I have linux knowledge but a openhab total beginner, I have sucessfully done following using paperui only;
Installed latest openhabian image on Pi3 and connected via wifi (used “standard” option during initial setup so have no demo config)
Succesfully setup my zwave devices as things/items/channels using the razberry addon board
Succesfully setup my X10 devices as things/items/channels using my Cm11a X10 interface (via a usb/serial adaptor)
Succesfully setup my Squeezelite players as things/items/channels using the squeezebox binding
Added/setup the openhab cloud service and successfully connected my google home app to my account (google is showing ok under https://myopenhab.org/applications)
I can now control them from the openhab phone app and from the “control” menu within paperui
To get my google minis to voice control my X10/zwave devices I understand i need to edit some config files (I use a combination of putty and winscp to connect to my openhabian)
… but “/etc/openhab2” is virtually empty of config files even though i have done all the above configuration, any ideas please?
PaperUI stores Things & Items configs in $OPENHAB_USERDATA/jsondb
(full path on an apt installation: /var/lib/openhab2/jsondb)
You cannot “convert” the *.json into flat text config files in $OPENHAB_CONF subfolders.
You can edit manually the jsondb files (not really recommended) but you will need to restart OH2 service everytime you change something since these are read only once (upon startup).
Many “advanced” users define their Items in $OPENHAB_CONF/items/*.items files.
You can take the settings from the jsondb and create manually the Items in flat text config (`*.items) files.
You will need to remove the Items (not Things) that you created with PaperUI if you want to re-use the same Item names.
You just need to add tags to your Items.
This can be done using the REST API (or json editing)… unfortunately, not from PaperUI (yet).
No need to transition from jsondb to *.items files for this.
Thanks for the quick reply, found everything under /var/lib/openhab2/jsondb in my openhabian image
Probably going to get some flack for this… but I’m very target/outcome led and once i’ve got the google assistant working, I’ll wont be touching the system again… will this work…
… i’m thinking of editing the json files direct, just have putty open next to my winscp and just restart the service everytime I want to “activate” a *.json file edit?
“So then I created an item through paper ui, was able to tag it through the console and got it recognized through google assistant. Excellent. Now update a bunch of tags in my .items files, and tell google to sync device, yes… everything works, all items now show up. Right. Remove item from paper ui, tell google to sync device and I get “an error occurred while syncing openHAB”. Add item through paperui, tag through console, throw in a reboot for good measure and now google can sync device and sees all tags, everything works.”
Yes, this will work but it’s too “manual”
better use the console or REST API to modify stuff in the jsondb files (to avoid syntax mistakes also)
Console & REST changes have immediate effect. No need to restart OH2.
I’m more motivated to read it now that I have a base system up and running thanks to paperui, its always been my “a bit suspect learning methodology”… I’ve used it all my life, always found it hard to motivate myself working through the “proper way”
I’d caution that you should not edit these files while OH is running. When OH shuts down cleanly I’ve seen it dump it’s current state to the JSONDB and your manual edits will get wiped out. I recommend only editing the JSONDB when OH is not running.
While I totally understand this approach and use it myself, with OH this approach often proves to be much more difficult in the long run if not flat out disastrous. It is also a bit annoying for those who help on the forum because it means we have to spend time fielding questions for which the answer is in the docs that we worked so hard to produce.
OH is complex and has a bunch of interrelated concepts which need to be understood in order to be successful. When you skip to “I just want something to work” you end up wasting a lot of time.
