Automation of venetian blinds

[Wolfgang_S]

The expire binding is not a binding that is going to replace your MQTT binding. You can use it on top th define a command that is to be sent after a specified amount of time expired.
E.g. I can ask Alexa to turn on light for 5 minutes. This means a specific switch will be turned on. By using expire the switch will be turned off after 5 minutes without further manual interaction.
The item in my case looks like:

Switch Rule_Fuenf_Minuten_Aussenlicht_einschalten "Fuenf_Minuten_Aussenlicht" ["Switchable"] { expire="300s,command=OFF" }

the related rule that I have uses a script to turn on/off the physical switch of the light via a UDP command. That script could be adapted to send MQTT commands:

rule "rule triggered by Rule_Fuenf_Minuten_Aussenlicht_einschalten"
when
        Item Rule_Fuenf_Minuten_Aussenlicht_einschalten received command
then
        if (receivedCommand === ON ) {
                executeCommandLine( "/etc/openhab2/scripts/aussenlicht.sh OUT4  1" )
        }
        else if ( receivedCommand == OFF ) {
                executeCommandLine( "/etc/openhab2/scripts/aussenlicht.sh OUT4  0" )
        }
end

I do not use Expire binding that was mentioned in a previous post because it is a V1 binding that will not be supported in the upcomming OH3.
Instead I use a jython replacement which is described here:

Jython Drop-in Replacement for Expire 1.x Binding

Edit: I’ve reimplemented this and am hosting it on my own repo instead of as a submission to the helper libraries. As a challenge to myself I wanted to see if I could replace the Expire binding using Rules. The answer appears to be yes. See https://github.com/rkoshak/openhab-rules-tools for a drop in replacement to the Expire binding. You don’t even need to change your Item configs. The rules will pick up your existing Expire binding configs and use them. The only limitation is you must caus…