Just wanted to say hi and get a bit of a heads up.
I’m not a computer genius but i’m definitely computer literate, however i’m just about to jump into installing openHAB on a raspberry pi. It’s all new to me, however i’m moving across from my home assistant because it just seemed way too buggy.
I spent around 12 hours installing the software, getting it connected to wifi, setting up shared folders and remote connections, then when i clicked the 1 stop shop z-wave configuration I can now no longer communicate with my Pi.
After every problem solved a new one arises… I’ve no idea about MQTT or what possibilities there are with these softwares, however I was hoping for something more click and play.
I want to be able to have a hub here in my home in Australia which communicates via z-wave to my blinds, lights, amazon alexa, tv, speakers, door lock, garage door and air con.
I’d like to be able to create scenes and control all of these things from an app remotely also.
Am I best off just spending the money on a fibaro or Vera system, which will work out of the box to do all the basics or am I capable of working out this DIY home automation that I found impossible with home assistant?
Welcome .
we are all here as a Community and we help as we can. if you read the documents and implement them . it becomes actually a easy system . but the Click and play . not really diy. but yes you can workout the diy yourself. and build what you need with all the platforms available to use. might need some googling skills but we all have that . I also started in search of a easy system . but what a surprise I got. now a year later and I am still here and building diy controls and sensors to fit me and my house and application that I want to work a specific way.
Thats wat makes it fun. my HA is My Handy work. and I Love Openhab as it makes more and more sense the more I use it. and break it. just to fix it .
Welcome yet again and have fun learning and building your system to your requirements .
when you need help . just shout and someone will help or point you in the right direction. where some one also had that problem or knows how to work around it. I can say that I know as I got a lot of help from the community . These are a bunch of friends that helps and gives solid advice.
OH is most definitely not click and play. Its a great package but takes a large investment in time to understand and to setup properly. There is a great community here to help. It really depends on what you want to do. If you enjoy HA and like to tinker then OH is a great option. If you just want to turn it on and never think about it again, a simpler option would be better.
I went through a similar process, I wanted to prepare a home automation for my new house, and gave a try to several brokers. I tried FHEM, ioBroker, HassIO and Openhab.
Because I did not want to spent too much time, I decided to decicate three hours to each of the candidates and see how far I come. And with Openhab… I made the best progress. So I decided to stick with it.
So far I am still a newbie, but I think I took the right choice. Openhab is highly extensible and flexible. No matter what I looked for so far, for everything I found a binding, script or similar.
Especially with Z-Wave my experience is positive so far. The binding is stable and controls my devices without noticable lagging. Alexa integration works well, and I even managed to include those Wifi-Lamps (Tuya or Smart Life they are referred to) into OH2.
But one warning: OH2 is highly addictive. As soon as you managed to include one thing, you start walking through your house, go through all devices and look for what you can integrate next For me, the next challenge are “old” stereos and TVs which are only controllable by IR remote.
I am sure you will have a lot of fun, and great support with this forum, as I had so far.
Thanks for the replies everyone
I’ve gone ahead and etched the img and openHAB2 is currently installing on my tiny Pi.
Not sure if it’s because I already jumped through all the hurdles with Home Assistant, but the whole process has been easier already.
My computer couldn’t open the flash drive after I used etcher, but a quick search showed how to give the drive a letter et voila, it worked. It makes alot more sense to set the wifi password within the config file - as compared with HA where you need to load a ‘file’ onto a USB.
Anyway, enough ranting, thank you so much for your replies, with the documentation as good as it is so far i have hope that i’ll have more success with OpenHAB
My suggestions are to start slowly and gradually build up your system. No matter what home automation hub you choose, home automation is complicated and hard. There is a lot to learn and the more capable the hub is the more there is to learn.
Definitely spend some time with the OH docs. Read the Beginner’s Tutorial (incomplete though it is) and the Concepts section of the docs end to end. Then read through the various sections as you are ready to start incorporating new concepts like Rules or Persistence. There are a lot of special terms and concepts in OH that all work together. Understanding the difference between a Thing and an Item, for example, will be key to understand how OH works.
You can be successful. Many people who likely have less computer skills than you are very successfully using OH in quite impressive configurations.
The point and click configuration is in work. There are some things that you can point and click and as time goes on more an more are being added. But there will be many things that must be configured by editing text files. And all the point and click stuff will have a text file configuration equivalent.
Use the forum. There has been a ton posted for almost every problem you can think of already and there are lots of us who love to help. If you show that you have put forth even just a little bit of effort and ask detailed questions we will jump at the opportunity to help.
Welcome and good luck! Depending on what technologies all your various devices use OH should handle their integration relatively easily. There are over 350 add-ons the last time I checked and more being added every day. In all likelihood if there is an API to the device, there is already a binding available to control it.
My personal guess is, by end of 2019 openHAB will be completely point and click, with text files as alternatives, and can be operated and maintained entirely from a web browser. That still doesn’t mean, that it can be setup by everyone immediately.
With Visual Studio Code and auto-completion writing of rules is not that hard though even nowadays.
What is really missing is a first-start page on Paper UI, that briefly introduces the user into the concepts with some nice diagrams and maybe an introduction video.
First go i tried loading openhab2 on my little pi 3 B+, i changed the config file to use wifi.
Unfortunately it wasn’t discoverable on my network, I couldn’t find an IP address and i wasn’t able to load it from http://openhabianpi:8080. I thought i’d give it another go and not touch the config file.
Success on the second go!
I’m very happy to see the UI up and running, it’s definitely a much easier install than home assistant.
Welcome to Openhab. Whilst I have never tried HA, I do visit their webpage and forum very often as I like to ensure any hardware I purchase will work on both platforms. I have heard that if you use ZWave (don’t own any) that Openhab has more stable and mature support so I am sure your move will be worth it if you are basing your setup around that tech.
Only openHAB 1 bindings do not work from paper UI. The idea is that those old bindings get replaced with new ones over time.
The documentation of each binding has only examples for files, because it is kind of obvious how it works in paper ui (If you are familiar with the concepts).
No matter if you write files or use paper UI. Both can be included in a backup.
I made the transition from Homeseer three weeks ago. I installed Openhab on my RaspberryPi.
First I removed all z-wave devices from my zwave controller and did a factory reset of the controller. The added just 4 lamps, 2 of them with dimmer, and messed around with that. Kept the config real simple so I got the idea of the inner workings of OpenHab.
The base is simpel, yes, but you can go all out, the way openhab is setup, possibilities are almost endless.
Install visual studio code, install the openhab plugin, connect it to the \raspberrypi\openhab-conf share. This will help you with the syntax of items etc. Look at your log after changing a file and saving it, it gives immediate feedback and clear error states.
Try the rules section last. This is where it can get complicated fast. Though I really got good help here on the forum with my rules.
It depends on the binding developer which configuration model fits. Usually there is not much to configure for a binding, that’s why most bindings do not have a binding configuration.
This is required to be documented in the binding documentation. If that is not done correctly for the Kodi binding for example, you can and should open a bug report on Github to have this fixed.
Personally I would move away from the Pi once you have the basics working and you are ready to put it into production.
The Z-Wave binding works really well. I use Fibaro and Aeotec devices (in Australia). Occasionally I have had to update the configuration to recognise the Australian version of these devices, but that has been added into the repo; so hopefully no need for you to do it.
Indeed, if you want to change from PaperUI configured Things to .things files you will have to do it again. But be aware that PaperUI Things are stored in a text file you can read, edit, and backup like any other text file. But, even better, they get backed up automatically for you by OH.
This was unnecessary. You could have just plugged in the controller and OH would have discovered all the nodes already paired with the controller.
For me, the next challenge are “old” stereos and TVs which are only controllable by IR remote.
