No Serial Port Satisfaction, How Do I Activate A Serial Port in openHAB2?

Setup, Configuration and Use Beginners
1

*openHAB2 running in Windows 7, 64-bit
*jre 1.8.0_161
*Paper UI selected

There is a Lutron main repeater connected to COM1, 9600baud. When I connect to the Karaf console and type “things list” this is all I see:
openhab> things list
ntp:ntp:local (Type=Thing, Status=UNINITIALIZED, Label=Local Time, Bridge=null)
openhab> items list
ntp_ntp_local_string (Type=StringItem, State=NULL, Label=null, Category=null)
RA2Data (Type=StringItem, State=NULL, Label=RA2 Data, Category=null)

Can somebody give me a clue about how to bring up the serial port string data in the Paper UI? How do I move the RA2DATA from “State=NULL” to something else (like “State=ACTIVE”). Null state doesn’t seem to do anything.

2

Have you considered to look into the Serial Binding?
Haven’t used it myself, but it sounds as if you need it.

3

Yes, thanks, I have been through the Serial Binding documentation and I have installed the Serial Binding, but nothing shows up in the Paper UI Inbox. I have defined an items file (“RA2.items”) in C:\openHAB2\conf\items, here is the file contents:

String RA2Data “RA2 Data [%s]” {serial=“COM1@9600”}

There seems to be something missing in the documentation for the serial binding or I am unable to make the intuitive leap to make the string appear in the Paper UI. Maybe I need to define a “Things” file?? I don’t know, the documentation for the Serial binding just leaves me hanging.

4

Hi, I started also yesterday with serial binding. in PaperUI the received values are also not visible for me. but when I include the item in habpanel, it does.

5

Thank you, after more tinkering, I have some serial port data showing in the Basic UI. Here’s what I did:

  1. Modified “ui” in addons.cfg from “ui = paper” to “ui = basic”

  2. Created a very simple “.items” file and stored it into c:\openHAB2\conf\items. Here’s my really basic .items file contents:
    String RA2Data “RA2 Data [%s]” {serial=“COM1@9600”}

(the string “RA2Data” is what gets linked into the sitemap below)

  1. Created a very simple sitemap. Here’s my really basic sitemap that I stored into c:\openHAB2\conf\sitemaps
sitemap TestSitemap label="My home automation" {
    Frame label="RA2 Serial Port Data" {
        Text item=RA2Data label="RadioRA2 Serial Port Data[%s]"
    }
 }
  1. Now I can see a very simple sitemap “TestSitemap” in the Basic UI and it updates with the serial port data on COM1.
  2. This took three days, but now I finally am getting some serial port satisfaction!!
6

The serial binding is a OH1 binding, because of that it does not support things. You have to create items in an items file.