openHAB generator - design your smart home in no time!

Apps & Services 3rd Party
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21

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.

23

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:

24 Likes
24

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
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25

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…

26

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!

27

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

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.

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.

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.

5 Likes
28

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?

29

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 :slight_smile:
It’s currently in the review queue but eventually it’ll appear as a official openHAB UI.

2 Likes
30

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

31

I prefer yours. Please provide a backup possibility

32

habdashboard link not working?

33

It does work, just click it. :grinning:

34

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"
    }
35

man is this complicated …

36

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.

37

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

38

how long you think it takes ±?

39

Home automation and OH are both very complicated topics, I agree. And I applaud the progress you have made thus far in trying things and learning OH.

However, I’m afraid that attitude will cause the willingness of users on this forum to continue helping you to dry up. We are all volunteers and spend a lot of our free time helping users. We are more willing to help those who first try to help themselves by reading the available documentation, which we have also spent a lot of our free time writing, than those who refuse to because it is “too complicated.”

It is common courtesy to respect the time of the volunteers on this forum and the developers to make your best effort to utilize the help that has been provided to you, including and especially the manuals and tutorials.

5 Likes
40

is not my fault if manuals and tutorials are structured in a way that is far too complicated for a beginner.

If you expect beginners with a low to average computer experience, to understand those instructions, you will loose 99% of potential users.

If the intention of the developers is to have a system used by a very little minority of power users, highly skilled programmers, then continue as it is. If the developers like to have a bigger user base, then the instructions should be structured differently

41

@claudioita then go and fix it as you please:

Seriously. We’re all volunteering our time and knowledge to make software better for the end user. It’s not a overnight success. Everyone, including the Community, makes it better everyday.
As Rich mentioned, attitude you’re presenting here is neither helpful nor encouraging.

I will continue my work here because it’s fun and I like to share my findings with the community. I’m not “expecting” anyone to do anything. But if I see if something can be clarified, I go and fix the docs. If 68 people could do that, you can do it too.
This is how open source works in general.

Take care

3 Likes