Hi Folks, n00b here that is starting to get into the home automation thing. After a lot of research I have decided that the box versions aren’t for me as they rely WAY too much on the cloud and I want to do all the processing in house. My question is this. Can you run OpenHabian on a PC. Now I know what many of you will say, just buy a pi it is cheaper etc. My Pi is old and is currently installed as a retro gaming console built into an old NES console. Secondly, I am an IT guy by trade and have access to MANY old systems that I can get for free so that is my main inspiration for using a PC. Lastly I want to do this as inexpensively as possible because I am a cheap bastard
So my question stands, can you install openhabian onto a PC ? has it been done before? Are there any downfalls to trying this? Should I just stick with a windows 7 install, make it a thin pc and install openhab from there?
Edit: ahh, openHABian! No, as far as I know there is no support for Win and there is no need. Just download openHAB and unzip it to a folder, install Java if not already installed and that’s it:
Dunno…but if you have a standard PC why would you want openHABian? AFAIK it’s tailored for PIs. I’d just install Ubuntu Server. Wait…actually I DID do that
And i can only recommend it…
I will try the thin client windows first then. I would like to install a linux installation of it just to avoid all of the windows crap that goes on in the background. But I will just take the time to strip all the crapware out .
I think @ThomDietrich has mentioned that openHABian should work on non-board computers. It might work on something like a stock Ubuntu server just fine. If not, if you are an IT guy and have even a passing familiarity with Linux installing on an old PC running an apt (Debian, Ubuntu) or yum (Red Hat, CentOS, Fedora) Linux would be easy enough to accomplish on your own.
Not to minimize openHABian (it really is awesome) but it primarily consists of scripts to do a bunch of configuration to give you a typical install of openHAB with ancillary services like samba share of your conf folder, option to install mosquitto, influxdb, grafana, and other third party servers that can be useful. There is ample documentation to do this yourself. I’m half considering publishing an Ansible playbook to install and configure all this stuff as well, once I get it all working.
While the Pi is very common for hosting openHAB. Lots of people host it on all sorts of equipment. I used to run it on an old laptop with a partially busted screen. I’m not running it on a VM hosted on an ESXi server. In both cases I’m hosting it on Ubuntu Server Edition.
My best advice. Download it and unpack to the root of your c drive. Run it, test it and make sure you are happy with it.
When you are confident that you like the setup, use nssm (non sucky service manager) to create a windows service from openhab. This can then be run whenever your windows pc is on (regardless of who if anyone is currently logged in) I find this especially useful on update wednesday, because when the pc restarts openhab launches automatically.
