Beginner advice required

Hello.
Total newbie here.
I found about openHAB while researching what can be done regarding home security. I would like to start a project that consists of PIR sensors that cause an alert to be sent out when triggered. Maybe then adding in a siren.

I first read about zwave and zigbee devices which looked good. Saw some xiaomi zigbee PIRs for about £10. However, being a cheapskate, and a fan of cheap electronics, I have discovered the mysensors project. This seems an ideal way to get in arduino.
I am familiar with the raspberry pi, so that seems an ideal platform for openHAB.

I would just like to check that what I am planning is possible, and would be grateful of any advice to get going before I start purchasing some components.

Grumpy

Yes, I do just that
Works great. MySensors node are VERY reliable in my experience
I used to have a pi runnong OH but I upgraded
A pi will be fine. Go for a pi3 if you can.

I use node-red and “translate” the topics fron mysensors to human readable ones.

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Thanks vzorglub
Can the pi acting as the controller (openHAB) also be the gateway? I see there are a few different gateway technologies :thinking:
I have looked at the node-red page. Not entirely sure where that fits in at the moment?

I don’t know to be honest.
I use a MySensors MQTT Ethernet gateway.
It is placed in a central location in the house and picks up every nodes without problems even without the big antenna.

Because it is MQTT My Sensors will publish something like this:
Topic: OHout/21/1/1/0/0
Payload 19.3
For the temperature sensor on node 21
So I get node-red to change the topic to House/MasterBedroom/Thermostat/AmbientTemp
Node-Red loads a json file with all the “translations” on start-up

and I subscribe to that topic in openHAB with the MQTT binding. For example:

Number:Temperature   MasterBedroom_ThermostatAmbientTemp   "Master Bedroom Ambient Temp. [%.1f %unit%]"   <temperature> (MasterBedroom, MasterBedroom_Thermostat, Temperatures, AmbientTemps) [ "CurrentTemperature" ]         { mqtt="<[mybroker:House/MasterBedroom/Thermostat/AmbientTemp:state:default]" } 

I have tried the mysensors binding but it won’t be completely repliable until the MQTT 2.4 binding is part of the main distro.

This is one of my temperature/humidity nodes:

Thanks
That is all a bit beyond me at the moment.
Ive got openHAB running with a nework binding. Thought I’d try and send a test email via some sort of button, but it seems to be a technical nighmare (And I work in I.T. !!)

I will keep reading. I’m sure it will make sense at some point.