Hi
This is s great thread you’ve created.
I’ve got a couple of customers with ModBus kit that I’ve managed to steer clear of, having read your thread, I’m glad I have.
I am really pleased to read that you are mastering your setup and getting it to work how you want it to.
As Rich says, these kinds of threads are incredibly useful in all kinds of ways.
So here’s a common bit of confusion.
From what I understand…
The whole setup of openHAB2 Things, Items and their links are stored in JSON files.
Regardless of how the individual parts are created.
- RestAPI
- PaperUI
- Text files
- And others that access the RestApi
To start with, I restricted myself to PaperUI, because my needs were basic and it seemed to work well.
As I branched out into different bindings and third party connectivity (like Tagging & Metadata for Alexa & Google Assistant) it became clear that PaperUI can’t do everything.
Having read lots of other people’s thoughts and comments (for which I’m very grateful), I’ve adopted the following pattern
Add bindings through PaperUI wherever possible, as dependencies are taken care of there.
Create Bridge Things in a Text file (however I’ve recently learnt that the auto generated Thing ID can be set when created in PaperUi, which makes restoring / moving systems much easier)
Use PaperUI exclusively for adding Things, as getting the channel & trigger syntax right can be troublesome
Create Text file Items, which can be manipulated quite easily.
Adding groups, tags, metadata and secondary links to bindings (for example the amazingly useful Expire binding)
I’ve gone as far as to make one Item file template which has everything I could need, which I copy and trim / edit until I have all the items for a Thing in a corresponding Item file.
This way, I can quickly find and edit the Items.
(“Alt & Click drag” is an amazing editor feature that I discovered on this journey)
These threads show the evolution.