Send Message to Telegram Channel

Telegram is a globally accessible freemium, cross-platform, cloud-based instant messaging (IM) service. The service also provides optional end-to-end encrypted chats and video calling, VoIP, file sharing and several other features.

The Pico LTE device provides all the components needed to send messages to the Telegram channel.

Before starting this Pico LTE tutorial, the Pico LTE SDK installation and configuration steps must be completed. Below are the system requirements for this tutorial. If you haven't followed the SDK installation steps, please refer to the page below before proceeding with the tutorial. The details of these steps will not be covered in this tutorial.

docs.sixfab.com

Pico LTE SDK for MicroPython

System Requirements

If you have completed all the requirements, you are ready to send a message to Telegram with the Pico LTE device. Let's get started!

Telegram Bot Configuration

• Search "BotFather" in Telegram's search bar. Start conversation with BotFather. Type "/start" to see all available commands.

• Use "/newbot" command to create a new bot in Telegram.

• After creating a new bot, continue with typing your bot's name into conversation.
• Give a username for your bot. (Warning: Bot's "name" and "username" are different. You will use the "username" in the next steps.)
• You will given a token automatically for accessing HTTP API. (Your token will look something like this: "1234567890:XXX9WhkY694zP856M4xNLcr9pXX-xxxxxxx")

Warning: Keep your token secure and store it safely!

Telegram Setup

• Open Telegram and send the '/start' command to the created Bot to send/receive messages to/from it.

• Go to the "https://api.telegram.org/botYOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN/getUpdates" URL address in your browser with the HTTP API Token you generated.
• On the opened page, you will see a JSON data similar to the following.

{
  "ok": true,
  "result": [
    {
      "update_id": 679821252,
      "message": {
        "message_id": 15,
        "from": {
          "id": 70*******,
          "is_bot": false,
          "first_name": "YOUR_NAME",
          "username": "YOUR_USERNAME",
          "language_code": "en"
        },
        "chat": {
          "id": 70*******,    ⬅ CHAT_ID
          "first_name": "*",
          "username": "*",
          "type": "private"
        },
        "date": 1686954941,
        "text": "/start",
        "entities": [
          {
            "offset": 0,
            "length": 6,
            "type": "bot_command"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}

Your 'CHAT_ID' value is indicated in the shown location within this data.

Test the Code Example

Copy the following code block into the config.js file and enter your HTTP API Token and chat_id. Then save it to your Pico LTE device.

{
    "telegram": {
        "token": "YOUR_BOT_TOKEN_ID",
        "chat_id": "YOUR_GROUP_CHAT_ID"
    }
}

Run the "send_message.py" script that you opened in Thonny IDE.

The output you get in the code should look like this:

If the process is successful, a message will be sent to the channel as in the picture:

Troubleshooting

If Telegram is unable to retrieve the chat_id and '/getUpdates'_ returns {"ok":true,"result":[]}, try sending a few random messages to the chat you created with the bot. After that, refresh the API URL page you visited in the browser.