I’ve pushed a new version with improvements in sensor UoM handling. Also added support for text_sensors.
Regarding ip address changing back to mdns hostname I’ve dug some more, details here mDNS discovery result overwrites existing thing configuration/property · Issue #3753 · openhab/openhab-core · GitHub
For now I’ve randomized the thing UIDs, so whenever you add one from the inbox I suggest you manually set decent thing names to avoid unreadable link names in item files as well as rules referring to the thing.
No progress on the ping getting stuck, plan to rewrite socket handling to java nio instead of the old style (socket + thread) that I’ve used. Maybe that helps.
Cheers