The Teloscope Bot is now on EOS

The Teloscope
8 min readOct 2, 2019

What is The Teloscope Bot?

The Teloscope Bot is a third-party application that runs inside the messaging app Telegram. Users can interact with The Teloscope Bot by sending messages and commands to it by opening a chat with it.

Here is a list of the bot’s main features:

  • Use the bot in your own language: 11 major languages available.
  • Get information about EOS accounts: display stats about CPU, NET, and RAM resources, total balance and votes cast.
  • Monitor accounts, premium names and contracts: subscribe to real-time notifications and set a threshold to filter out irrelevant Tx.
  • Check EOS exchange rate in BTC, TLOS and US dollar, or use the EOS converter.
  • Know current RAM price on EOS Mainnet in EOS/KB

How to use it

You can access the EOS version of The Teloscope Bot here (this is an invite-only private beta for now).

It might be of your interest to know that there is a similar version of the bot for the Telos EOSIO blockchain network. You can find it here. Oh, and you can get a free Telos account in seconds! (Sorry, no free EOS accounts).

Once you’re chatting with the bot type /start or press Start to begin. On first use, the bot will show you a brief introduction with a disclaimer with which you agree by using the bot. Basically it warns you that this software is a beta version.

Also on first use, the bot will prompt you to select your preferred language. You can change it anytime in Settings.

After selecting your language, the bot will ask you the “What do you want to do?” question. Now you can press Subscriptions, Any Account Info, Converter, Settings, Help.

Options after issuing /start command

Or type the common slash (/) to bring up the list of commands.

List of commands available

The commands are pretty self-explanatory:

  • /help — returns a help message.
  • /start — begins interaction with the user. This command gives you access to the subscription service and information about any account in EOS.
  • /eos_price — returns the real-time price of EOS token for these trading pairs: EOS/USD and EOS/BTC.
  • /ram_price_nm — returns the actual price in EOS of 1 KB of RAM on EOS Mainnet.
  • /web — returns the URL of The Teloscope website.

Subscriptions

You can press EOS accounts, Bid names , or Contracts to select the type of subscription that you want to manage.

Options under Subscriptions action

Accounts

You are allowed to subscribe an EOS account. Select Show subs for listing your current subscription, New for adding a subscription, or Delete for removing it.

Options under EOS accounts action

You will be notified whenever there are relevant actions from/to your tracked account. Alerts are sent immediately

By default, alert threshold is set to 0.001 EOS. You can change that value under Settings at the initial bot screen. Please read further below on the Transactions threshold section how to do it.

The current balance and specific links to Tx details on EOSX and BLOKS.IO explorers are included in the information that is sent.

If you want to test that bot notifications are working you can proceed as follows: go to your preferred voting application (wallet or web) and submit your votes again.

Names

The Bid names option helps you follow the EOS premium name you want. You can even subscribe to a name that includes a dot (.) in it.

Premium names are part of a bidding process. Whenever an account places a bid for any of those names the bot will send you an alert including the bound bid information.

Contracts

The Contracts option lets you receive alerts whenever the code of a smart contract has been updated. You can subscribe to any EOS contract the same way you do with accounts and bidnames.

This may be useful not only for developers but for anyone who’s especially concerned with possible changes made to custom tokens etc.

Any Account Info

This option gives you plenty of information about any EOS account. You just need to provide the name of the account you want the bot to query about.

Give the name of the account
You can get info about Resources and Votes

Resources

Resources button gives you access to several types of information about the provided account. You can check stats about CPU, NET,Ok, ya RAM and Total balance, either individually or all together.

Available information about any given account

Votes

Votes button returns the list of voted BPs. If you are using a proxy the name of the proxy and its voted BPs are displayed.

List of BPs voted (and proxy if used) by an account

Converter

This option makes quick and easy convert EOS to and from USD, BTC and TLOS in real-time.

Choose an option and then type the amount you want to convert

Settings

You can customize your settings to make the bot suit your needs and preferences.

Language

By default, the language of the bot interface and chat messages is English. But as the bot is multilingual you may also chat with it in your local language. You can easily change your interface language by pressing Language and selecting your preferred one.

Currently 11 major languages are available: Spanish, Turkish, Russian, Chinese, Indonesian, Hindi, German, French, Dutch, Arabic and English.

Example: Options displayed in Spanish language

Network

By default, all the available options are executed on the EOS Mainnet. But you can change your default network to the Jungle and Kylin Testnet with this option.

Tx threshold

By default, the minimum transaction amount set in order to receive a bot alert is 0.1000 EOS for all and each of your subscribed accounts. You can check the current value and change it. Just keep in mind that it is a global value, so you cannot set it on a per account basis.

Troubleshooting

If you’re about to raise an issue because you think you’ve found a problem with The Teloscope Bot… please read this first.

Please note that you must have a username in Telegram, not just a display name, in order for the bot to chat with you. So make sure you set one in the Telegram app settings.

If you are experiencing operational issues (freezing up, general slowness) with the bot, please type /start and check again.

If the problem still persists you can check Telegram Messenger twitter to see if there are any widespread connection issues. It doesn’t happen often but sometimes Telegram experiences difficulties that affect chatbots as well.

Keep in mind that The Teloscope bot is currently in public beta. This means that it is feature ready but might have bugs that can be found only when a wide user base tries it out. If you find any issue with the current version of the bot, please contact us.

Future development

We are always testing refinements that we include as soon as we can in regular updates of the bot. If you have a sound proposal of improvement, please contact us. And check our community channels for new announcements related with The Teloscope Bot.

Protect yourself from scammers

Naturally, any bot should be treated as a stranger. Bots are no different from human users that you meet in groups for example.

Beware of anyone impersonating our bots or any of The Teloscope team members, even if they chat nicely! Just click on the photo/avatar/info of the bot/person you are talking to, to check their username.

Beware of impersonators! Click on the avatar/info and check the username

We will never chat with you about our bot from any other account. Moreover we will never ask you for passwords, private keys, Telegram codes or crypto/money.

Also, be careful when opening files sent by bots, same as you would deal with ordinary humans. Make sure the computers you use are free of spyware, malware, and virus infections. Always keep your operating system and the software on it up to date to protect you from security vulnerabilities.

Troubleshooting

If you’re about to raise an issue because you think you’ve found a problem with The Teloscope Bot… please read this first.

Please note that you must have a username in Telegram, not just a display name, in order for the bot to chat with you. So make sure you set one in the Telegram app settings.

If you are experiencing operational issues (freezing up, general slowness) with the bot, please type /start and check again.

If the problem still persists you can check Telegram Messenger twitter to see if there are any widespread connection issues. It doesn’t happen often but sometimes Telegram experiences difficulties that affect chatbots as well.

Keep in mind that The Teloscope bot is currently in public beta. This means that it is feature ready but might have bugs that can be found only when a wide user base tries it out. If you find any issue with the current version of the bot, please contact us.

Future development

We are always testing refinements that we include as soon as we can in regular updates of the bot. If you have a sound proposal of improvement, please contact us. And check our community channels for new announcements related with The Teloscope Bot.

Protect yourself from scammers

Naturally, any bot should be treated as a stranger. Bots are no different from human users that you meet in groups for example.

Beware of anyone impersonating either our bots or any of The Teloscope team members, even if they chat nicely! Just click on the photo/avatar of the bot/person you are talking to, to check their username and compare this with @TeloscopeEOSBot, @TeloscopeBot or @TheTeloscope.

We will never chat with you about our bot from any other account. Moreover we will never ask you for passwords, private keys, Telegram codes or crypto/money.

Also, be careful when opening files sent by bots, same as you would deal with ordinary humans.

This guide has been produced by members of The Teloscope team.

The Teloscope is an independent non-profit block producer. The revenue we get from any service we provide to the network is fully invested in our BP infrastructure, as well as in tools and services for the community.

You can support us by including theteloscope among the list of BPs that deserve your vote.

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