Hi, dear OpenHab community!
Sorry for nube question, I‘m sure it was discussed many times here.
I‘m a happy user of OpenHab for 3 years already, but unfortunately not very helpful as Home Automation is not my real hobby. Sorry for that. As the result I set up my HA system back in 2016 and almost did not update it since that time. Just added a couple of devices and that‘s it.
My system is pretty common to all others: USB powerbank-powered Rpi 2, running Openhab 1.8. All devices(30 pcs) are connected via Z-wave Aeon Gen 5 stick and Habmin. I have also Mosquitto Broker there and MQTT binding, which is used to connect my touch panels(Android) and Nodered as rule engine (you know that topic). There is also Google calendar binding and weather undeground integration, which stopped working few months ago for obvious reasons. Never found time to fix. Standard tips and tricks were applied to avoid SD card wearance in RPi. All configs are commited to my local svn from time to time.
So this configuration was running for years until now, but it‘s time to upgrade - I have trouble connecting new Zwave devices, as these do not exist in database, and want to add some other bindings and finaly implement my HA server redundancy idea.
What I have so far: two Rpi 3, two SD cards, family on vacation. What I want to do: go to latest stable OpenHAB release with minimum pain. And I need some small help from community to do this. I try to formulate my questions better:
What is the best OH release to try? Does it make sense to take Openhabian, as I see it should have pretty everything I need?
What is the easiest way to port my items and sitemaps files? Is there any guide? I would like to keep some SVN-friendly format for backups.
Any good ways to refresh Aeon Stick? E.g I mean I have included and excluded several tens of times already. So my Node list looks quite defragmented with some devices missing/ disconnected, but I don’t know how to remove them safely. I have second USB Z-wave stick as backup, which I synchronize with main one after upgrades.
I think OpenHABian makes sense. You need to decide what version train to run first, though.
I am quite new here, but here is a migration guide.
@chris or @sihui could best advise about zwave specifically.
The latest stable release, 2.4, came our late last year. Many are running 2.5M1. I am running that with a newer snapshot version of the zwave binding.
2.5 is late being released but 2.5M2 is almost ready. The devs integrated Eclipse Smart Home and redesigned the build system, so there has been major needed work.
Thank‘s. I‘ve read the migration guide, but ownestly I don‘t see it helpful so much, as I really want to do the fresh installation and migrate to new bindings, rather than use old ones with new OH - this is actually my primary target for migration.
I really looking for newest Z-wave binding, as it seems to be the most critical in my installation, but it looks that the best one is still in snapshot version.
That is what I did from 1.x to 2.x.
I also hard resetted my zwave stick and did a fresh inclusion, but this may not be needed.
It depends on how many devices you have and how easy you can access them
So let me see if I have this right, you have spare hardware right? You have the capability to set up a ‘test’ system and still keep your running 1.8 version untouched and intact correct?
Yes, that‘s a plan. I have all spare HW including spare Z-wave stick, backed up from main one. I want to setup and test everything first, before I shutdown 1.8 system
You might consider keeping version 1 bindings initially, so that migration to OH2 is simplified to system settings, rules, etc.
Should also allow a space to review your rules to exploit new OH2 features like group triggers.
You can come back later and individually migrate each binding to v2 - this is where the real changes are and likely to be the hardest job.
Perfect!
As Bruce has mentioned, the most recent stable version of OpenHAB is 2.4. This version has been out since December of last year however. Being a long time OpenHAB user, you may have read here in the forum about some recent problems with the build system which have not allowed milestone builds for some time. OpenHAB version 2.5M1 was released prior to the problems with the build sytem however and many folks are running it with success and no problems.
Under the circumstances of having a whole spare set of hardware and being able to experiment, I’d start with the 2.5M1 because it does contain many enhancements and updates.
This is great advice. Some of your version 1 bindings may not show up initially in the binding list, I believe you may need to set a setting to ‘show legecy bindings’ or some such. Go for it, come back with questions or simply you success story! Have fun!
Actually my rules are quite hardware independent, as I wrote I‘m using NodeRed via MQTT. So binding migration is the main task I would like to do now, as the rest is quite easy - even sitemaps - funny, but I use almost unmodified demo sitemap from OH 1.8.
Because there will be a new RPi image based on most recent Raspbian.
But you can also use the current openHABian and walk the full upgrade path.
All important fixes are meanwhile in there.
O would say use Raspbian Lite Buster now since it is the latest stable release. The current OpenHAB image is based off the (now oldstable) Stretch version of Raspbian which will have less overall support. as people move to Buster. Raspbian is based off Debian and uses the same release terms.
