So, I always dreamed to live in a house, not in a loft (apartment). In few months I will have my own house for my family. I wish to automation my home and have a large display on the wall so I can control everything. I read for 2 days this forum, docs etc, but I still donāt know some things. In large part or for the moment itās about hardware.
I will buy today an Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ with 32Gb card, power suply and Wi-Fi network. I will install OH2 for the beggining on my Windows PC and make some tests there. Beside the RPi I will need a USB dongle (for RPi) to comunicate with devices ans sensors from my house. This is correct until now? If yes, please someone recommand me an USB or something else that would work with my sensors (I dont know yet what I will buy) on a budget price. Is there any dongle that work with more than one protocol (Z-Wave, ZigBee, Wing and so on)?
For the beggining I wish to test only to turn on/off a light at sunshine/sunset or a certain hour. I will need a smart switch and a dimmer, or the swith is enough?
Install openHABian on the pi and do your testing from there.
You will get a feel of the real system and linux. If you practice on the PC it might get quite different when you move to the Pi
Just for the record: There is nothing preventing you from having more dongles. I have a Z-stick for Z-wave and a Tellstick Duo for 433. If you want to begin small 433 is a good choice since the devices are very cheap, but if you plan on doing a more serious setup Iād vote for Z-Wave or ZigBee. Or a combination
Of course Just keep in mind that mesh networks (like Z-Wave or ZigBee) works better with more nodes. I had many problems with my Z-Wave network in the beginning, but with 10+ nodes things started getting better. So thereās a point in going for many nodes of the same type.
If you are just starting with OH donāt try to do more than you can chew. Do it one step at a time. It can get complicated and a bit overwhelming at time.
Read the docs again and again. The binding docs are VERY important.
Start with one technology and get familiar with it
Start with simple
Welcome
Like @vzorglub mentioned the binding docs are very important. After reading through them, take a look at what you already own that may be able to communicate with openhab via binding. For example, your TV, an Amazon echo, etcā¦ If your wanting to keep the cost down take a look at the sonoff or esp8266 devices, no dongle needed. Most of my home is automated with just the RPI and no dongles. Also read up on anything before purchasing, it may be worth a few extra dollars for one brand over another.
Iāll throw in - learn how to search this forum to take advantage of shared experience.
(Sidenote - be cautious about posts or web tutorial technical detail from before, say, 2017. OH1 had differences to OH2 that you should be using, and new users often get caught out using an old āstart hereā guide)
Relevant previous found by searching āzigbee zwave dongleā -
Also, if youāre all new with a PI -> BACKUP your SD CARD
And not only when you have time ā¦ everytime.
I learned this the hard way.
When I say backup, it means stop your PI, pull out the card to your windows computer and make a copy with
Can be quiet long, so donāt use a 32gb SDCARD if you donāt need as much space, but the ONLY safe way to backup the entire system.
Doesnāt seem to be a viable way ot backing up a server that needs to be online 24/7 to me. My OH server currently has an uptime of over a yearā¦ For backup of OH I recommend looking at the openhab-cli command which nicely backs up everything OH related to a single neat file that you can copy to some secure location.
This is how I backup and it works good for me. You may also want to look at using a SSD hard drive and remove the SD card. I have the RPI 3 B+ with 128G SSD and its works great, plus you can get the SSD for less than $30.
EDIT: One thing I forgot to mention is you may need to change permissions of the backup file when transferring the zip file to your PC. I use FileZilla for this and to change the permissions use this ```
sudo chmod a+rw backups
and to change permissions back this
sudo chmod a-rw backups
Well maybe in stable environnement, but when youāre a noob, dealing with backup in Linux is everything but user friendly. And when you need to restore ā¦ here comes the thrill .
Iāve no idea what I need to backup.
I mean system + openhab + everyting else I picked up on github
I donāt know how to do it:
Amanda, come on, Iām sure you can print labels for 5ā25 floppy with it ā¦
dd script to USB seems to work except when it crashes (and killed my system once), and now for some reason my PI is USB dependant : no USB plugged -> no boot
And more important, what ever the method always failed when trying to restore
Sorry to hear your having issues with making and restoring backups. Have you tried a backup like I posted above? I used this when moving my OH from RPI2 to RPI3 and it works great.
One thing I forgot to mention is you may need to change permissions of the backup file when transferring the zip file to your PC. I use FileZilla for this and to change the permissions use this ```
sudo chmod a+rw backups
and to change permissions back this
sudo chmod a-rw backups
As was said earlier, you can mix devices. I have a mixture of Zwave devices, and Sonoff switches, and a Broadlink controller for IR devices. I too am running on a Rasperry Pi 3, with the original Razberry board, and all works very well.
Xiaomi use Zigbee.
Thereās a binding in openhab if you have the gateway (not tested by me, look on the forum)
If it works, it is the easiest I suppose.
More advanced :
Thereās also a zigbee binding if you replace the gateway by an usb dongle (not tested also, not sure it works with xiaomi stuff)
Personnally, I installed on my PI a small daemon named zigbee2mqtt and a dongle.I use with xiaomi thermometer and without the gateway, working perfectly.
Amanda will backup a full server while it is up and running. You just need to mount an external file system (USB SSD/HDD or network shared folder) for Amanda to put the backups. Amanda comes with openHABian or you can install it separately. Linux, Windows, and Mac are all supported I believe.
I found Amanda to be easy to set up and use. The hard part is figuring out how to mount the external file system which is operating system dependent and can be challenging for non-Linux users on a headless RPi.
More expensive yes. Fewer no. I think there are more zwave devices than any other similar technology with zigbee being a close second. Though zigbee doesnāt yet have a good support in OH directly as zwave.
It works with some xiamoi stuff but not all. Be sure to check the zigbee readme for the list of devices known to work. Not listed devices may work but have not been shown to work. Unfortunately Zigbee is a little more open of a standard than Zwave meaning just because it says Zigbee doesnāt mean it is compatible with all other Zigbee devices/hub/coordinators.
Iām not sure ā¦ switching both account (root and backup) is not quite intuitive.The whole system of slots or whatever named it is like, changing tape on a server.
And as always what is backed up when installing via openhabian-config ? Everything ?
Amanda IS powerful for sure, but too linux āadminā for me ā¦
Just keep in mind that mesh networks (like Z-Wave or ZigBee) works better with more nodes. I had many problems with my Z-Wave network in the beginning, but with 10+ nodes things started getting better. So thereās a point in going for many nodes of the same type.