A General Question about OpenHAB

Hi there,
I am not new in automation buisiness but OpenHAB confuses me !
I installed OpenHAB2 from SD Card , not the complicted way with openHABian, this is rather simple.
I read a lot of documents how to configure this by files … well ok I understood. But I cant get this to work.
Added the milight binding, configured it in openhab.cfg, put the binding in the addon dir added items in the items file, created a sitemap
looked in the logfiles… found some events for commands but never got it to work. Maybe I am using the wrong version ?. Maybe I modified the wrong files. I don´t really understand how the load these files into the running openhab, Rebooted the Raspi… not working !
I discovered PaperUI and habmin, changed things there and found the is no change the the configuration files at all. So what i am configuring there, there is no feedback to the files. This is a very strange method for configuration.

This leads to several Questions:

  1. Is openHAB2 really a good Idea or should I use an older version
  2. How can I real log information what is wrong.
  3. What is a configuration strategy files, habMin or PaperUI
  4. How the update the system after a configuration change.

THX BLOB

Please don’t mix up documentation from openHAB1 and openHAB2 :slight_smile:

If using openHAB2, the simple way would be to set up Raspbian, add the repository to apt and install through apt-get. Did you know about the official documentation for openHAB2?
As milight is supported via a OH2-binding, the only thing to do after installation, would be to activate milight through Paper UI.
Be aware that there isn’t such a file like openhab.cfg in openHAB2 anymore, this is openHAB1 only. If installing an old OH1-binding (regardless if using Paper UI or copying the jar to ./addons/), you would have to configure these bindings through one file per binding. These configuration files reside in ./conf/services/
Please be aware that the paths might vary depending if installed manually or via apt-get (which is the recommended way).

openHAB2 makes use of Eclipse SmartHome, so there are different ways to configure, unfortunately Eclipse SmartHome uses mapdb for storage, so any changes through Paper UI won’t be visible in configuration files. Even more severe, there is no way in configuring a sitemap through Paper UI at all yet, so you are forced to use both Paper UI and text configuration.
On the other hand, if having openHAB1 up and running, it’s simple to switch to openHAB2 (just take configuration from openhab.cfg to several files, don’t install any extension but put all bindings needed to./addons/), afterwards you could migrate step by step to OH2 bindings.

The general questions:

  1. If starting from scratch, try out openHAB2, it’s really stable
  2. Either start in debug mode or use the karaf console to increase log level.
  3. Comes up what you need :slight_smile: e.g. if using zwave, Habmin is a must have, however, autodiscovery is very smooth through Paper UI, but there is no reason not to use best of both worlds :slight_smile: beside the fact, that the configuration is split to files and database.
  4. if using apt-get, just do an apt-get update && apt-get upgrade to get the latest version of the installed flavor: (stable,) beta or snapshot.
    If changed any configuration, openHAB should spot this dynamically (well, sometimes doing a restart is more reliable :wink: - systemctl restart openhab2.service would do the trick)
1 Like

Or even simpler: openHABian

Hi Udo
Thanks a lot for the help, it extended my knowledge about openHAB. with this I tried to re-setup an started again from scratch. the HABmin in this case really helps,but what I am missing in there is any note if its HABmin 1 or 2. I loaded the milight binding ( a bit astonished ) but there were two bindings one of version 2 and one on 1.9 so I clicked the 2.0 but it loaded 1.9 i think i should try the other one. Then I checked the event … log its working fine but not the lamps. today the lamps spontaneously changed their brightness Ahh does it still work ? I opened the UI … all the names Changed From “Nightmode” to"milight_whiteLed_15807d975a9_0_lednightmode" very strange !! But I now can operate the lamps. The channels are a bit mixed up, And serveral function will not work, but switching to night mode works mostly somtimes for the wrong lamp. Maybe I started with a bad milight. this weekend I will try my Internetradio an hope it will work.

As I understood you right OH2 is really stable, and most of the things are working properly. So I assume it must be my mistake ---- I will try again.
Again may thanks.

Bernd

Ohh all texts texts in HABmin disappeared I will try Paper UI and search for a Solution.

I am more or less desperate !

Bernd