Shortcut to controllign ESP devices

[mbdmbd (Michael Davison)]

Hi All,
I’m sure that there is comprehensive documentation somewhere but I’ll be honest, as a luddite who needs to read things on paper I am just swamped by the shear volume of documentation and the impossibility of printing it.

My problem is :
I have been using Openhab (latest version) on a Raspberry Pi for a year to monitor and control TAPO devices - via GUI configuration.
Separately, I have recently started playing with ESP32 and ESP01 devices to control relays through their VERY basic webservers. I wanted to add control of these devices to my Openhab but got absolutely swamped by the discussions of Mosquito and MQTT and various other systems. Having only learned the GUI configuration (and knowing a decent amount about Unix) I simply don’t understand the roles and structures of the scripting / files that Openhab auto generates, so most of the discussions go directly over my head. SO, I decided to research reading and commanding web pages from Openhab as the easiest way to control these extra devices. This didn’t provide me with the short cut I was hoping for - but I am still optimistic that generating a web-click on a web button as the action of a trigger might be the easiest way to drive ESP devices.
So here’s the question : Is there a concise tutorial for adding access to / sending commands to web pages from Openhab? If so I would be most grateful for a clue where to find it.
I have found much discussion of scraping data from websites, but nothing about web-access configuration in Openhab and /or sending ‘clicks’.

Thanks all,
MBD.

P.S. I found Openhab really accessible compared to my previous experiments with Home Assistant etc, but I’m beginning to wonder if ESP is better suited to other IOT / Automation systems. If that’s the case, feel free to tell me.

[rlkoshak (Rich Koshak)]

@mbdmbd

This didn’t provide me with the short cut I was hoping for

The short of it is there is no short cut.

@mbdmbd

So here’s the question : Is there a concise tutorial for adding access to / sending commands to web pages from Openhab?

Not really. There are lots of separate tutorials that show piece parts of the process but rarely will you find an end-to-end tutorial that does exactly what you need. To be successful in the DIY home automation realm, you need to be able to identify individual tutorials and how-tos that you need and translate them to what you want and string many of them together in order to reach your end goal.

openHAB and Home Assistant, despite all their GUI based stuff, are development platforms. They are a framework upon which we build our home automation. So there really are no two instances out there that are the same. Everyone’s openHAB instance is unique.

@mbdmbd

I simply don’t understand the roles and structures of the scripting / files that Openhab auto generates

Be sure to read and understand the Concepts section of the openHAB Docs. We can answer specific questions but if you don’t have an understanding of Things, Channels, Links, Items, and Rules OH is always going to be completely incomprehensible.

@mbdmbd

P.S. I found Openhab really accessible compared to my previous experiments with Home Assistant etc, but I’m beginning to wonder if ESP is better suited to other IOT / Automation systems. If that’s the case, feel free to tell me.

Ultimately you’ve picked the hardest path to follow. You are using an open source DIY home automation hub along with a DIY microcontroller. You are not going to get out of this without doing a good bit of learning.

Personally, I think HTTP is going to be just as hard as MQTT to get it working. In fact, I think MQTT in a lot of ways is simpler because, as a messaging protocol, understanding the way data passes back and forth is much easier to understand and the data requires significantly less manipulation to get it into a usable form.

There are lots of books you can buy that teach you everything you need to know about MQTT and then some if you have difficulty learning from screens. Sadly OH will only have electronic docs but you can print the pages that you need.

If you want to forge ahead with HTTP, I’m certain there are books about how HTTP works available as well.

In either case, if you don’t have an understanding about how these protocols work, you will never figure out how to integrate them with OH and your ESPs. These are low level protocols and therefore require low level understanding of how they work to use them with OH. Higher level protocols *(e.g. Zwave, Zigbee, Shelly, etc.) are much easier to use with OH. You barely need to know anything about how they work, they are just automatically discovered and you can start using them.