The best hassle free hardware (plugs and so on) for openhab2

Hi Community,

i have a question about the best hassle free and easy to use hardware in and with openhab 2 to use. i search plugs and shutter. what do you use? at the moment i use fs20 and other vendors. my goal is a fully configuration all hardware devices via paper ui. thanks for answers

greetz

You may need to specify some more boundaries to get good advice. There is cheap (and a lot of work), there is convenience (available for significantly more money) and there is everything in between. There are questions of infrastructure (is your house wired for ethernet or do you have to do wifi) and of electrical installations (do you have easy access and knowledge how to do wiring of 220 or 110V (depending where you live)).
From the top of my head:

  • cheap: ESP8266 modules (for example SONOFF-TASMOTA, ESP Homie), 433Mhz interfaces (e.g, MySensor)
  • less cheap: KNX, Insteon, WEMO, and of course z-wave
  • more specialized is available too, e.g., MilIght, Hue, IPX800

These are just a few that come to mind. Your budget, your conditions, your infrastructure, your comfort/knowledge will make all the difference.
Maybe it helps you if you browse the available bindings (if there is a binding, it will provide the easiest integration) and if nothing fits, you can start looking at writing scripts for specialized hardware and use the exec binding, access your hardware through http and or IFTT.

Bottom line, you define what hassle free means (are you comfortable with MQTT? it offers huge flexibility).
Do you need one system only (maybe zwave will do)?
Are you good in programming (the sky is the limit)?
Are you less restricted budget wise?
Can you rewire your house?
etc

Hi Markus,

thanks for your answer. What i mean with hassle free hardware is a easy way to integrate in openhab.
At the moment i use the following hardware (1). The most hardware is easy to integrate over the paperui. But for fs20, for example, i must use a bridge (homegear) for integrate my plugs, dimmer and shutter.
My goal is a fully configuration over the paperui gui. No textfiles edit and so on. I come from fhem. In fhem is the programming way over text files the normal way, but for my lot of hardware in my house is that not the efficienci way.

plugs based on the ip protocol is not a problem. i have cat 7 network and cisco ac cluster wlan in my house. my energenie socket systems based on ip and works like a sharm. works zwave hardware in openhab out of the box? knx bus system is not a alternative.

My Hardware what i use at the moment:

4x cisco ac cluster accesspoints
cat 7 cable in all rooms
multiroom audio via silvercrest in all rooms
4x milight bulbs 1x milight strip
4x energie socket strip (lan and wlan)
5x fs20 plugs as dimmer
rpi3 with openhabian for my future live system
openhab test system on my esx server in a debian vm
varius network devices eg harmony hub, onkyo, kodi systems and so on, tablets smartphones, notebooks…

for the most devices is a bindung in version 2.0 aviable, but for fs20 and energenie sockets not, at the moment.

Impressive setup.
Maybe it helps just going through the list of bindings until you find what you need.
I personally do not use zwave, but from posts in the forum it seems that for most it works very reliably, stable and easy. There is additional help available for configuration (habmin) and it seems that most use a USB controller. The latter may require a little care and consideration to get it working on your esx server, but again the forum will be your friend.
Given your setup you might be comfortable with a little more DIY: ESP8266 based



Both use Sonoff software (cheap), reflash the chip and voila you will have a system that does not need a controller; but you will need MQTT, which works very well with OH2.
Hope that helps

@gravidigit did you see this one: http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/fs201/readme.html
and this one
http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/energenie1/readme.html
just stumbled across and it seems to provide a binding for fs20 and energinie, you will need a controller though and it may not fully match your need regarding no textfile based config. but maybe a doable compromise