Starting over from scratch?

Setup, Configuration and Use Beginners
1

Hello!

About a year ago, I dove into openhab and quickly got frustrated and quit everything ‘home automation’ just as quickly as I started. I had read up on OpenHab for a few months prior to diving in, watched a bunch of youtube videos (and mainly studied BK Hobby’s youtube videos and followed his tutorials during initial setup).

In the initial set up I selected the ‘demo openhabian setup’ figuring that I could just use that as a base and change/add/remove stuff as I went. I used ‘Visual Studio Code’ with the Openhab addon to edit the config files. Later, I learned about HABmin and tried switching to that to add things/bindings/etc.

I have a Rasperry Pi 3 B+ running openhabian off a USB flashdrive.
I have have a Z-Stik Gen5
I have Zooz Toggle dimmer (light switch)
I have a Zooz 4-in-1 sensor
I have 3 Phillips Hue Bulbs (and the Hue Bridge)
I use Windows 10 on my PC.

I could never get Openhab to recognize the Zooz 4-in-1 sensor. OpenHab can “see” the Zooz Toggle Dimmer, but can’t control it or do anything with it.

The Philips Hue bulbs and bulbs work a-ok via OpenHab (turn on/off or change the colors, etc), but I generally use Phillips App to control the lights because turning on my PC to open ‘openhab’ and click the light on seems like a waste of time and not “real” automation.

Anyway, I just want to start over from scratch and follow the Openhab website’s tutorials, guides, and read my way to the promised land. I tried to take a shortcut and follow youtube (as noted above, I just basically just followed BK Hobby’s tutorials).

I’m definitely a novice and want to completely start over from scratch. I just want to make sure this isn’t going to mess things up more once I re-install openhabian and such. Can I re-format the USB flashdrive, the internal flash card, delete everything on my PC related to Openhab, and then download all the new stuff from Openhab.org and re-install and start over? (Does anyone know how can I delete all the Openhab files off my Windows PC to completely start over?)

Thanks for you time and thanks for reading.

–ABP

2

Please do yourself a favour and watch the videos on our official openHAB YouTube channel. The first one is about openHAB 3 installation from scratch….

1 Like
3

Thanks hmerk!

I just finished watching it. Lots of familiar stuff from the last time I installed openhabian, but lots of new stuff too with OpenHab 3. OpenHab 3 looks a little more user friendly and makes a few things eaiser/faster - hope that’s all true.

Thanks again. I’m gonna start afresh soon!

4

So far I like openHAB 3 and the video linked above helped A LOT, thanks! I’m so much farther ahead in the last 2 weeks that I ever was with openHAB 2. Hope I can keep it up. I have all the things working that I could never get working a year ago. I’ve only done simple things like add z-wave, add dimmer switch, add Hue bulbs, and add a 4-in-1 sensor. I can control the lights and dimmer switch with openHAB. I can can also see the data from the 4-in-1 sensor in openHAB (like luminance, battery power, temp, etc). I’m so much farther that I ever was a year ago. Thanks again hmerk. I haven’t set up rules or truly automated anything yet, but that’s something I’ll try to learn as I continue forward. The ‘motion sensor’ for my 4-in-1 sensor shows “NULL” in the “items/model” tabs in openhab 3, so I’m not sure if that’s normal or if something is set up wrong. All the other sensors (except for tamper alarm [which I’m not too worried about b/c I don’t think I’m worried about it being tampered with…at least not today] are providing data. I was expecting to see “motion detected” or something like that when I moved my hand in front of the sensor. Guessing that’s not how it works, so I’ll to read up more about it.

–ABP