First time designer user, where are my Paper UI things?

Setup, Configuration and Use Items & Sitemaps
1

I’ve setup bindings and many things using paper UI. I now want to start making rules and custom sitemap(s).
I am very confused that my conf/items folder is completely empty since I have a bunch of working items that I setup in Paper UI…

2

Regrettably, they’re only in a JSON notation saved from the live state, and not directly available to Designer

3

OK So if I want to use my own custom sitemaps I need to setup things and their items first?
I have an RFXCom transceiver and a ZWave serial usb stick, I have the feeling both of them should be of the type ‘bridge’ instead ‘things’. Or is it that it needs to be setup as bridge and each individual device socket/light switch/dimmer/etc is also added as thing for that bridge? I can’t find any documenation on ‘bridge’.
Where are the parameters documented for the binding. For example for zwave I can see “Port Configuration
Serial Port”. From other threads I’ve seen that the parameter in a things file is ‘port’, but I can’t see that in the binding documentation…

4

I’m having flashbacks!

has a pointer to the formal syntax for Things and Items. A Bridge is a Thing. The parameters required for specific Things and how they associate with a bridge should be documented in the binding’s (online) documentation.

Edit – Binding descriptions:

One could write a JSON translator to dump into the flat-file format. I haven’t done it as my devices don’t involve discovery and I hard-coded them all. I’ve read, but have no personal experience, that manually configuring ZWave can be challenging.

Edit: If you do “export” the JSON to flat-file format, you probably want to create your rules and sitemaps and all in a different directory and then either symlink them in or otherwise copy them in to the “live” directory so that you don’t have “doubles” of the Thing and Item definitions.

You can use the Thing references in Designer without the flat files, but auto-suggest and “spell checking” won’t be there to assist you.

5

Hui, relax guys :slight_smile:

One step after the other.

First please read here: http://docs.openhab.org/configuration/index.html#text-vs-ui

You can define Things and Items in Paper UI or text files or mix both. Whatever you do, in the end you’ll have a bunch of items you can use in your rules and sitemaps. Just use their names as described in the sitemaps, items and rules documentation. Here are some links with the details needed:

For me it was always easier to do everything in text files. I am however not using Z-Wave, where it’s wise to work with HABmin.

6

Does that mean I can use Paper UI to add new things and items and use them in my rules and sitemaps without having to manually add entries to .things and .items files? That would be nice, because the manual setup isn’t working out for me (see bottom RFXCOM Cheap PIR Sensor Binding in Openhab2)

7

Yes you can!