HouseBot

This is probably a dumb question (I have more) but is there a way for a HB script to check for the existence of new email without actually receiving the email? Id like to be able to set a flag, change an indicator and maybe issue a beep on a SW remote when new email has been found.

Not native to HouseBot, but I intergrated email a long time ago into HouseBot. At the time I got the complete message which could set my cpu to 100% if large emails were received. So recently I changed the complete script and now it only gets message headers. It has a built in spam filter with a friends list and spam words list and auto spam delete options.

Anyways, to answer your question... Yes it can be done.

Richard, so the original email still resides on your ISP's email server and has not been received in its entirety from the ISP's server to your HB server? Reason I want to attack it that way is that I do all my email traffic from another PC not associated with HB and I would want to, after notification by HB that there is 'new mail', be able to download/receive the new mail to my everyday PC.
Capturing only the message header with the notification would be a nice touch though. I could see HB lighting an indicator and dropping the header into a list box or property label.

Yep, the email stays with the ISP. You can delete emails from HouseBot and even read them. For emails to be read, they need to be Normal Text. MultiPart Mime is something I left out because of the long loading time. I only display the text part of the message. I even put an Outlook start button on the email theme panel. When that button is pressed, the swremote jumps to the start panel, minimizes and outlook gets started. Handy...
I handle up to 4 accounts and scramble the passwords using some code. There is an email alphalist log in which you can select emails to be read or deleted. Also a popup pops when new email arrives. I put an account switch for each account so an account can be turned on or for checking. A command to check the enabled accounts is fired from a task using a timer. All else is done via script.

Richard, care to share all that... and in English (even if only the comments) ? It sounds exactly - probably more so - like what I want to do: One email account, notification of new mail, and as you describe, display the message header.

No problem in sharing. Send me a PM with your email address so we can set it up. Once you got it running (meaning you stripped all of my overhead and specifics) you might even want to post an export in the scripts section.
I have setup a couple of tasks to check for email and scramble the passwords. One script device, a timer and a NULL device with lots of properties for display purposes. I can send you all of that and make an export as good as I can. Usually exporting stuff is difficult since lots of other stuff is invorporated and the exporter also wants to have all relative stuff.