How to install Airthings binding (extension) on OH 5.0.2?

Setup, Configuration and Use Beginners
1

Hi,

Background: I’m a long time OH 2.5 user but completely new to OH 5.02. I also have no experience with OH3 or 4. My OH 5.02 is running on a RPI 5B Rev1.0 which has a built-in Bluetooth 5.0 interface. I also have a Airthings Wave Radon unit which I would like to integrate with OH 5.02.

What I have done so far: I successfully installed the Bluetooth Binding, which came with the OH distribution, and created a Bluetooth interface thing with Background Discovery turned ON. After a reboot, the thing status was ONLINE and green. My INBOX was filled with bluetooth devices. One of them was my Airthings unit which I added to my thing list and its status was also ONLINE and green.

The Problem: The channels tab of my Airthings thing only shows one (1) item, Received signal strength indicator (RSSI). Based on https://www.openhab.org/addons/bindings/bluetooth.airthings/, there should be other 4 channels:

radon_st_avg, radon_lt_avg, temperature, and humidity

I asked chatGPT but it did not know much about the OH 5.0.2 UI to provide helpful information. So here I am asking for help from you - real human :slightly_smiling_face: .

Question: How do I get these channels to show up?

Thank you!

2

Click on the code tab of the Thing and post what you find there. It may not have detected that it’s an Airthings device.

Also note that it only supports four Airthings devices. If it’s not a plus, mini, gen1, or radon Airthings Wave it’s not supported by the binding.

When I tried to use the Bluetooth binding awhile back I had mixed results in terms of reliability so I eventually opted to use a third party service instead: GitHub - Drolla/WavePlus_Bridge: Airthings Wave Plus Bridge to Wifi/LAN and MQTT There are others.

3

@rlkoshak Hi Rich, below is what I found under code tab (with MAC address xed out):

UID: bluetooth:beacon:hci0:xxxxxxxxxxxx
label: Bluetooth Device (Corentium/Airthings AS)
thingTypeUID: bluetooth:beacon
configuration:
  address: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
bridgeUID: bluetooth:bluez:hci0
channels:
  - id: rssi
    channelTypeUID: bluetooth:rssi
    label: RSSI
    description: Received signal strength indicator
    configuration: {}

My Airthings device is https://www.airthings.com/wave-radon

Thank you for your help and the WavePlus_Bridge suggestion.

4

OK, it sees that it’s an AirThings device and not a generic BT device so I don’t have any ideas. Like I said, the BT binding never really worked well for me anyway so I quit using it a long time ago. BT is a pain to set up in Docker anyway so I had other reasons not to fight and try to use it.

5

@rlkoshak Hi Rich,I thought it might be a simple fix I wasn’t aware of. I’ll give your WavePlus Bridge suggestion a try. Thanks for your help.

6

Did you try changing it to bluetooth:airthings_wave_radon?

7

@seime Hi, I just tried and got this error message from openHAB (v5.02):

openHAB
Error: Changing the thing type is not supported

Thanks.

8

@seime @rlkoshak Hi, Good news!
I tried Arne’s suggestion, got an error, but the inbox now shows a new entry: “Airthing Radon / Wave 2” – it has all the channels:

UID: bluetooth:airthings_wave_radon:hci0:xxxxxxxxxxxx
label: Airthings Radon / Wave 2
thingTypeUID: bluetooth:airthings_wave_radon
configuration:
  refreshInterval: 300
  address: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
bridgeUID: bluetooth:bluez:hci0
channels:
  - id: rssi
    channelTypeUID: bluetooth:rssi
    label: RSSI
    description: Received signal strength indicator
    configuration: {}
  - id: humidity
    channelTypeUID: bluetooth:airthings_humidity
    label: Humidity
    description: Humidity level
    configuration: {}
  - id: temperature
    channelTypeUID: bluetooth:airthings_temperature
    label: Temperature
    description: Temperature
    configuration: {}
  - id: radon_st_avg
    channelTypeUID: bluetooth:airthings_radon_st_avg
    label: Radon Short Term Average Level
    description: Radon gas level
    configuration: {}
  - id: radon_lt_avg
    channelTypeUID: bluetooth:airthings_radon_lt_avg
    label: Radon Long Term Average Level
    description: Radon gas level
    configuration: {}
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