[CLOSED] BitPing.Net - A bitcoin notify service

[MORA]

[UPDATE]
As of March 2013 the website is no longer operational.
If someone wishes to take over the domain, feel free to contact me.
[/UPDATE]




After a few long evenings, the website is now ready for real use.
The idea is much the same as the old bitcoin-notify, but other than that is has no connection.

TL;DR New Bitcoin notify service (Beta) - http://www.BitPing.Net

The system uses bitcoind to download the block chain.
And Abe to parse the blockchain into MySQL (So you can run the block explorer also).
Then a monitor looks into the database every so often, to see if there are new notifications to be made.
Really the most work is in making the user interface, and since it may still contain a few bugs, I will wait a few weeks before publishing the UI code.
The monitor and an installation guide is avaliable from day 1 however, so if you plan to run a similar website, you should start by getting bitcoind and Abe synced up.


The idea is that you enter a bunch of public addresses into BitPing.Net (or a self hosted database).
Then select the number of confirmations you require and which http address to call when a new payment is made.
Currently we only support 1+ confirmations, ie. no unconfirmed notifications and just email/http notifications.

The HTTP POST interface is very simple, and there is an example when you are logged in.
More notification types, and events will be added as requested.

There is a link to the github at the bottom of the page with a rough installation guide to bitcoind, abe and the monitor script.

Any feedback is very much welcome, thanks.



Screenshots

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[Jeremy West spendbitcoins.com]

watching

[HostFat]

watching

Me too

[adamstgBit]

watching

Me too

me three

but why no 0 confirmations notification?

[notme]

watching

Me too

me three

but why no 0 confirmations notification?

+1

This is the only feature that will bring me to use such a service.  There are lots of ways to get 1+ confirmation info.

[adamstgBit]

would be very cool if you could add a "test triger event button" that would send a test http request.

this helped me allot when testing my application using bitcoin Notify, didn't have to send myself coins...

[MORA]

watching

Me too

me three

but why no 0 confirmations notification?

+1

This is the only feature that will bring me to use such a service.  There are lots of ways to get 1+ confirmation info.

Care to enlighten me ?
I can think of polling one of the block chain browsers, but then you are depending on that one site being there.

[MORA]

watching

Me too

me three

but why no 0 confirmations notification?

Since I am using Abe for the block work, and Abe currently does not store a list of unconfirmed transactions.
There has been some talks in the Abe thread to use a different script/software to get the 0-confirmation info.

[MORA]

would be very cool if you could add a "test triger event button" that would send a test http request.

this helped me allot when testing my application using bitcoin Notify, didn't have to send myself coins...

Added
Link is on the API page below the table with data, a TEST tag has been added to the API to show if the event is a test or real.

[notme]

watching

Me too

me three

but why no 0 confirmations notification?

+1

This is the only feature that will bring me to use such a service.  There are lots of ways to get 1+ confirmation info.

Care to enlighten me ?
I can think of polling one of the block chain browsers, but then you are depending on that one site being there.

I can think of polling a blockchain browser with fallback to others.  I could use your service, buy then I am depending on your site being there.

[MORA]

watching

Me too

me three

but why no 0 confirmations notification?

+1

This is the only feature that will bring me to use such a service.  There are lots of ways to get 1+ confirmation info.

Care to enlighten me ?
I can think of polling one of the block chain browsers, but then you are depending on that one site being there.

I can think of polling a blockchain browser with fallback to others.  I could use your service, buy then I am depending on your site being there.

Yes for now you would be depandent on my site, but within the near future everything thats needed to run the site is public domain, so you could host it yourself, or signup to several services that hopefully will come, that would also protect against the unlikely event that one of the servers was compromised and used to send fake reports (unlikely because a fake report does not gurantee that the shop will actually deliver, after all a look in their wallet or block chain browser will not show the payment).

Ofcause if you can use the Ape API, you can make a small script to pull data for the monitored addresses instead of using the database, and then you could use any abe server as a backup.

[Bitcoinreminder.com]

Another fine alternative is http://www.bitcoinreminder.com

It sends email/sms reminders.. Its completely free at the moment (even the sms reminders)..

Works fine for me and a lot of my customers

[MORA]

The source for the main website have been added to github today

[MORA]

Another fine alternative is http://www.bitcoinreminder.com

It sends email/sms reminders.. Its completely free at the moment (even the sms reminders)..

Works fine for me and a lot of my customers

Quite a bit nicer layout than my version

However the main point about BPN is that it is free (as in freedom and cost) to download and use, in that content, I do not see your site as an alternative, instead since you have made the same post in several other threads, I guess its simply advertising 

Anyway the more options the better.

[MORA]

Added Pubnub notifications (both on the site and in github), and a few metatags + titles.

Still no idea how to get 0-confirmations from bitcoind :/

[MORA]

FYI : blockchain.info now offers a notification service also, havent tested it, but I think that does 0-confirmations.

[MORA]

New feature : AdHoc notifications - https://bitping.net/oneshot.php

This is a mini API to request a single notification of 1 payment without registering as a user.
For now any URL can be used, but it may be necessary to limit it to URLs that resolve to the IP of the API caller later on, to prevent the service from being used as a slow and expensive HTTP attack gateway

Will be added to github in a day or two, already live on the site, feel free to give it a test run!

[hex]

I would like to use your service but as I see it already has downtime.
You don't plan to make it reliable ?

Also does it have option that if my server is not available that it tries to deliver notification later ?

[MORA]

I would like to use your service but as I see it already has downtime.
You don't plan to make it reliable ?

Also does it have option that if my server is not available that it tries to deliver notification later ?

If I didnt plan to make it reliable, I would not have spent the time to move it to a new server, now would I  

It will retry for a few times, but if your server is down more than 10-20minutes, the notification will fail.
However you can use pubnub, and their history command to check for missed events.


The downtime was because my previous VPS provider did a very poor job, ended up with a broken database, and had to move it yesterday.

For now its hosted at slicehost, and by the end of next month, when my new dedicated is ready, it will be moved as a VPS on that.

If this takes off, then I will ofcause make redundant systems with HA failover.
But as long as its low volume, a VPS on my dedicated should have plenty of uptime.

[hex]

It is now downloading blockchain again from beginning ?


How about incising that retry to at least few days? It can try frequently for the first hour and then it can try like once pen hour.

Also is there option that BitPing requires specific reply from my server? Something like 'OK' ?


I plan to use it for exchange and I think those are options that I need to make it reliable.