Looking for OpenHab - Freelancers

I’m so lost configuring this product but I have opened a Freelancer project to find someone who can do this on my behalf.

https://www.freelancer.com/projects/Linux/OpenHab-Configuration/

If you or anyone you know could configure this for me then please get in touch

Cheers,

Philip

Where are you located, Phillip? Just wondering about time zones.

Hello John,

I’m working in Azerbaijan at the moment which is GMT + 4, I also have a friend in the UK which is experiencing the same issues.

Any ideas where to get support from for persons who are non-developers?

Br,

Philip

Except for the Echo, there are official bindings for the other protocols. Have you attempted to use those ?

If so, what are the points of your confusion ?

Hello Bob,

I’m struggling to even get openhab started.

Best regards,

Philip Meehan

Assuming you really are starting from zero—

First read this excellent article.

It is the best step-by-step guide I’ve seen to getting OpenHab working on Pi. Even includes specifics on configuring a Hue setup.

Details on the Hue binding are here:

Get the Hue running first BEFORE you attempt the Plex or Sonos. It is more straightforward device and the examples in the MakeUseOf article and Hue binding doc are more complete.

You’ll also need to install the Plex and Sonos bindings and configure them.

Plex details at https://github.com/openhab/openhab/wiki/Plex-Binding

Sonos details at https://github.com/openhab/openhab/wiki/Sonos-Binding

Sonos binding doc suggests that there were/are problems with a buggy UPnP library.

Rule of thumb for your ITEMS:

Things that you are not controlling but merely displaying are Number or String, as in this from Sonos:

String currenttrack “CurrentTrack [%s]” (Sonos) {sonos="[RINCON_000E581369DC01400:currenttrack]", autoupdate=“false”}

Things which you are going to control and have simple on/off points are Switches, as in:

Switch PlayLivingRoom “Play/Pause” (Sonos) {sonos="[ON:living:play],[OFF:living:pause]"}

Things which you are controlling that have a ranges of values (dimmers or volume for example)
are usually Dimmers in your ITEMS file but Slider in the sitemap. Again from Hue,

(from ITEMS)
Dimmer Dimm_1 “left bulb” (WhiteDimmer) {hue=“1;brightness;30”}

(from Sitemap)
Slider item=Dimm_1 visibility=[Toggle_1==ON] label="Bedroom Brightness"

(EVENTUALLY - you will also need to eventually stop using the Pi’s SD card except for booting and use a USB stick or USB-attached disk. See this thread re that topic.

The link @watou posted at the end of the thread is good. I wish I’d had that rather than having to hand-roll via the links I posted in same thread).

Hope this helps.

Thank you, I will surely give this a try over the weekend!

Best regards,

Philip Meehan

Thank you for this information, I have reinstalled the pi2 and started the
instructions from the beginning.

However I keep hitting this problem, do you have any advice?

HTTP ERROR 500
Problem accessing /openhab.app. Reason:
Sitemap ‘demo’ could not be found
Caused by:
org.openhab.ui.webapp.render.RenderException: Sitemap ‘demo’ could not be
found
at
org.openhab.ui.webapp.internal.servlet.WebAppServlet.service(WebAppServlet.j
ava:114)
at
org.eclipse.equinox.http.servlet.internal.ServletRegistration.service(Servle
tRegistration.java:61)

From: bob_dickenson forum@community.openhab.org
Reply-To: openHAB Community
replies+946d3ecd024b3e4b1e4bba4aa7028256@community.openhab.org

If you have already created your sitemap for your implementation and placed in the sitemaps directory, this is probably because you are not passing the sitemap parameter on the url, e.g.,

http://192.168.1.12:8080/openhab.app?sitemap=philip (where the sitemap file is ‘philip.sitemap’)

[Substitute ip-address of your Pi and name of your sitemap ]

AFAIR if you do not pass the sitemap argument, OH defaults to looking for “demo” ie file demo.sitemap. If you did not install the demo files, it will not be there and this message will appear.

Look in your sitemaps directory (ie openhab/configurations/sitemaps. If demo.sitemap is not there, you probably did not install the demo files. If you want the demo setup, download distribution-1.7.1-demo.zip from www.openhab.org and install. No real need to do this if you’ve already started your particular configuration-you might end up over-writing your work.

Hello Bob,

I have installed the demo site maps as per the instructions and I’m still facing this issue on demo mode.

Slightly perplexed and it was directing me to Apache tomcat earlier.

Could this be a problem with environment/path settings somewhere?

Best regards,

Philip Meehan

You are running Tomcat on the Pi also ? If so, apache server installed and probably autostarts also when you boot.

If so, most likely a port conflict between Tomcat and the Openhab jetty server both trying to use :8080 by default.

Not in a position to test this theory at the moment, but I think if you go into /openhab/server there is an eclipse.ini file. (It is plain text.) One line in that file looks like this:

-Dorg.osgi.service.http.port=8080

I’d change that 8080 to something else, like 8090 or 9080 etc. and retry.

I have disabled tomcat, what’s strange is that I didn’t install it. I noticed when trying to install on my qnap that the openhab runs on 8082 which makes more sense.

I don’t suppose you know anyone who would install standard openhab capabilities for plex, Sonos & hue remotely for me as part of my freelancer project?

Best regards,

Philip Meehan

Your big problem with any sort of remote installation is going to be TESTING. You can probably find someone to do the items and sitemaps for you (except for the Echo – no existing binding AFAIK). But since you are mainly controlling (as far as I can see) lighting and entertainment items, it will be pretty difficult to remotely test the adequacy of the implementation. So someone else might do the base config stuff via the items and sitemaps, but YOU are going to have to do the testing.

This is all just assuming you’re trying to get some sort of unified UI and remote control for your lighting/entertainment. If you want to start doing some actual automation with it, rules and scripts will be the tools and, again, very difficult to actually test remotely when you’re doing lighting/coloring/playlists/volume/etc etc.

See this re the Echo…