openHAB 2 version - PiFace Binding

Add-ons Bindings
Tags: #<Tag:0x00007fc8f66a7770>
#1

Hello community,

In my smart home environment I am using the RaspberryPi PiFace I/O interface together with openHAB.
The binding seems to be only available as v1.0 binding.
–> https://www.openhab.org/addons/bindings/piface1/

In the forum I see multiple remarks that openHAB v1.0 bindings will not be supported in the upcoming openHAB3 release.

What can I do?

@Wouter_Born @wborn from the git metadata I believe you are the original creator of the PiFace binding.

Is the binding still maintained? Is it intended to port the PiFace binding to openHAB version 2.0, so that it can be still used with openHAB3 later on?

Any alternative?

regards,
mWerk

Migration of Piface binding to OH 3
#2

I cannot comment on whether there is a 2.x version of the binding in works or planned to be developed. But what you can do when OH 3 comes out if there are no plans to develop a compatible binding includes:

  • stick with OH 2.5
  • run an instance of OH 2.5 (or 1.x) to support your 1.x bindings and use MQTT 2.5 Event Bus. (NOTE: I’m working on some improvements to the Event Bus which should make setting it up and using it easier, will be released in the coming weeks and I’ll post at that link with the new code when it becomes available).
  • interact with PiFace using shell scripts or Python and control it from openHAB using the Exec binding/executeCommandLine
  • set up a separate service that interacts with PiFace and integrate that service with openHAB (MQTT is a popular approach).
#3

Actually it looks like this binding was originally contributed by Ben Jones @ben_jones12 back in 2013. There is no PR open on an openHAB 2 version, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that nobody is working on one.
If nobody else seems interested in migrating it to an openHAB 2 binding, you may want to consider doing it yourself if you have some familiarity with Java. From a quick look, it doesn’t seem like it would be too hard to migrate.

#4

Yeah sorry, I no longer use PiFace so won’t be contributing anything for v2 or v3.

#5

Hello,
@ben_jones12, thanks for your clarifying reply.
So I will have to go for one of the options presented by @rlkoshak (thanks for putting the list together), as porting the binding myself will not really work. I know about the java coffee in my mug, but have no idea how to rewite the binding code.