Network Binding not finding anything

OK you’ve said it at least 3 times now I give in, you have beaten me to death over it.

Hi There,

I’m new to the community. And have been trying to figure out how to get the network binding to perform a manual scan to show items in my inbox that I can then integrate into my home automation context. Initially I’m looking for the mobile devices in my home to do presence management, but not a single device shows up when I search for network things.

I’m running a fresh install of “openHAB 2.4.0 Release Build” on Raspberry Pi 3B via openhabian.

The steps I’ve following to performo a manual scan are as follows

  1. Navigate to PaperUI

  2. Click on the Inbox

  3. Select "Search for Things’

  4. Click Network Binding

The screen shows “searching for Things …” with a spinning circle for about 2 minutes, but nothing shows up in my inbox for me to “manuall accept” those things into my home automation.

I found another post that seemed to indicate that network.config file has an error in it, whereby it places a random “B” on two lines. I’ve cleaned up those 2 random Bs but still have the same behaviour.

/var/lib/openhab2/config/bindings/network.config :

allowDHCPlisten="true"
allowSystemPings="true"
arpPingToolPath="arping"
cacheDeviceStateTimeInMS="2000"
service.pid="binding.network"

Any help would be appreciated.

The scan is known to be broken in the 2.4 version of the Network binding. I think it was fixed for OH 2.5 M1. If not you will need to move to the snapshots. I believe the snapshots have stabilized in the past few weeks so it should be safe to run, at least to get started.

Scanning works in OH 2.5m1. But especially mobiles to not expose any services that the binding could find. It tries to ping devices (most mobiles to not respond to pings nowadays), it tries to find windows pcs by looking for the netbios and rpc ports, it tries to find XBox’s by the multi media port.

But the binding can’t perform any magic. If a firewall blocks all traffic and pings are disabled or the network subnet is too big or IPv6 only, those devices cannot be found.

Yeah well it is the first thing a new user comes across. A tutorial that sends them down a rabbit hole. Only to find out it isn’t supported. Frustrating.

1 Like

Currently broken is not the same as not supported. And it isn’t even currently broken and hasn’t been for some time.

But if you have any recommendations, changes, or additions to make to any of the docs, I’m certain the Issue or PR would we welcome. See How to file an Issue

Oh I got the impression that the network binding had been depricated , if so then it would be helpful to new users, taking first steps, if the tutorial didn’t take them straight to a broken or depricated tool.

1 Like

Network binding is definitely not deprecated. It is current and there are new features being added to it even in the last months.

It is also not broken in the snapshots for sure and I suspect not in OH 2.5 M1. There was a bug that escaped notice when OH 2.4 was released that prevented autodiscovery from working which was quickyl fixed once it was discovered.

I’m not sure it is a good use of time to rewrite the tutorial to deal with a momentary bug that has since been fixed. But anyone who disagrees is welcome to modify and improve the tutorial.

Just installed M1 on a Pi 4 last week. Nothing discovered…

Just another newbie here that stumbles into the rabbit hole of the outdated tutorial.

Honestly, where is the problem to mention this long term issue with a small sentence in the official tutorial ?
I wanted to give OH a try but when my first experiences are beginning with a listless non up-to-date official tutorial this seems not to be a trustful start.

Here’s another vote to update the tutorial. I installed OH a couple months ago, tried the tutorial, it failed, ok another day. Now maybe it’s better so I try again, tutorial fails. Hmm, something wrong with the install? OK I reimage the SD card on the Pi and reinstall everything from scratch. Still fails. I never suspected the Very First Tutorial would lead astray.

So, thanks in advance for a better onboarding experience.

BTW the install page neglects to mention the need to do systemctl start.

Same happened to me…I stumbled over the not working Network Binding in the tutorial. First of course I believed that some setup on my install was not correct, so I started to navigate through the community.

After spending 2 hours with it, I still do not know whether the Network Binding is broken, deprecated or in the middle of a re-write.

What’s so difficult in writing a sentence in the tutorial e.g. “The Network Bind is currently not usable - please skip this part of the tutorial”?

Can I do this? Updating a tutorial usually takes no more then 10 minutes, if one knows what to do.

Sorry to say - if you want to have new members in your community, then you must be a little smoother then this one here…

The binding is working fine with the latest snapshot. As 2.4 stable release is very old now, I suggest to upgrade to a snapshot version.

BTW, welcome to the community.

Installed latest snapshot - now, Hue Servise does not connect to Logitech Harmony.

This whole thing is completely buggy and halfway between old, file-based, and new, web-based- but unstable and core features missing.

How am I supposed to work with this?

Okay, we need to work through one issue after the other.
Network binding is working now?

What does the HUE service have to do with the Harmony binding?
I am using HUE and Harmony (and Network binding) without any issues, not sure what you want to achieve.
If you want to connect your HUE devices to your Harmony remote (which I did too), this is not an openHAB issue, because openHAB is not involved in this.

Please be more detailed and more specific in your questions:

If I understood correctly, he would like to control his Fritz! Dect 200 socket with the Harmony remote control. He probably has no Hue Bridge and therefore wants to use the Hue Emulation service. See here.

It is possible to use some Smarthome buttons with Hue lamps on the remote control. I have 4 buttons defined for this. You also can create a new Action in “Harmony APP” where Hue Bulbs are used.

So, if he emulates his socket as a Switch or Lighting he could use it with Harmony remote.

But therefore you do not need neither Harmony Binding nor Network Binding.

Yes, I did see all of his posts, which are all full of complaints and no detailed explanation what is exactly wrong.
I am not willing to help if I need to crossread three posts to get an idea what his problem is.

1 Like

Hello sihui,

thanks for your help and questions. I try to achieve the following:

  1. connect to my Fritz!Dect 200 switchable power plugs through the AVM binding (working)
  2. make them availalable to my Logitech Harmony remote control through openhab: this was planned by the usage of the HUE emulation service, which emulates a HUE bridget (Logitech Harmony can connect to HUE bridges)
  3. In the HUE bridge service, publish the Fritz!Dect 200 plugs (that are connected through the AVM binding with openhab as HUE based switches/plugs
  4. in order for the HUE bridge emulation service in openhab to pick up the devices and make them available, I have to create items for them connected to the channels. those items need to have tags (I believe [ “Switchable” ]).

This is where the problems are:

Problem A: I have set up the whole thing in 2.4 and/or 2.5 through paper UI. Paper UI does not support the editing of items, so that I can create tags. Those tags are needed by the HUE emulation service to find the right items which it publishes for other consumers, such as the Logitech Harmony.

Problem B: the HUE emulation service in 2.5 (latest build from two days ago) seems to be broken, as Logitech Harmony can not connect to it (this was working in 2.4).

Kind regards

@Celaeno1: thanks for your patience and explanation. I want to do what you described.

The two open questions I am having:

  • in which version does HUE emulation service work? It seems to work fine in 2.4, but not in 2.5
  • how do I maintain the item tags needed so that the HUE emulation service can pick up the items? I have maintained the whole config in paper ui

I have not installed Harmony Binding and do not need it, as far as I have understood.

I complained about the Network Binding because when working through the very first tutorial here:

it is one of the steps that fail - when reading this the first time, I came to the (wrong) conclusion that with out the Networking Binding no devices would be found on the network.

Kind regards,

Kind regards,

I think that is the wrong approach. I’m using a similar setup and did it this way:
Use the Logitech Harmony Binding to make your remote available in openHAB:

As your DECT devices are already available in openHAB, you now should have several AVM and Logitech channels available through items and are able to use them in rules.

There is no need to use the HUE emulation.

It is possible to create the tags via the REST api.

I have never used the HUE emulation, so cannot comment on this. You may find useful information in the repo, though:

Good luck.