Several bindings require a geolocation to work. Some require the system’s location (Astro) while others require any (nearby) location (Weather).
Instead of providing the same latitude and longitude over and over again, I was thinking if this could not be set globally once for the entire installation.
I have come up with these options:
Make these a setting that can be managed through Paper UI (much like locale)
Provide it through some .cfg file
Create a binding that determines this
The bindings or other parts of the system (Eclipse Smarthome or openHAB) could then optionally use this setting. For example,
if set, force its use or
use it as a default if not explicitly overwritten through the binding configuration
Sounds like a good idea to me actually. I do recommend opening a discussion on this on the Eclipse SmartHome forum as if this were to be implemented, that is probably where it would occur.
Some complications I can think of:
how to handle situations where multiple lat/longs may be desired (e.g. multiple weather binding configs for different locations)
is this actually a more generic need applicable to more than just lat/long? If so maybe having a way to set reusable variables in the config files would be a better idea (e.g. define lat=XX.XXXX and in your config reference that using ${lat})
not sure a binding would work because this would require the bindings and/or core of OH to know to query this binding for the lat/long which I’m not sure is possible
In the short run one could implement a shell script with some sed commands to replace ${lat} with the actual lat number in the config files before OH is started.