openHAB generator - design your smart home in no time!

[ThomDietrich]

Hello Glenn,
adding the generator in openHABian is already in motion. It will be available before the week ends

Besides that, I have to agree with @Kai, this tool would be way more helpful as a native feature as part of the initial setup on the openHAB webpage rather than as a separate command line tool. If this tool would then offer to either write to database or files, that would be an amazing addition. @kubawolanin what are your thoughts on that? Surely you’ll need to reinvent a few things but the abstract logic and snippets will stay the same.

[Kees_van_Gelder]

fantastic. Definitely going to give that a try

[gbealmer (Glenn Bealmer)]

It’s great that you are taking steps to include this so quickly. When introducing someone to OpenHab, using openhabian as a base goes a long way in convincing them that it’s not too complicated for them. The addition of this tool will enhance that impression.
I never disagreed with concept of it being included as a native feature. My concern was the delay in availability. Experienced users aren’t really the target audience for this capability and novices are likely to begin with the stable release.

[job (Joachim Boeddeker)]

I tried the tool a bit and it works good. (I didn’t use the item creation, all my items are already defined.)

I first used the HABpanel creation:

• the first character of the name is omitted
• a cellar would be nice as well
• it’s only a functional view, a positional view would be nice as well (like in the sitemap)

Afterwards i used the sitemap creation (thanks for saving the last inputs ;))

• due to sorting, i would try to not use the group items directly. Better use the single items grouped in the sitemap

Thanks! I may start to use a HABpanel now.

[kubawolanin]

@ThomDietrich

Hello Glenn,
adding the generator in openHABian is already in motion. It will be available before the week ends

That’s right, pull request is here.

I’ve started working on a UI-based generator. You can see my progress under this Pull Request.
It’s definitely not ready to be tested, but here’s a little sneak peek:

[ThomDietrich]

It was totally my fault for slacking off… The openHAB generator is now available with openHABian!

https://community.openhab.org/t/openhabian-hassle-free-openhab-setup/13379/1121?u=thomdietrich

[skatun (Kim Skatun)]

Sorry guys for getting back to you so late, I meant to share my opinion on this topic a while ago. So I just came back from holiday and one night on a bar I run into a guy who had tried OH two times and given up, first time was OH1.xx and second time openhabian. And he had now given up again, because it was too complicated to get something simple up running.

I would say OH1.xx was for computer science people and OH2 is for engineers, but with the work of @ThomDietrich and @kubawolanin I am sure we can help this guy out and many other like him…

I like the graphical layout. its pretty awesome and I hope I can help improve it somehow.

Basic first what I think the tool should contain:

1. Be able to export the files(this is already implemented)
2. Backup existing file before overwriting files
3. Load existing files into the tool, so that current selection would be highlighted.

I know @rlkoshak and me likes group analogy in items files and it would be great if this approach will be included in the tool. By doing so we could also generate automatic rules and not just items.

Also I like to keep items in seperate files, I know some people like to keep everything thats belong to i.e living room in one file. However I like to keep things that belongs together in their own items file to easily do modification across rooms, for instance if I find out i would like to expose all my temperature items to OpenhabCloud, I just need to add the openhabCloud group to all the items in the temperature.items file instead of doing this in 8 different rooms.items file

I think a seperate tab where the user could select which of @rlkoshak design pattern to integrate would be awesome, I bet 90% of user would like persistence, time of day, internet connection(speedtest by @ThomDietrich), presence .

Maybe a lot of user also would be interested in my alexa dummy items and rules(synonyms), my generic heating rule (with the admin sitemap to set actual target temperatures), my generic scene rule selector(you just add groups of which light items should belong to and each group then becomes a scene(which shows up in sitemap and can be used with alexa). It handles GPIO lights,MQTT,HUE,DMX and much more in the same rule and in the same scene…

Well this was a brief introduction of my opinions, hope we can discuss them further…

[george.erhan]

@skatun

I would say OH1.xx was for computer science people and OH2 is for engineers,

I disagree! IMHO 1.x is for engineers, 2.x is struggling to get to the end consumer and engineers!
The idea is great nevertheless, it will help a lot of people to grasp more from the powerful potential of openHAB!
Still, I think there should be intermediate levels of application! IMHO, the framework should allow engineers to provide end consumers some specific platforms! I do not see (at least for now) something that can substitute the conceptual work of a technical guy!

[rlkoshak (Rich Koshak)]

A lot of this is very relevant to the PR under discussion here. Please jump in and share your thoughts there as well.

@skatun

I think a seperate tab where the user could select which of @rlkoshak design pattern to integrate would be awesome, I bet 90% of user would like persistence, time of day, internet connection(speedtest by @ThomDietrich), presence .

This is harder than it appears because they all need to be customized for one’s specific environment. That said, the Visual Studio plugin does include the DPs as code snippets.

@skatun

Maybe a lot of user also would be interested in my alexa dummy items and rules(synonyms), my generic heating rule (with the admin sitemap to set actual target temperatures), my generic scene rule selector(you just add groups of which light items should belong to and each group then becomes a scene(which shows up in sitemap and can be used with alexa). It handles GPIO lights,MQTT,HUE,DMX and much more in the same rule and in the same scene…

If you haven’t already, whether they are useful to incorporate into the generator or not, please write them up as Tutorials and/or Design Patterns (if they are generic solutions to more than one specific problem).

I do something similar it sounds like for my lighting as your generic scene rule selector but I have not posted it as a design pattern yet because my setup is really simple.

@skatun

I would say OH1.xx was for computer science people and OH2 is for engineers

At the end of the day, home automation IS engineering. OH2 is making great strides towards making the problem easier for non-technical people but I am skeptical that any tool will ever be simple enough that I could give to my dad and he will be able to automate his house (he was an engineer, but the type that drives trains). There will always be people who OH will not be able to reach.

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try, but actually achieving this is going to be a very long way off.

[claudioita]

@kubawolanin

npm i -g yo generator-openhab

how long should this take on a pi3?

Mine is 10 minutes under installing (showing the letter \ spinning)?

I am not sure if I have node.js, do I have to install it before, or is ok also after?

[kubawolanin]

Is your machine behind a proxy/vpn?
Should take a few minutes.

Alternatively, you can try my HomeBuilder tool - it’s an early stage preview, but should do the work
It’s currently in the review queue but eventually it’ll appear as a official openHAB UI.

[sihui]

@kubawolanin

but should do the work

Amazing. openHAB is already a wonderful software, now it will become perfect!

[claudioita]

@kubawolanin

Alternatively, you can try my HomeBuilder too

I prefer yours. Please provide a backup possibility

[claudioita]

habdashboard link not working?

[sihui]

@claudioita

habdashboard link not working?

It does work, just click it.

[claudioita]

@kubawolanin

Alternatively, you can try my HomeBuilder tool

How to transform from “Internal database” that are generated from PaperUI adding things to

“Textual Configuration Files” which is how I copy paste your code into sitemap and items?

I do have some HUE bulb, netatmo stuff which I want to integrate in the code that I generated automatically with the tool.

For example I have a HUE light in my

  "ChandelierOne_ColorTemperature -\u003e hue:0210:00xxxx3040:12:color_temperature": {
    "class": "org.eclipse.smarthome.core.thing.link.ItemChannelLink",
    "value": {
      "channelUID": {
        "segments": [
          "hue",
          "0210",
          "0017xxx3040",
          "12",
          "color_temperature"
        ]
      },
      "itemName": "ChandelierOne_ColorTemperature"
    },

  "ChandelierOne_Color -\u003e hue:0210:001xxxx040:12:color": {
    "class": "org.eclipse.smarthome.core.thing.link.ItemChannelLink",
    "value": {
      "channelUID": {
        "segments": [
          "hue",
          "0210",
          "001xxxxxxxx243040",
          "12",
          "color"
        ]
      },
      "itemName": "ChandelierOne_Color"
    }

[claudioita]

man is this complicated …

[kubawolanin]

Note that my current preview site does allow to create textual configuration files, but in order to make internal database, you’ll need HomeBuilder to be a part of openHAB. Which is not the case at the moment. Please be patient, it’s still in the review queue.

Also, please read through the user manual of openHAB.

[claudioita]

@kubawolanin

Also, please read through the user manual of openHAB.

no way, is more complicated then a university exam, it would take me 6 months.

[claudioita]

@kubawolanin

Please be patient, it’s still in the review queue.

how long you think it takes ±?