That is the whole point of openHAB. You have Items that represent each device and use rules to send commands to one based on events from the other. Once it is in openHAB, anything can command anything else.
Is there a tutorial on how to “link” Logitech Harmony to openhab, so that Harmony learns about the Fritz!Dect 200 switchable plugs and can control them?
The tl;Dr is no, there is not a tutorial for such a specific configuration. See How to get started (there is no step-by-step tutorial) for lots of getting started resources and https://www.openhab.org/addons/bindings/harmonyhub/ for working with Harmony.
Bring the “Hue Emulation Service” into pairing mode.
Then search with your “Harmony Hub Software” for a “Hue Bridge”. Read Harmony Hub Manual how to achive this.
Add your item from above to it.
Define a button on “Harmony Remote Control” for using with the device. Read Harmony Hub Manual how to achive this.
Or create a new Action and assign your device to it.
installed Hue service (and yes, I am able to understand the difference between Hue service and hue binding)
installed fritz binding
set up my Fritz!Dect 200 devices so that I could turn them on and off in OpenHAB
Connected the Hue service as a “hue bridge” to Logitech harmony
This was all more or less ok (I am ignoring the fact that the documentation how to get there has been partially wrong and outdated).
But I have not understood how the item files are supposed to be working: whatever I have written in the itmes file, it never got picked up successfully, and the hue emulation service never published any devices to logitech harmony.
I am assuming this is because of the (sorry to say in it in these harsh words) the total mess around how to set up items and maintain tags - the Web UI called “Paper UI” does not offer any options to maintain the items in an appropriate form or fashion, as it does not suppor tags editing.
In addition, the item file I created in \192.168.xxx.xxx\openHAB2-conf\items never worked - my impression was that it never got really read or interpreted by open HAB.
So, I guess my real question is then:
How do I maintain those tags in the items, or maybe even - how do I create or edit items? How do I make OpenHAB recognize/read the item file(s)?
It would be very helpful to open issues when ever you find anything that is incorrect or outdated. See How to file an Issue. The main docs are maintained in the openhab/openhab-docs repo and the add-on docs are stored with the add-on code in openhab/openhab1-addons or openhab/openhab2-addons depending on the binding.
Finally, I would like to recommend that we consolidate the two or three threads that are onging right now into one thread. The Total disaster seems to have the most activity.
Yes, thanks for your recommondation. Will update the latest status (working, thanks to the help of this community!) tonight in the Total disaster thread.