickers, etc.)
• The project is well maintained and backed by the community - i.e it will not go stale any time soon.
• There are no time delays when sending messages.
• A home assistant integration will also be developed to forego any need for a node-red or custom HTTP requests which are resulting in blockers for the current workarounds [2] [3] [4]

[0] - https://docs.openwa.dev/
[1] - https://community.home-assistant.io/search?q=whatsapp
[2] - home-assistant/core#43576
[3] - home-assistant/core#44210
[4] - https://community.home-assistant.io/t/you-can-now-send-whatsapp-notifications-from-ha/184316/34

Expected behavior

(What you expected to happen)

As the maintainer of open-wa, I will develop the first drafts of the add-on as best as I can then submit it as an update in the comments of this issue to hopefully get it 'graduated' as an official home assistant add on which will make it useful to thousands of users (instead of stumbling upon my custom repository).

Actual behavior

(What actually happened)

TBD

Steps to reproduce

(How can someone else make/see it happen)

N/A

Proposed changes

(If you have a proposed change, workaround or fix,
describe the rationale behind it)

[stavfx]

Can we have this as an addon from a custom repository, if there's no update on having it in the official repo?

[nsnui0]

a must-have add on!