1st setup and configuration on Raspberry (manual installation)

Setup, Configuration and Use Beginners
1

Hello all!
I’m totally new to openHAB and automation at all.

Out of the wish to install a roller shutter engine I started also my personal project to openHAB.

At first I tried several times the installation of openhabian but the connection via browser failed around 10 times. So I decided to start with manual installation based on Raspian Buster lite and following the instruction of this great forum around Java installation and so on.

I got openHAB installed and can access via web browser http://openHAB:8080/
I already installed some bindings and learned the need to write text files for
home.items stored in /etc/openhab2/items,

'// Gruppen
Group gEG // Gruppe Erdgeschoss
Group g1OG // Gruppe 1. Obergeschoss

Group EG_Ost “livingroom” (gEG)
Group EG_West “kitchen” <EG-West-Küche> (gEG)
Group EG_West “WC” (gEG)
Group EG_West “Kammer” (gEG)

Group 1OG_Ost “kid” <1OG-Ost-li> (g1OG)
Group 1OG_Ost “work” <1OG-Ost-re> (g1OG)
Group 1OG_West “sleep” <1OG-West-li> (g1OG)
Group 1OG_West “Bad” <1OG-West-re> (g1OG)

/roller shutter/
Rollo Rollo_EG_Ost “Rollo kitchen” (EG-Küche)
Rollo Rollo_1OG_Ost “Rollo kid” (1OG-Ost-li)’

and home.sitemap stored in /etc/openhab2/sitemap

'sitemap home label=“Home menue”
{
Frame {
Group item=g1OG label=“1OG” icon=“firstfloor”
Group item=gEG label=“Erdgeschoss” icon=“groundfloor”
}
}
’

I cant find anything more than the bindings in my PAPER UI.

Googel, as my helper, hints me to use openHAB designer. Where can I find this openHAB designer?
I have not seen a designber foler in openHAB.

Here my folder structure
‘/etc/openhab2
html
icons
items
persistence
rules
scripts
services
sitemaps
sounds
things
transform’

Maybe I have total missknowledge in usage of different UI in openHAB but all the different UI seems to me not the right at this stage of installation/configuration.

BTW I read something about an additional configuration file in openHAB on another place than ‘/etc/openhab2/’ but I can’t find this folder and in ‘/etc/openhab2/’ is no ‘configuration’ folder.

Any help is verry wecome :wink:

cheers, bdream

  • Platform information:
    • Hardware: Raspberry 3B+
    • OS: Raspian Buster Lite 2020-02-13
    • Java Runtime Environment: _Zulu Java 8.
    • openHAB version: 2.5.4 Release Build
2

You should not rush into your Home Automation adventure and step two steps back first else you’ll get stuck on many more occasions like you already did.

Start reading the docs from the beginning.
Most of your questions are answered there. Docs are there for a reason.

And don’t use a manually installed system. Switch to openHABian, using the image.

3

nice try. As I stated

I tried several times.
But gave it another chance right now and used a new SD-Card with actual openhabian.

I started again and want to acces via WIFI as mentioned in doc I did with my data:

  • Open the file openhabian.conf in a text editor
  • Uncomment and fill in wifi_ssid="My Wi-Fi SSID" and wifi_psk="password123"

Network connection is not working as I anticipated from former tries.

I started to run ‘sudo openhasbian-config’ where I got first time:

[sudo] password for openhabian: openhabian
sudo: openhabian-config: command not found :frowning:

just found out there is a 0 byte file named ‘openHABian-install-failed’ in ‘/opt’

Brings my question up, why not to use manual installed openhab?

cheers, bdream

4

You are not encouraged to use WiFi for the install just as you shouldn’t run your openHAB server on wireless (only) anyway. Start installation with Ethernet attached to be on the safe side.

If that still does not work, follow the debug guide.

5

When you install manually (per the instructions) you are responsible for setting it up as a service and such.

When you install openHAB using apt you can get updates and everything get’s put in the standard locations and configured to start as a service in addition to working with standard OS conventions and the like.

When you install openHABian you get openhab, customization to the OS, and a bunch of other services installed and preconfigured to work with openHAB. You also have a nice menu to use to install and configure additional services like Mosquitto, InfluxDB, Grafana, etc. If you are on an RPi, it also has a nice ZRAM option that helps avoid lots of writing to the SD card which can wear it out.

The problem with “Google” is it doesn’t tell you how old the information is and whether it is still relevant. It’s been nearly five years I think since Designer has been viable. You should look through the official docs which will tell you to use VSCode with the openHAB extension to edit OH configs.

6

Hey! Thanks for your help so far.

I walked thrue the doc and installed openhabian again and again and with LAN (have not seen there is no possibility without an extra server is running) :grimacing:

Now it runs and I have to read many docs.
First Items are done. Have to deal with sitemap now… Will say tomorrow :sleeping:

cheers, bdream