What I take on the chin is that I have limited time… and it is not about “don’t we all?” I commute 200km per day, work 8+ hours, hence, am away from home for 12h. 8h sleep, and I have 4h left for other things. [I am also end of life, maybe another 10 years to live; time will be of the essence.]
As you know, I have started looking at v2 last year in August and got stuck when I was offered a bunch of Admin interfaces with varying capabilities. What I also take on the chin is that I get into it, and then have to stop, and by the time I get back to it, I forgot most of what I’d learned before; however, I do take notes, and I have a structured approach. One thing is, I want clean systems. And when I buggered up the Java install, and had to uninstall, and fix, and clear and what not, I rebuilt the system based on my notes… the further I progress, the less like I want to ‘destroy’ the system.
While I have no intention to ‘frustrate’ my fellow forum members, my aim is to look for a repeatable and reliable way forward to create the OH v2 system. One assumption is that my naming can stay the same; I have some 500 items, and now remember that creating or having these in PaperUI is a mess, as I end up with a list of 500 items I have to browse through. At present, these a logically grouped in ‘energy’, ‘water’, ‘light’, ‘astro’ and other groupings, with easy access via items file.
When I asked why we have multiple interfaces with disparate capabilities, I was told this is the freedom in Open Source, where people do what they like. Given my time constraint, I see no value in figuring out to use A for Z, and B for Y, in a changing environment. I am doing this now, and am looking for a way to easily transition form v1 to v2… based on what works ‘at this very moment in time’.
Having a thing created that names itself to blah:blah:rpi3ohv2, without me being able to edit it, also knowing there will be different hardware or other upgrades/progressions, is not really helpful. I get the part for non-local things, but for itself “thismachine” or “localhost” would have been better. [This would be in line with the astro binding, referencing ‘home’ for sun and moon.] But this is a very minor point. In this case, since I had mt items already defined and referencing one name, I was not prepared to change them to the new name. Hence, I deleted it, and ran into the problem of not having unlinked it. I am sorry for not being aware that PaperUI created links (I had to delete)… the issue here: I don’t know what I don’t know.
Anyway, what I wanted to say is, I have no intent to frustrate anyone; I consider myself lucky for having such a great response to my encountered problems, including explanations that help me understand the bigger picture.
What causes me problems seems to be directly related to my findings in August: multiple interfaces with different capabilities, rather than one that does it all. I have no intention to keep track which interface may develop new capabilities and change my approach accordingly. If it worth anything, I’d like to appeal to the community by saying: make sure whatever binding, thing you develop, that at the very least, textural configuration (thus not requiring any UI) is always possible. As such, UIs can develop or cease to develop, without affecting basic configuration, but rather ensuring that anything can be configured textually.
Merry Xmas to you all.