Items and Links and PaperUI for FritzBox

[Horus (Flo)]

Hello,

Obviously, I am new to OpenHAB and I am having some problems to grasp the concepts / differences of Things, Channels, Links and where to confgure them.

Currently I am using OpenHAB 2.4.0 on ArchLinux. Following the tutorial, I have activated Item Linking -> Simple Mode (org.eclipse.smarthome.links).

I have added the Hue Binding, which worked great. It found a number of Things (the lamps) with some Channels (color, brightness) each. As Simple Mode is activated, the corresponding Items are created automatically (Linking). In the PaperUI -> Control I can control the Items. Everything perfect so far!

1. Is that conceptualization correct?
2. Is there a way to get a list of automatically created Items to use them in a .items file? Or further configure them, such as setting Tags, Labels?

As a second device, I added and configured the fritzboxtr064 binding. However, even after successfull configuration, I don’t see anything new in my Inbox. Try to add Things manually, but “Inbox- > FritzboxTR064 Binding -> Choose Thing” is completely empty.

3. Is that because the Binding hasn’t been ported to OpenHab 2 and lacks the introspection features?

Ok, next step is that I copy the Item definitions from https://www.openhab.org/addons/bindings/fritzboxtr0641/. After I deleted some which are not applicable to my Fritz Box, I get stuff like that in the event.log file:

2019-08-20 16:36:14.645 [vent.ItemStateChangedEvent] - fboxWanTotalBytesSent changed from 3869042698 to 3869052110

So, I guess I have some working Items defined now. However, I expected them to show up in the PaperUI -> Control, but there is nothing.

4. What Items show up there and why the Items from the fritzboxtr0641 are not shown?

I am pretty sure that there is some misconceptions on my side for helping me understand OpenHAB!

[opus (Jürgen Baginski)]

@Horus

Is that conceptualization correct?

I would say, yes!

@Horus

Is there a way to get a list of automatically created Items to use them in a .items file? Or further configure them, such as setting Tags, Labels?

Not directly. Items created via PaperUI, either automatically or manual, are not saved in .Items files. (They are saved in .json formatted files.) If you need tags you can’t use the PaperUI create items and have to create the (new) items in an .item file.

The fritzboxtr064 binding is a Version 1 binding, in version 1 there were only items no things, so nothing will show up in the inbox nor will any item of such binding will show up under the control section. Read the documentation and create items for that binding in an .Items file.

[rlkoshak (Rich Koshak)]

@opus

If you need tags you can’t use the PaperUI create items and have to create the (new) items in an .item file.

You can add tags through the REST API. A number of users follow this approach. Create the Item (or let it be automatically created) in PaperUI and then use the REST API Docs to add the tags.

[opus (Jürgen Baginski)]

Thanks, I wasn’t aware of that way.