How do you monitor if Openhab is running?

[matt1 (Skinah)]

I have only had openHAB fully stop because:

1. Memory leak in java
2. Ran out of HDD space on device running openHAB due to camera recordings building up and not stored on a NAS.
3. Ram drive or other space constrained ZRAM running fully out of space.

2 and 3 are outside of openhab and require monitoring and consideration when setting up how the system works.

Cause 1, I run monitoring on the system using the system doctor binding from the marketplace…

The red lines are where I did a system reboot when upgrading to the latest milestone, and the circled red area is where I got a memory leak from bad code I had written in a binding. The graph allows me to catch these issues before committing code to the project. After every update I just take a look at the graph over the next few days before I go more hands off on the system.

As others have mentioned, you could also be meaning if a single thing goes down, this happens when:

1. Cloud service goes down that is required.
2. Battery goes flat for wireless sensors.
3. Bug in a binding not handling unexpected stuff occuring to bring the device back online again.
4. Firmware update to a device breaks something that requires an update to a binding to fix.

@rlkoshak

Beyond the lights, most of my automations are more subtle and their failure wouldn’t necessarily be noticed right away.

Since things are going to break, I deliberately now design and choose gear so that they continue to work when openHAB goes down. I aim to have gear that is fully stand alone, yet can be augmented by openhab. I try to stay fully clear of a solution that totally rely’s on openHAB to be the full brain doing the heavy lifting.

Example of a bad way I don’t like where I use a wifi device to measure temp, and then another wifi device to heat with openhab doing all the logic. I choose to still do it knowing it will fail at some point…

iSpindle: Track your homebrews with an opensource MQTT hydrometer temperature sensor

Finally got around to setting up the heater controlled via the temp sensor that is floating inside the brew via the iSpindle. The iSpindle takes the temp reading, then an openHAB rule turns the heater on and off via a Tasmota plug socket. Was brewing with a kveik yeast and it needed to stay a lot warmer… Changed the rule to allow temp to drop 0.3 degree before turning on and off heater to prevent relays changing state as often as they have a limited lifespan. Red lines show where the heater was…

An example of a system that I like is my watering system. It is fully stand alone to water the garden, it will automatically vary the watering amount based on weather forecasts. I use openHAB if the rain gauge reports enough rain has fallen, I can stop anymore watering for 3 days, and then stop the warning icon from showing up on my TV that warns us not to hang washing out on the days the grass gets watered. If I shutdown openHAB my grass still gets watered, but with openhab it is a nicer experience that saves water from being used, and our washing does not get drenched by the sprinklers.