My experience with OH after 3 months (for those who still hesitate and don't know where to start from)

I disagree with Zwave configuration statement. It is very effective and usable. However PaperUI and Habmin needs to use combined. But first we should understand Zwave logic and it takes lot of time and effort. I agree with the statement in this way. It will be the same in any other systems as well. PaperUI is for icluding and excluding, Habmin is for changing the settings. I would have one suggestion. Zwave network information needs to be backed up as well from the stick. I use Zwave Controller 5 to do that. Some months ago Chris promised that he will make backup function avaiable in openhab but I do not think that he will do it in the near future as OH3 is the priority today. But manual solution is very recommeded otherwise if Zwave stick fails all device needs to be resetted and reinclude to the new stick and so on.

Not at all. Of course you can include and exclude via HABmin.

habmin

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In fact I prefer to use HABmin for that. The official documentation lays I checked said HABmin is the recommended UI to administer Z-Wave. Chris has some additional documentation using that on his website.

And if I choose Z-Wave it would be very different from Zigbee, Wi-Fi, or MQTT. Those differences are what makes it so unworkable.

I don’t doubt that they would be different.

But it does not work. I always remove it with external softwer direct from the stick, or exclude manually. It was working on my Smatthings but never worked with Openhab. I use Aeotec Gen5 stick.

How about a fuly worked “Hello world” example of using Astro binding to flip a day/night indicator on BasicUI?
This is the same for any config, and is actually of use in almost every home system. It touches on installing a binding, using discovery, Things-channels-Item relationships, configuring simple UI (plus weaning off PaperUI for everyday use), optionally the use of the rules.(though there will likely be a fight over which sort of rules)

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Just stay away from “Simple Mode!” Probably arguments on what channels to flip the switch too.

I actually have that set up based on forum posts.

The docs now support tabs, similar to the helper library docs. As more OH 3.0 docs get added/updated, expect more tabs, which will allow for examples in all scripting languages.

Simple mode has been removed

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It is still there in 2.5.5 That is what new users are using now. :wink:

I plan on creating some of these but i won’t bother until Openhab 3 is out otherwise the UI will be completely different and the videos are no longer useful. I think this is holding back a lot of videos from getting produced as it is a lot of work to create a decent video that will need to be redone when 3 is released.

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Documentation too.

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To be fair, a lot of documentation is done (and imho very well done…) :slight_smile:

Officially approved videos would boost confidence in the content.

True, but for OH 3:

  • the Beginner’s Tutorial needs a complete rewrite
  • rules docs will need a complete rewrite, or at a minimum an additional set of docs written; the reference stuff is largely there but the discussion about how to approach rules (event driven and such) isn’t there
  • we will need another migration tutorial
  • Actions work significantly differently which needs to be discussed
  • Sitemaps will have a GUI based way to build them now which needs to be discussed
  • Federating with OH1/OH2 to continue to use 1.x version bindings needs to be added to the docs (most of the docs are written, though people seem unhappy with the requirement on MQTT so someone may replace it which will itself need to be documented)
  • User and role management
  • The new UI needs to be documented, though from what I’ve played with so far it’s pretty intuitive; but I already know too much and am not a great judge for what a new user would think.

There is lots to do and we are kind of in a holding pattern until stuff settles down a bit before we can really start in earnest.

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I think they expect it to be developed here.

It’s only an alternative to the current way (writing .sitemap files) which will still be supported but you’re still right.

It’s steadily getting there, some early adopters are starting to use it in production, especially now that https://github.com/openhab/openhab-core/pull/1451 got merged a few days ago - the NGRE (not so “NG” anymore) is now the only rule engine, and your DSL rules in .rules files run through it. They also appear in the UI and you can disable/enable them, or run them manually (but not edit them from the UI, same as items or things when they come from files). You can also use create rules in the UI and use the rule DSL (and Jython or other script engines) as an alternative to JS for scripting.

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Guess I’ll have to contribute heavily to the beginner’s tutorial or write it myself, since it will likely be heavily UI-driven. But it’s a little early to write it now since there will likely be an “onboarding” wizard when you start openHAB for the first time (which is not done now) so it would influence the tutorial. There’s a lot of new stuff with the new pages concept for the UI and some of it can be quite obscure so I’ll have to do some write-up on that too.

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Awesome! I’ve only been partially following the github discussions. Glad to see Rules DSL will still have support.

Even if it’s just outlines and bullet points about certain things that you want to be sure get addressed or emphasized I’m sure we can fill out the details.

There is one thing I’ve lost the ball on which I’m sure you can answer as the UI guy. What about Persistence? Still file based configured or is there a UI now?

I’ve not been running with OH 3 yet but will probably switch over soon and start creating some stubs for docs we can build upon. I just checked and there is a Docker image which will make it nice and easy. :smiley:

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Is it true that the version of some bindings is several months older than the OH2 version?
It was just a rumor I heard.

Unfortunately still file based for now, there’s no API - however every item gets automatic RRD4j persistence with no configuration with some sensible defaults if the addon is installed (and it is by default). It’s probably enough for most users.
To tell you the truth I’ve been running OH3 as my daily driver since mid-April and I have not written any configuration file yet - ate my own dogfood and recreated everything from scratch with the UI and some JS rules - and I couldn’t be happier, it boots up fast and the lag I had with the old rules engine is gone. But I’m aware doing everything with the UI is not going to be for everybody.

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