For newcomers: What is the difference between Openhab and home assistant?

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I think one really big upside of OH wasn’t mentioned: Cloud integration via myopenhab vs. HAs Cloud subscription!
Integrating OH into Google or Apple is pretty easy in OH and the service is free although donations are very welcome.

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@moesfeld it was actually one of the first posts!
It’s a very important point too!

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23

Parlez-vous francais M. Lavoie?

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Oui, bien sûr.

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Only saw Home Assistant at friends. You can build shiny dashboards and click around in fancy GUIs - which I hate. I almost never use the GUI of my openHAB. I simply created a Samba share and modify all the configuration files and rules in VisualCode. From what I’ve heard, this can somehow achieved in HA, too, but not completly.

Probably not relevant for beginners, but after several years of openHAB usage, using this method is fast and easy to backup. Disclaimer: I’m a professional developer :sweat_smile:

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Openhab fonctionne aussi sous Windows et MacOS. Évidemment ca prend un ordinateur un peu plus puissant. Comme je déteste Linux et tout ce qui lui ressemble, j’utilise Windows.
Pour ce qui est de la programmation il y a blockly qui est un système d’assemblage de blocks style casse tète qui semble faire le travail si on ne veut pas utiliser un language de programmation. Cependant ses fonctions sont limitées en autant que je sache. Moi j’utilise DSL qui est un dérivé de Java, un language algébrique qui découle d’un des premiers languages utilisés en programmation qui s’appelle Fortran(FORmula TRANslation). Ce n’est donc pas ce que j’appellerais un language mais plutôt une méthode de transmettre des informations ou/et commandes à un ordinateur.
L’avantage de OH c’est que le système supporte une grande quantité de composantes et sous plusieurs protocols de communication(WiFi, Zwave…etc…).
De plus, OH n’a pas besoin d’internet pour fonctionner ce qui dans mon cas représente un avantage intéressant.
Dire qu’il n’est pas nécessaire de connaitre la programmation pour utiliser OH, ca me semble un peu osé mais j’imagine que c’est possible si tout ce que l’on veut faire c’est de gérer des composantes assez simples(interrupteurs, lumières…). Dans mon cas j’utilise OH pour gérer mon système de climatisation et de sécurité.

Pour ce qui est de HA j’ai regardé ca (il y a longtemps) et j’ai opté pour OH. Cependant, HA semble plus facile à utiliser et de ce fait pourrait aussi etre plus fiable et/ou stable.

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This is an international forum, English language please.

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I have a similar view as many above. I use both systems together for different reasons. OH has by far a much better rule engine. I have been able to do many complex things with simple rules. When you try to do something similar in HA even with YAML it still is over complicated and doesn’t do all that much. The pros of HA to me is only the amount of integrations, HA has a very large database since there are more users supporting it (not even sure how it took off over OH). I wish I knew how to port HA integrations over to OH but thats a bit beyond my coding skills. I have gotten much better at coding though thanks to the OH community. Because of the larger integrations I just pipe the items over to OH and control almost everything straight from OH. So I am just using HA as more of a gateway than anything.

The biggest con of HA and one of the best pros of OH is the quality of the community. It has improved for HA but I still see people getting made fun of for asking something simple. Where with OH I have always felt welcome and no question is too stupid to ask. I may not be able to code but I have tried to help other developers in the past with testing and finding workarounds etc.

My honest take away is if OH had the number of users as HA it would blow HA out of the water in terms of quality and usability. Is it as easy for new users maybe not but it is pretty close, especially with the newer ui’s.

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Chiming in on this:
I tested to run both openHAB 2.x and Home Assistant on OpenBSD (my primary choice when applicable) back in November 2019 when I was evaluating which system to go for as our successor to Domoticz. Neither of them worked in that environment, but I did not dwell on it. In the openHAB case I think that it had something to do with the serial port for the Z-Wave and/or RFXTRX controller. Since then I am running openHAB on Debian for some kind of convenience.

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Follow-up of this thread by the initiator.
After a month or so being on openhab, I am more satisfied than with my few weeks of experience on home assistant.Though no final results have been attained, I am learning and I am still interested to get my things running under openhab.

This adventure on openhab is similar to the one I begun around 1995, leaving windows for linux. Now I work within a slackware environment as a stable system and when necessary to have access to more software pasture, I go to ubuntu (debian) or archlinux derivatives (Artix, manjaro, or rather Nemesis). I do not possess programming skills.

openhab installation
I am working with the docker installation of openhab, with a preference for command line than for the openhab main ui (or gui). Though I would really appreciate to be able to run some of my devices from the main ui as you call it. The os on which the openhab docker engine led installation is running is kubuntu.

openhab projects
I have been accompanied on my projects:

Yesterday I have returned to the vendor the aqara M2 hub, to get a refund. With it I could see my zigbee sensors (temperature and humidity, movement sensors and door sensors. It was useless to pursue with the M2 hub, as I wanted a home alarm system plugged into the tuya alarm siren.

However, with the sunoff usb dongle I still see none of my devices. Though I still hope to be able to do.

It seems that I am progressing, although none of these devices could be operated from openhab. The devices that I are now identified with the tuya api method.

The struggle with the learning curve to intelligent home devices is really steep. Presently, until my prayers to the new american pope are heard, I read on docker and openhab and .yml.

Any additional cues would be appreciated.

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If you haven’t already, can you open a new topic about this? I’d rather not discuss it too long in the docker howto thread. Essentially this is a Zigbee2mqtt issue, not an openhab issue, and perhaps there are many more experienced Z2M people over at Z2M forums who can help you, but if you prefer, I’ll give it a try.

Feel free to ping me on it, but hopefully others can help too.

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Thanks for your input.

For the sonoff zigbee dongle replacing Aqara hub: [Replacing an Aqara M2 hub with a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle_Plus to detect zigbee sensors]

I hope the tags or the forum catergories are fine.

33

Being a user of OH since 2019, I have now over 3000 lines of DSL code and fairly advanced energy dashboard, I wouldn’t say I know everything about OH but I have been to most areas.
Recently I pull the trigger to migrate to HA, I spent past 3 weeks migrating most of my Things/Items (I have over 600 items most configured in items files). In HA now I have nearly 1000 entities, covering all I have in OH plus many more.
The migration was initially triggered by lack of integrations in OH. I have a few native HomeKit devices, and Dreame vacuum robot, and media players such as HomePod and Apple TV. Those are supported out of box in HA. Lately I’m migrating all my rules to HA automations - well it’s a pain to learn Jinja templating but HA has very nice development tools so I’m getting there.
In my opinion, HA nowadays is better than OH in most areas if not all - simplicity, seamless UI experience, larger collection of integrations, more functionalities, bigger community. In fact I was shocked when I saw the Shelly and Unifi integration in HA, almost native experience. For Dreame vacuum I even get persistent notification same as from the vendor. The weakness of HA is in the automation part, well for most people it is good enough, and I find it covers 90% of my automations. More tricky automations like plan charging of my car can be done with some smart integration, saves lots of time for me to test. But hey there is pyscript for proper data science and AI if you really want.
By migrating to HA, I also moved away from HomeBridge (OH doesn’t support HomeKit TV/Receiver). So it’s sort of simplification in my setup.
Anything I miss in OH: not much to be honest, some flexibility of HomeKit integration maybe, so for example I can bundle different accessories in the same tile. Or create climate accessory whatever way I like in OH. And access to historic data is very convenient in OH. But 99% of my use-case of OH can be easily covered by HA, plus much more so it’s no brainer for me to migrate.
Did I even mention ESPHome and bluetooth proxy - I can now connect native HomeKit BT/thread device to HA. With matter hub I have my vacuum exposed to HomeKit, and I’ve only used HA for 3 weeks :slight_smile:

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