Some newb questions I could not find answer for

[qqa (justin)]

Hi,

I’ve been using openhab1 now for a while and got a pretty decent setup for it running. Inspired by openhab2 and playing with it for a few days I have a few questions I could not get answer to… hopefully you guys do… so far I really like openhab2 and love where it’s heading to.

• astra offset.
  I have many rules which do something “an X amount of time before/after sunset/sunrise” I found a topic where it stated that this is because the new rule engine will need some work. Is there any other way to get these kind of scenario’s done in the meantime?

• Item descriptions
  This is little but a little annoying. I’m running beta4 and when I adjust my items sometimes it gets into a state of where all my hue lights will instead of getting the right description name it will get “color” or “brightness”. I need to restart openhab2 all together to get it back working, is this a known issue or should I file a bug?

• zwave with two instances
  Allthough I like playing with openhab2 my openhab1 is still needing to function especially for all the zwave devices. I tried getting the zwave plugging working and it does but I need to shutdown my openhab1 instance as apperently only one instance can query the zwave controller stick. How do you guys get around that? Or am I forced to do everything after hours when no one is using it

• paperui/ habmin
  I’m not 100% sure what “should” be the way in openhab2 to get new zwave device included, should I do it the old way via habmin? or do I go via the paper-ui?

• openhab1 proxys
  a limitation from openhab1 was that I needed to use “time proxys” in my events so that I always had a variable that would be filled when it was “day/miday/pre-night/night etc…” is this still needed or can I now fire off rules depending on a certain state of “day”

• initializing
  when variables are created for the first time they all seem to be “NULL”, especially with the proxy setup it needs to cycle first for a day before they get into a filled state or manually put them right. is there anyway to declare a variable to “OFF” when starting up openhab, I got many “configuration switches” which would really benefit from a “default”.

Sorry for the many questions… keep up the great work.

[mr_eskildsen (Martin Eskildsen)]

@qqa

zwave with two instances
Allthough I like playing with openhab2 my openhab1 is still needing to function especially for all the zwave devices. I tried getting the zwave plugging working and it does but I need to shutdown my openhab1 instance as apperently only one instance can query the zwave controller stick. How do you guys get around that? Or am I forced to do everything after hours when no one is using it

I have an OH 1 setup and also a OH2 setup, which has been running for a couple of months now. The main reason for starting OH2 is actually my Z-Wave setup. Inclusion is just working better in OH2.I still need OH1 because my sietmaps didn’t work out the box (I haven’t had the time to dig into what is the problem). I run OH2 and OH1 as tow mqtt connected instances. If you don’t care how much data you send as MQTT use the MQTT event bus, else you can set up mqtt messages for each item (that is what I have done, because I like to be in control ). Actually both my MQTT server, OH1 and OH2 runs on the same Raspberry Pi…

[quote=“qqa, post:1, topic:16091”]
paperui/ habmin
I’m not 100% sure what “should” be the way in openhab2 to get new zwave device included, should I do it the old way via habmin? or do I go via the paper-ui?[/quote]
In OH2 I both use Habmin and PaperUI, I actually haven’t figured out how to start inclusion in Habmin, and I find the scan in PaperUI quite elegant, whenever you have your controller connected, you just have to do a scan and then set the device in inclusion mode. I use network inclusion mode, since my raspberry is located long away from other computers. With OH2 I can stay in front of my PC and start inclusion. I have seen some problems with Z-wave lately because I have updated frequently, and also has hit some “bad” versions . I have now learned to take backup . I am quite happy with my OH2 / OH1 bridge setup and reverting to OH1 isn’t an option anymore!

[rlkoshak (Rich Koshak)]

@qqa

astra offset.
I have many rules which do something “an X amount of time before/after sunset/sunrise” I found a topic where it stated that this is because the new rule engine will need some work. Is there any other way to get these kind of scenario’s done in the meantime?

Install and use the 1.9 Astro binding. You may need to enable “Include Legacy 1.x bindings” for it to show up.

@qqa

zwave with two instances
Allthough I like playing with openhab2 my openhab1 is still needing to function especially for all the zwave devices. I tried getting the zwave plugging working and it does but I need to shutdown my openhab1 instance as apperently only one instance can query the zwave controller stick. How do you guys get around that? Or am I forced to do everything after hours when no one is using it

Only one program can access the zwave controller at a time so I’m afraid you have to move zwave over all at once. You can’t have both running at the same time.

@qqa

paperui/ habmin
I’m not 100% sure what “should” be the way in openhab2 to get new zwave device included, should I do it the old way via habmin? or do I go via the paper-ui?

I’d recommend Habmin. But there is no “proper” way, just alternative ways.

@qqa

openhab1 proxys
a limitation from openhab1 was that I needed to use “time proxys” in my events so that I always had a variable that would be filled when it was “day/miday/pre-night/night etc…” is this still needed or can I now fire off rules depending on a certain state of “day”

The Rules engine is largely unchanged so you still need to these proxys. In case you haven’t seen it:

[Deprecated] Design Pattern: Time Of Day

[Edit] Adde link to Time of Day State Machine For years now I’ve let this Design Pattern post get out of hand so I’m going to rein it in a bit now. It’s really expanded away from what it’s originally intended to be (i.e. a way to illustrate how to code a time based state machine) into a thread that is mostly about the example, Time of Day. It’s partially my fault for naming the thread “Time of Day”. But there are better alternatives for Time of Day in specific and time based state machines in g…

@qqa

initializing
when variables are created for the first time they all seem to be “NULL”, especially with the proxy setup it needs to cycle first for a day before they get into a filled state or manually put them right. is there anyway to declare a variable to “OFF” when starting up openhab, I got many “configuration switches” which would really benefit from a “default”.

I recommend using a combination of persistence with a restore on startup and a System started rule. The link above shows a System started rule to do what you describe. The link below shows a way to setup persistence. You can just use the MapDB portion of the tutorial if all you want is restoreOnStartup.

Design Pattern: Group Based Persistence

Edit: Updated for OH 4 See Design Pattern: What is a Design Pattern and How Do I Use Them for an explanation of what a DP is and how to use them. Problem Statement There are several reasons why a home automation enthusiast would want to use openHAB persistence: charting, using historical Item states in rules logic, restore previous values on openHAB restart, detailed analysis, access to the data with external tools, etc. By default, a persistence add-on will implement a default strategy which…