@KraxelHuber My gateway is a CUL stick v3. OH2 needs homegear to communicate with the CUL. a good starting point to setup homegear is here and here
You can find the config file for homematic/CUL (homematicbidcos.conf) under /etc/homegear/families
First you have to peer any device with homegear. Unfortunately I have no experience with thermostats and window sensors - I think you can steer them with rules in OH2:
Where do you see the main advantages of OH2 vs FHEM?
I like the well structured web interface, which is easy to use and with the HABPanel it is pretty easy to build a nice Dashboard. I like the addon system too. I am not afraid of configuration files, but I like it, if I can configure almost the whole system with a nice web interface.
If you come from FHEM I would not use Paper UI for creating any rule! Use the text files config. You will have more control and it’s much more “powerful”. Maybe I missed something, but I think that Paper UI Rules are just basic.
OH rules are slow compared to FHEM scripts. But if you setup and tweak it well, this isn’t a issue at all. Devices (and bindings) are pretty fast. Nothing to worry about. But if you have hughe calculations you might get in trouble with rules. Then you can try scripts in OH. Which are different to rules.
All “standard” parameters for homematic, you can set directly with OH. No problem. But for example the MASTER paramSet on Channel 0 is a bit tricky. For that you will need extra scripts. For most people this isn’t an issue.
I love OH2 for many reasons. Mostly because it’s UI’s, it’s Java’ish syntax and very good device support. (And I hate perl)
A lot has already been said. I just want to share my personal experience with FHEM and openHAB.
I’ve started my home automation endeavors with FHEM and it was depressing. It was 2013 and FHEM seemed like a relic from a distant past. Horrible frontend, crippled scripting capabilities (perl? really?), and maybe more I’m not remembering right now. After around half a year I abandoned FHEM and used (out of frustration and lack of time) the CCU2 build in functionality.
When I turned to openHAB, It took me a few days to understand the basic concepts and everything just worked. A nice GUI, powerful rule engine, high levels of grouping and abstraction and the sheer amount of bindings gave me all the capabilities I needed. Since then I’ve been one of the early adopters to openHAB 2 and that has been official release in January.
Usage of bindings is self-explanatory and tools like homegear you will need additionally will be installed in just a few steps, nothing to worry there. Regarding Homematic in particular, I am using a RPi3 with a busware SCC PCB and homegear in a standard installation. openHAB works with homegear flawlessly. The need for paramSet settings never really ocured to me really. These are settings you (normally) configure once, you can just do that with the LAN Configuration Software (basically the CCU frontend for your desktop PC, connected to homegear).
In comparison I would recommend openHAB to everyone who’s thinking to switch from FHEM.
Edit:
Two more additions.
Follow @lopez1de’s advice and go with rule text files. I’d actually go one step further and try to define everything in text files instead of using the Paper UI managed database. By defining things, items, rules, sitemaps and everything else in text files, you gain full control over your “smart home” you were probably looking for when you abandoned the shiny UI of your commercial products.
Check out my homematic set up to get an understanding of how this will look like: https://github.com/ThomDietrich/openhab-config/blob/master/items/homematic-heating.items
Look into using openHABian, it offers openHAB, Homegear and things like MQTT (Mosquitto) out of the box. (Disclaimer, I’m the developer of openHABian )
Just my 2 cents here:
I started with FHEM and I do like some things there, the “rules” (if, do, … there was a nice command(set) which was easy to understand for me and I got nice results.
What I didn’t like was the KNX-Daemon i had to run, cause FHEM couldn’t talk directly to KNX. Therefore (I have also some Homematicdevices) I need an external daemon for that, but that homegearpackage was much better then the KNX-daemon for FHEM.
Especially because the DMX-support was very limited in FHEM I tried out Openhab. And yes, compared to the FHEM installation Openhab looks like a big fat truck. And all the things were kind of different. But against the help I got in the FHEM-Forum the people here were very helpful and nice.
And the possibilites with OH1 where after the learningcurve I had to take much better and also the developement of OH2 was startet. So I had a nice interface for OH1 - even simple and working apps on the phone - and nice expectations for OH2.
FHEM has it’s advantages, but the project lacks a bit of innovation, when you need a dashboard or things you can spend much time. With OH2 now there is so much good going on and as I (just a little bit, but it was enough) watched some developments and decisions which were made in OH2 until the product was ready I saw that things were really made with looking to the future.
After good experience with OH1 I set up OH1 at my moms house with z-wave, in the first place to replace an old timer clock. So I can edit the times remotely. It was up and running quite fast and I gave my mom access to the switches through the iphone-app. Just for fun. You know what happened? She liked it. And is aksing for more…
My advice: go through the process, take the learningurve, take it that some things work really different, but if your basesystem is up and running you’ll have more fun to make it better und add some things in the future.
It’s just great that I hadn’t to do much after switching to OH2 to make my things availible through homekit. And some time later easily to Alexa.
Go for it
(and damn, my mother ordered an Echo. I need to upgrade the installation there to OH2, too…)
Thanks for sharing these links. I already came across the first and third one. What makes me a bit nervous about EnOcean and openHAB is the fact that some more relevant posts are already quite old (going back to 2014), and I am wondering whether they still have some validity regarding OH2. I guess there occurred many changes to OH during the last two to three years and setting up an EnOcean gateway may look different with OH2 these days. Please correct me if I am wrong!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I will definitely take a look at your Homematic setup.
Did you see the following blog entry (in German): http://onesmarthome.de/smart-home-openhab-2-homematic-ccu2-installation/
It explains how to use a Homematic CCU2 with OH2 without homegear. This should also work with my HM-CFG-LAN LAN. Just wondering if anybody already can confirm an apparently easy setup like this.
Would it be advisable to start setting up the devices using the PaperUI and then move to text files in order to do the fine tuning? Or should I ignore PaperUI completely and start setting things up using text files only?
That’s one of the main reasons I am thinking about switching. I need a good looking GUI in order to put it on some tablets that I am going to mount on the walls in my house. The results of TabletUI or smartVISU in FHEM may look good, but I think it’s quite a bit of work to set them up. I hope OH2 is easier on that front.
You can totally do that! Using a special device in combination with homegear is what I would call the next level
I’ve done it this way because I already had a big set of files from openHAB 1. If you start out fresh, it’s totally up to you. You should just know that both directions are possible. Choose the one you feel more comfortable with
Is it possible to request the inclusion of my EnOceanPi gateway as well as my other EnOcean devices into the EnOcean binding? On the EnOcean binding GitHub site (EnOcean Binding · openhab/openhab1-addons Wiki · GitHub), it is simply mentioned to add an issue for it at openhab. Whatever that means?
For openHAB 2, please do not consult the OH1 wiki if not said so specifically. All the latest info can be found in our docs page, e.g. http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings.html
You need an account there. Then you can edit the pages online and submit these changes. If you are unsure you could also send the info to me and I’ll add it to the page. That’s an option but the first is also quite easy.
Either way it would be great if you contribute your devices.
I am not sure if we are talking about the same issue. My first question before moving to OH2 is whether it supports my EnOcean devices, namely
EnOcean Pi 868 GPIO module gateway
Eltako FT55-rw switch
Hoppe SecuSignalFHFS-vw window handle
The Wiki doesn’t mention any of these devices. Does that automatically imply that they are not supported? I am wondering whether there exists some kind of list for all sorted EnOcean devices?
I also found a post that implies that support for EnOcean within OH2 is limited (EnOcean bindings : Opencean or Aleoncean?). Which binding is the correct one to choose if I start with OH2?
Ah. I see, completely missed your point. The list inside the binding README show probably just a few examples. Search for the individual product names here on the forum, chances are high they were already mentioned. I have no idea about what the enocean binding does and does not support.
You will have more control and it’s much more “powerful”. Maybe I missed something, but I think that Paper UI Rules are just basic.
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