So long and thanks for all the fish

1

It’s with a heavy heart that I find myself having to leave the community. After having my OH setup crash/die for the 3rd time (this time probably a corrupted sd card) I have come to the conclusion that I don’t have the desire to spend hours a week “playing” around with OH. A beautiful Sunday afternoon is meant to be spent with the family, not stuck behind a computer patching together a HA system.

I still believe OH is one of the most powerful HA solutions out there and if there was a consumer version available I’d buy it in a heartbeat. I just don’t have the knowledge to dedicate to a DIY based system. Things that would take someone 10 minutes to do would take me an hour.

I would like to give special recognition to @Kai for his tremendous work and leadership, @ThomDietrich for the incredible OpenHabian, @sihui for the help he is always willing to (patiently) give, and @guessed and @Lolodomo for creating the tools and helping in my original transition from Vera to OH. This community has been the best community of all the forums I’ve been a part of. Your patience with “Noobs” is outstanding and never did I feel looked down to or that I was a bother.

So where does my journey take me next? Well, backwards wasn’t an option. My Vera 3 is very much past useful life and even unable to update to the latest firmware (among other things). I decided it was time to round out my travels and go from DIY to one of the biggest players on the block, Smartthings. I will admit this was a very rushed decision (as in gotta replace OH with something…) and it may not be where I ultimately land. I do have some early opinions on Smartthings but this isn’t the place for that. If you want to know, PM me. I think it’ll send me an email and I’ll respond. My username on the Smartthings forum is the same as here and even my profile pic is the same if you want to get in touch there.

I’ll still be checking in from time to time to see how the battle goes. I truly wish everyone luck on here. It was a fantastic journey and I did learn a lot. My path (for now) is just heading in another direction.

Regards,

Matt

2 Likes
2

It’s sad to see you going away!
I wish it would have been FAKE NEWS :grinning: but apparently it’s not.
Good luck and all the best.

3

Beware of SmartThings, hopefully it has gotten better but I moved to OH because their devs seemed to have their heads up their asses and it was almost every week that I would find another aspect of the system down (or the whole system down) because they patched something on the server side that broke everyone.

4

@RHINESEL Thanks for your kind and honest words and all the best for you HA future - please always feel invited to come back (there might be a chance if you listen to @Mike_Bagdanoff :wink:

5

You’ve forgot to thank Rich :wink:

Na, thank you for posting… and posting how you feel… and I for one think that this is an honest statement. It highlights both, the limitations of an ordinary bloke, as well as the short-comings OH has as a system for the ‘ordinary bloke’.

When I sum up the hours I have spent on (what I find to be the most) trivial things, such as type casting; or finding out what extensions a functions has, or what commands, values a binding can deal with… it is simply unbelievable.

The forum as helpful as it is, but the lack of distinction between the OH versions, is certainly not helpful either.

And certainly, lots need to be done to grow the OH community, which is (as I understand) a double-edged sword: if too many ‘ordinary’ blokes pick it up, the simply queries for help will sky-rocket; however, when the entry to OH is made somewhat difficult, the contributors can focus on the real issues and advancing the product.
– Like in real life: there are always two sides (to anything)

I picked OH based on the integration capability, its openness, and capabilities. I wouldn’t pick it for unambiguous documentation, nor the Xtend language :wink:

In any case: I wish you luck with whatever you chose to run as HA system.

As for the forum software; I suggest adding a forced tick box, as to whether this post is for OH1 or OH2… there will be OH3 in the future (So I hope) which will raise this issue of currency again.

I would even offer, if I get appropriate forum access to split the posts between OH1 and OH2.

6

Max_G, I feel your pain. This is my fourth try to get this working (several months between attempts) and I sometimes feel I’m beating my head against a wall.

Some helpful searches/responses can come from a different platform/OS/version and it sure makes it all confusing.

I may dance around the openHAB bonfire myself and chuck it all as well.

Good luck with the alternative.

7

In general, I do not know what people have tried to accomplish, more so how they did it… however, I reckon buying a Raspberry Pi 3 and installing openHabian, like so: openHABian hassle-free openHAB Setup might be a good start for most ‘ordinary’ folks?!

8

@RHINESEL Thanks for this post. I’ll miss your cheerful comments in the openHABian thread :wink: All the best for you and your new ways in home automation. I’d be thrilled to hear about your experience after a few months! Till then, Thomas

9

@RHINESEL Sorry to see you go. Do check in an let us know how you get on with ST and it’ll be great to hear how the packaged options are getting on.

If you ever happen by the (SF) Bay Area, give me a PM and we’ll grab some drinks and discuss war-stories.

Mark

1 Like