OpenHab Marketing is Lacking

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I think that you would be considered a “power user” of IT products

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That could be confusing because that does not have anything to do with JavaScript. Those are the Java Docs of everything that goes into the making of OH. In those rare cases where you have to deal with the raw Java stuff from OH, that’s where you are going to find the methods and data available on each Class that OH implements.

You should almost never have to go there unless you are trying to do something not supported by the helper library, looking to contribute to the helper library, or want to write rules without the helper library, there is little reason to have to use the JavaDocs.

Ironically, that’s just the JavaScript version of JavaDocs for the helper library and really not something you’d be expected to use that much either. It lists all the classes and all the data and methods on the classes. That actually is relevant when writing JS Scripting rules. But even there, those docs are really only relevant if there is something not covered or not clear in JavaScript Scripting - Automation | openHAB which are the primary reference docs for JS Scripting.

There are lots more human readable examples there and those docs show you how to actually use the Classes in context. But, of course, the add-on readme also links to those class docs. For example:

Items

The items namespace allows interactions with openHAB Items. Anywhere that a native openHAB Item is required, the runtime will automatically convert the JS-Item to its Java counterpart.

See openhab-js : items (opens new window)for full API documentation.

  • items : object
  • .NAME ⇒ Item

Using JavaScript Scripting - Automation | openHAB (or the equivalent for the other languages) as the first place to look to to answer all the questions about writing rules in JavaScript was pretty much the whole reason Rules - Advanced | openHAB in Getting Started exists at all.

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@ubeaut, that could simply be because they are more active in the media than we are. At least that’s my impression. I don’t remember having come across articles about OH. I believe that’s what we should focus on after the Getting Started document has been published.

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Thanks for pointing out the docs I was looking at were not JavaScript. No wonder they made no sense.
Also with some of the examples and solutions I cannot figure out if they are DSL or JavaScript. That would also lead to confusion.
Anyway I have a working system which does what I want and I don’t change it that much once it up and running.
Keep up the good work.

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Unfortunately we don’t have enough moderators to follow behind every post and ensure tags are appropriate and every reply mentions the language being used. I tried for awhile but gave up.

Rules-of-thumb:

If you see the following it’s Rules DSL:

  • a rule starts with rule and has when, then, and end
  • Items are referenced directly by name
  • core actions like executeCommandLine, createTimer, sendHttpGetRequest are referenced directly
  • you see blocks of code enclosed by [ | ]

If you see the following it’s JS Scripting:

  • a rule starts with JSRule or looks like it’s built from a bunch of function calls
  • Items are always got at through items using items.getItem('MyItem'), items.MyItem or items['MyItem']
  • core actions are referenced through actions (e.g. actions.excecuteCommandLine(...)
  • [ ] are only used in reference to defining or obtaining an element of an Array or Dict.
  • you see function() or () =>

If you see none of that it’s probably jRuby (if it’s a recent example) or Jython (if it’s an old example). The jRuby examples are usually well labeled. There are few examples of Groovy or Java Scripting on the forum.

In the main docs, if there will either be a table that shows it in several languages, or you should assume Rules DSL (for now).

Note, I don’t think this is off topic. It’s stuff like this that needs to be addressed.

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hey guys, here is my 2 cents on the topic of comparison HA - OH
Both of those systems targeted audience are some kind of power users for sure.
When a “normal” user hears about needing to setup some kind of linux system on a raspberry PI, game over. Or docker, even worse.
If you sold it to him preinstalled and prepacked in some plug and play box, then maaaybe…
Normal user goes for google home or alexa.
Only “geeks” go for homeassistant and openhab.
This is the reality of the situation of home automation market.
The difference between oh and ha is just flavor. Lets say HA is Ubuntu (looks nice but normal user still uses windows (alexa), and OH is Slackware or Debian. (little bit more hardcore then ubuntu, but same concept basically)

example

this guy is considered an expert in the normal people world. he has this crazy, complicated smart home setup

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This week I saw about five headlines about Home Assistant on Google News. Zero from openHAB.

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Hi everyone.

I wonder if there is anything that can be done similar to what many brands, such as HomeKit (and even Homey) do with the “works with Homey” badge.
Homey is quite new but it will get at the same level, and maybe even higher, of Home Assistant in terms of marketing quite soon. Even HA doesn’t have the “works with HA” shown on the websites of big smart home manufacturers.

I believe it would be beneficial for our marketing efforts to have partnership with companies so they showcase that their products work with OpenHAB. For example, we seem to be having an issue with Yale (Yale/August smart locks with WiFi support [3.3.0;3.5.0) - #84 by nelson.aponte) because we don’t have one.

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