I have openHAB2 running on my rasp pi3 and have successfully installed bindings for my Haiku fan and Ecobee3 thermostat. I know how to create rules using the experimental rules engine in the Paper UI, and the occupancy and temperature data from the remote sensor I added as a test shows up there. I wanted to know if such data, as defined in my .items file for Ecobee, would/should also be available in the Paper UI control window? Also, I noticed an anomaly where the scope= ‘value’ does not seem to persist when edit the Ecobee binding in the Paper UI, yet it is there in the ecobee.cfg file. I have it set there as Smartwrite as was recommended, and all that I am slowly testing with my set-up seems to be working. Just curious as to why this is happening. As a final question, I have become more familiar with the Paper UI vs the other options (Basic, Classic, Paper, HABPanel), and am wondering which of these is the best one to set up and run my whole house automation. Is it more a matter of style of interface, or will one provide easier/better functionality? I wanted to ask now as I see there is discussion of updating the Paper UI.
Not necessarily. First of all, PaperUI is intended to primarily be an administration UI. Also, PaperUI is strictly limited to working with OH 2.x Items, Things, and concepts.
With the understanding of these limitations, the Control tab in PaperUI will only show those Channels that have been linked to an Item. You can create the link in PaperUI or in .items files. But what this means is that Items that are not linked to a Channel, including those that are bound to an OH 1.x version binding, will not show up there.
The .cfg file will always take precedence. If you have edited this file so that it is not all commented out then any setting made there will be the setting applied, and any setting not made there will not apply. As a result, any setting you make in PaperUI will be undone.
PaperUI is intended for administration. There is a discussion started in the Architecture category about making what ever replaced the current one be the one UI. But for now, PaperUI is for administration. The rest of the UIs you list are intended to be configured for the users of your home automation.
Which you choose is, as you guess, a matter of taste. You will have a lot more control and flexibility with HABPanel, but it may require some JS coding to get to where you want to go. The phone apps work with sitemaps which is how you define BasicUI and ClassicUI UIs. These are easier to set up (if a little tedious) but provide less flexibility.
Thank you very much for taking the time to so thoroughly answer my questions - it is greatly appreciated. I have now watched a few tutorials on HABPanel, and I will experiment on creating a simple setup for some of the hardware and processes I currently have running in my home through openHAB2.
