Hello I’m new to openhab , I’m wondering of it’s possible to use old android phones and have them linked or binded to an openhab hub ? (My hub will be a pine64) my buddy is gonna install open Hab on a old tablet or laptop as a hub. Will this kinda setup work? The old phones will be used as cams or motion detection cams … Some phones have temp sensors built in , could these be accessed with openhab? Thanks .
There was a project someone started at some point to create an app that will expose the data from the sensors on a phone. I have no idea what its state is or whether it got any further than an idea.
There are also apps that will turn your old phone into an IP camera. I have no experience with any of them so cannot make a recommendation.
The long answer is phones do not provide a way to publish or expose their sensor data to external entities (i.e. openHAB) out of the box. You need additional software (i.e. apps) that publishes or creates an API for external entities to query for sensor data.
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Yeah I do recall an android app that was supposed to let you get access to all the sensor data… Can’t think what it was called though…
What do you think you want to use the phones for? I have an old android phone running a squeezebox client… It’s stuck behind the TV and I use it just for OpenHAB to make voice announcements.
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I had an app on a very veryold Windows3 phone, that made it an IP webcam. Search IP webcam on google play, there are loads. it should then be straight forward to access this via HTTP binding. But I’ve not tried it.
Exposing the temp data or a motion sense trigger, I suspect wont be so easy.
But there is probably an app out there somewhere.
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You can put something together using Tasker for Android to send and receive data to/from OpenHAB.
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Do you have anymore info or a wrote up on your setup? Is like to use it for
voice announcements too, that would be cool, what kinds of info do the
announcements give and is it 2 way voice communication?
For me I wanted to use the phones for security cams, I am using an app for
that but thought I’d be cool to have it on openhab. I also have a old s4
which has temp and humidity sensors thought it would have been cool to use
with open hab too. Those were my initial goals.
Yeah I’m using Alfred cam app. But thanks for the tip on http binding , I’m
new to this so I had no idea.
Ill check that out , and links of examples ?
Look for Squeeze Player in the Android Play Store…
This is a squeezebox client. You then need to setup a squeezebox server on a PC or raspberry pi somewhere.
Then you can use the SqueezeBox binding in OpenHAB where one of the options is to make it “speak”.
All the info required is in the wiki…
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