Unable to get DateTime to work

[rlkoshak (Rich Koshak)]

@Tinimini

Is it possible to make a rule that would notice if the time between two heartbeats has been too long?

[Deprecated] Design Patterns: Generic Is Alive

There is now a Rule Template on the marketplace to implement this for you. See below for instructions on how to set it up. Please see Design Pattern: What is a Design Pattern and How Do I Use Them for a description of what Design Patterns are and how to use them. Problem Statement Many sensors report status to openHAB periodically (e.g. temperature sensor) or unpredictably (e.g. motion sensors) and a subset of these sensors do not have a built in way for openHAB to query whether or not they a…

I particularly recommend the Expire Binding version near the bottom of the first post.

Also, I think you could receive an MQTT message into a DateTime Item as long as the value of the message is epoc (it must be a number, not a String representation of the number) or in ISO 8601 format.