First of all I consider OpenHAB2 to be a gorgeous product. Nevertheless I am currently thinking about a “larger scale” installation in a family house, leading to wealth of sensors and actuators (around 100+). For this reason the possibility for …
A) a fast disaster recovery and …
B) a smooth transition to newer OpenHAB-versions
is important for me.
A) is mitigated by using an backupable Z-Stick (Gen 5) in case of hardware failure. This allows me to continue with a new stick by restoring the Z-Stick configuration without including all devices manually. Further I try to use the textual configuration for things, items, persistence, sitemaps which allows me a fast recovery or a smooth transition to a new OpenHAB-installation (B).
With this in mind I discovered a few shortcomings (or features) which I want to place here for discussion:
- When a thing is defined textually, it is also automatically discovered which crowds up the inbox and may lead to duplicates for the same thing: Would it be of advantage to hide textually defined things from the inbox, which means to blacklist those node_id(s) mentioned in the textual configuration?
- If the Z-Stick is defined textually as a bridge, the include/exclude commands are not working any more: Would it be of advantage to allow include/exclude of ZWave-Devices even if the Z-Stick bridge is defined textually? (Currently I use a second instance of OpenHAB to do a secure inclusion)
- If a thing is defined textually, it is not possible to change the “configuration parameters” in HABmin. For example if I want to calibrate a temperature sensor, I have to switch to a non-textual configuration to do this: Is this restriction necessary? Would it be possible to set those “configuration parameters” in HABmin? Would it be nice, if one could set those configuration properties in the textual configuration?
- What is the purpose of the xml-files in userdata/zwave? I discovered, when I do an inclusion in a non textually defined environment a file with network_xxxxxxxx__node_y.xml is created. If I transfer the Z-Stick to another instance a similar file is created, but it differs. It is mostly striking, when a secure device is used: The secure classes are not enumerated in the xml, but secure sensor readings are properly received.
What is the exact purpose of the xml-files?
Would it be possible to query all those parameters from the Z-Stick or the Z-wave network and use those xmls as cache only (if required)?
Best regards,
brstein