Keen to learn more of your ‘BUS’ system as the backbone?
BTicino openwebnet BUS.
A lot of work was recently done to create a openHAB binding that interacts with most BUS devices. It one of the main reasons I went with openHAB and not some other home automation platform.
Its like KNX but a bit cheaper and easier to manage as all the components come from one manufacture and are sure to work together without much fuss. It comprises of a 2 wire 27v BUS cable that runs to every switch, video door bell, thermostat and zone valves for the underfloor heating. There are also some wireless devices but mainly its a wired star system with cables running back to racks where most of the components are.
All my lights, all blinds and some sockets inside and out are connected to adressable actuators which are also connected to the BUS via 2 wire cable. Also connected to the BUS are sensors and a scenario controller.
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Very VERY interesting! as on my todo list is the water underfloor heating system we’re having installed later this year across the ground floor.
Well if you need to control your underfloor heating then BTicino BUS can do it.
If you did go this way then you could add more components later 
its BUS so you just need to connect them up via the 2 wire shielded cable or wirelessly if needed. Some components are designed for updgrading traditional 230v wired to the BUS and they designed are small enough to fit behind traditional fittings. It doesn’t have to be DIN rack mounted.
For the heating system there is a central controller dedicated for that purpose, and cooling too. My heat supply is ground source, deep bore, heat pump. Its possible to reverse this for cooling in the summer but I chose not to this… its not very efficent to cool floors. It would work better with passive ceiling radiators. Some things to think about
My house is low energy and has a very high thermal mass. So, I just set the desired temperature for a zone and let it run the whole year like that. Its fully automatic. There is no playing around with temperature settings as any temperature changes take days. openHAB does help me monitor and chart the sytem temperatures so that I know is running as well as it can be.
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I am based in the UK, any recommendation on dealers of this brand? this really does sound like what we need after a brief google moment… we were contemplating going the zwave route but I’ve already decided to limit my zwave rollout to just security and lighting. Relying on Tasmota for garage, electric gate and workshop outbuilding automation, zigbee has the monopoly on door sensors.
I think going the BUS route for heating and blind-automation will be the ideal way forward.
I am based in Austria. BUS systems are common here in Europe. KNX, BTicino. Even though I live in the mountains many of the local installers installed one or the other system and some did both. The UK is no longer Europe but there are installers for either system, however, from what I have seen they are harder to find.
One thing to bear in mind. KNX comes from an industrial background and there are many manufactures of the components adhering to varying degrees to the KNX standard.
BTicino is Legrand. A big single company. As all devices are made by one manufacture they are more likley to work toegether with a minimum of trouble. openwebnet is the open source protocol. These systems are marketed towards hotels and homes.
Yes I gathered the rare nature of this kit here in UK from my fruitless google search. I must state that I do love Legrand products, have imported a great deal of their components for electrical work, quality/form/function.
Me too. Well mostly. Its well made and reliable. However, some things are bit too dumb but thats were openHAB takes over. Its smarter, more flexible but also less reliable. I have most things running on BUS scenario controllers. When I need something a bit fancier I use openHAB, but nothing mission critcal, just the bells and whistles.
edit… A good example just now of tinkering messing things up… Alexa announced the west blinds were closing as the sun is getting low. Only they didn’t move…Turns out I had added a ‘summer’ only condition at some point to the blind rule but not the Aelxa announcement rule…doh!! Fixed by combining them
it’s fair to say implementing star system into existing home is basically full reconstruction… 
It could be, it depends. But you are right, it is best done on a new build; which mine was. I have conduits running every where so its usually possible to run more wires without hacking up the walls. But not always. Grrrrr.
Our home was built before electricity was invented, and it has all the latest beyond regulation standards in as far as cabling/plumbing is concerned… if one does not mind an angle-grinder and concrete breaker… then one will do whatever it takes to achieve what they feel most comfortable with. I’ve chased most walls in the house already for connectionless ‘visually’ fittings for flatscreens etc, 40G ready copper cabling in all rooms and OM5 optics in primary rooms, have a rack enterprise server with enterprise switches it all conduits back to with enterprise mesh wifi across the home and land… lets not even forget the army of CCTV cameras running off of Milestone…
I like doing the manual labour work, it is very fulfilling… the bit that gets annoying is the tedious software side of things because theres so many ways to skin it and everything has to be done from the ground up in OH, not complaining about the power and flexibility whatsoever, just from an end-user’s point of view, would be nice to go ‘ahhh, I do love what Mark has done, ohhhh let me download his template’… 
rather than spend a fortnight or two getting it right.
The only problem with the template things is that are in the end bespoke. Its likely to need some tinkering with to get it just how You would like it. If you are perfectionist like me you will at some point find a dire need to dive in and edit the code. They are however good for getting ideas and on how to go about coding it. Also, my ‘templates’ are not perfect and never finshed. There is always some leaning and some improvement to be done somewhere. I am always reading stuff on this forum on the look out for new ideas. As it was all new to me when I started and I am not a programmer I find my openHAB setup is getting quite complex to manage. See the edit in my previous post to see what I mean about the multitide of tinkering opprotunites in openHAB causing issues Geek alert!!!.. I am not complaining, tinkering is way better than wasting my life on social media 
!!!
I refer to the saving/loading idea as ‘template’ for it literally means just a template, no real function until that template (‘guide’) has all the holes plugged in… in most cases it could even potentially just leave loads of untied configuration in a system, but the benefit of being able to ‘share’ ones efforts with the globe are limitless! Some highly complex configurations could easily be re-deployed by someone who at least understands how OH holds it all together… for now it is a ‘forum’ copy/paste job and attempting to translate all the wonderful grammar of a global community… code is much easier to understand from my position than written posts. The ability to save and load and possibly even have version control of rules, complex configurations, would in itself make OH a pleasure to use day in day out, especially in situations as you describe where things get really complicated.
It is my opinion and I do not force it upon anyone.
Well I post my code all over on here when appropriate. Partly because I am one of the more chatty types; maybe too chatty for some here . And partly while am I trying to help someone I help myself and there is also a chance that a real expert takes a look and tells me how to do it better I often see on here new to me ideas and even though my code is mostly done I try use the new found idea just so I capture it in my code for later thinking and tinkering with.
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As Markus indicated, we already have most of the building blocks in place. And more building blocks are built all the time. I’m hopeful even stuff like Rules will be easier to use as building blocks in the future. But ultimately, that’s all OH can provide, building blocks. You are asking for a turn-key finished system. And that’s just not going to happen. Everyone’s system requirements are unique.
We all have time constraints and therefore we all have to prioritize our what we spend our time on. At this point of your life, spending time building your home automation system may not be possible. And that’s fine. But there is only so much that OH can do for you.
It’s more than just tying up loose ends. Home automation is a development activity. You are developing your own bespoke home automation system using one of the most powerful, and consequently complicated, frameworks there is.
Having said that, what you are asking for does exist. It exists in the commercial home automation hubs that only support half a dozen different technologies and otherwise have significant limitations. Fewer options means simpler to set up, configure, and use. It also means it’s less capable of meeting exactly your specific requirements.
And that’s the point. OH gives you the tools to build exactly what you need. But you have to build it and that will take time. You are looking for a complete system you can just install. Any such system is not going to be as powerful or flexible, nor will it exactly meet your specific home automation requirements. But it will require less time.
OH will continue to get better and require less time and expertise to set up. But it’s never going to be something that doesn’t require a significant investment of time to build your bespoke home automation system with.
OH 2.5 already has support for rule templates though it’s not used much and there are additional approaches being explored for how to distribute rules and/or parts of rules that do not require copy/paste/edit. PaperUI is also planned on being replaced for OH 3 with something hopefully a little more complete and usable. Look at Next-Gen Rules | openHAB and Helper Libraries for openHAB Scripted Automation — openHAB Helper Libraries documentation for some works in progress.
I tried that. It lasted for a week and my wife made me turn it off. She found it to be creepy.
You/she will get used to it. Mine is little a bit random which makes it appear less robotic, more moody. Sometimes it knows we both just entered and says hello to both of us or sometimes it will say hello to one of us but not the other. It’s just for fun and me exploring stuff. People are funny. At first she thought it was too spooky but now my other half complains if the house/Alexa says hello to me and not her 
My mum was similar with her Alexa. She said no way in my house etc. My Dad died and she is on her own now so o bought her one anyway… I use my echo show to do video calls with her. I am 2000km away. She loves it now for radio, timers,weather etc. I often catch her shouting at Alexa or she asks me to video call her and not use whatsapp etc. She hates tech. At 84 it’s too confusing but she seems fine with disembodied Alexa talk.
Don’t take risks 
I have my home ask the first person to get up to bring the other (adults) a coffee.
It’s absolutely correct and fair in detecting who’s addressed but my wife is 1000% convinced I intentionally miscoded that so it’s always her to get the job.
A very civilised and detailed response. OH community is very lucky to have you indeed.
Plumbing OH via shell is fine… nothing wrong with that, however having an advanced UI which permits one to be able to edit/save/load/version-manage configuration from the comfort of a web-interface would simply take OH management to the next level… I do not expect OH to turn into a big hold-your-hand platform… it is simply a case of when you have used a few interfaces from different projects, you kind of like this and that and think well hey if OH had that kind of interface too then OH would be even better…
I mean for example I love the flow interface in NodeRed… but I shall not demand that as a feature, it might upset those who prefer antiquated methods of configuration.
On the subject of this topic, after some heavy research I’ve decided to use additional systems alongside OH, as we completely rely on our XMPP server and SMS gatway for notifications we don’t really have any need for a dashboard or day to day user interface as such as we’re relying on voice commands for operation in all rooms. This path permits us to partition the services, using each system’s advantages for each service. I conclude that isolation of each system is the best way forward and as each system matures further with the advantages of another, only then would it be wise to collate the ‘eggs’ into one basket. OH gets the zwave egg, for Chris’s addon is most definitely the best most user-friendly and highly compatible zwave implementation in the opensource community thus far, yes I’ve ran them all. MQTT will be the communication hub between each system where required. Everything can be done in just one system, I mean even HomeGenie has a fully programmable interface which can make it just as powerful as any other automation system if one is willing to code hours on end, thus from an ‘effort’ perspective it makes sense to use each system where the appropriate particular function configuration is easiest to manage. Thank goodness for MQTT and its broad support.
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