Automate Your Home with openHAB

[@nihorothereal]

As soon as you said - "no subscriptions, I hate subscriptions", I subscribed. Now I know, this channel is good.

[@ProTechShow]

"Buy our product. Now keep paying us more money or we'll brick the thing you bought from us." Frustrates me no end that people just accept it.

[@yonderhornet]

Years ago I setup a alarm system with OpenHAB for my work office. It has motion detectors, door/window sensors, fire and co2 detectors and lights. It was pretty slick, but since then a lot has changed. And even worse, I forgot everything I had learned about OpenHAB. This was a fantastic refresher and worth the like.

[@ProTechShow]

Thanks!

[@nelsonaponte]

This is one of the best videos I've watched about openHAB. You explain everything in a great and simple way. How about creating a new video about the new features of openHAB since this video was published? Now there are Add-Ons suggestions, scene support, Time Series, improvements to Blockly (the graphical rule creation tool), debugging tools on the front end, support for different scripting languages (e.g., Java, JavaScript, Python, Groovy, Ruby) for advanced automation, and many more improvements.

[@ProTechShow]

Thanks! I don't have any immediate plans as I already have a backlog of videos I'd like to make, but I'm sure I'll revisit the topic at some point.

[@snugglesjuggler]

Really good tutorial! I'm a long time openHAB 1.x and 2.x user that needed to upgrade my current system from 2.5 to 3.x and understood that it was time to cut off some of my 2.x knowledge but couldn't really understand the best 3.x approach and what to relearn. You nailed it with the Semantic Model explanation. Also 100% agree with you about automation vs controlling. When I started using openHAB 10 years ago, control panels was the cool kid. 5 years later voice commands became the norm. Now I'm just waiting for an accurate indoor person locator and gesture sensors to enter the home automation arena. That would really help the system to make better decisions based on a person's presence. And some of the socially awkward voice commands (if not living single) could be replaced with silent gestures.

[@ProTechShow]

Thanks! That would be quite handy indeed. I have a selection of timers and motion sensors that work well in transient rooms like the hallway but not if you're sitting watching a movie. I haven't seen a reliable indoor presence detector that just works reliably without some kind of device to track. Imagine having to give guests a BLE dongle just to make the lights work!

[@maxmustermann2676]

This is very to the point of things without missing out on important bits. Well done 👍

[@ProTechShow]

Thanks Max 🙂

[@brianbrian9527]

I was looking for a platform to re-start my SmartHome. What I was using is very complicated, despite the hype out there. Your Explaination in this tutorial is so good, I do not know if its the person teaching or the product is that simple to get started. I have just formated my server and waiting for the OS to finish installing. Cannot wait to try it ! ! !

[@ProTechShow]

Thanks. Good luck - it can be somewhat addictive!

[@miklosangi-lazar6129]

Thank you! Brilliant. Best online teacher i've seen in the last half year at least. The way you explain should be the standard of instructional videos! (and i seldom comment on videos, if ever) ;)

[@ProTechShow]

Thanks! 🙂

[@RiaanEloff]

17:30 - i get to there, but then my ground floor only shows the info under NULL. Below METADATA it does not show that list to add a location. Instead, it shows something called CHANNEL LINKS, and that’s it. Anyone with pointers as to how I get the same screen as he does? Vers 3.4.0

[@RiaanEloff]

Found the issue. I created ground floor as a location. in the video it is a group 🙂

[@enzanto]

great video, I have used OpenHab since 2.2 or something. VERY setisfied with it. the transition to OH3 and semantic model have been tough to adapt to. because my mind is stuck in old config files :P So as a seasoned OH user. this video helped me understand the semantic model better :D

[@enzanto]

i also agree on the dashboard section. It's not automation. it is remote control :P I'd rather spend my time making good rules than good dashboards

[@ProTechShow]

When OH3 came along I decided that rather than try to migrate everything over and pick between options I'd just start from scratch and use the semantic model. Glad I did - having got used to it I find it much more natural now and I think trying to retrofit it to what I had would have taken twice as long.

[@enzanto]

@@ProTechShow i did the same. out with the old and in with the new! I also went from openhabian on a pi to running it in a kubernetes cluster!

[@ProTechShow]

@@enzanto sounds like a nice upgrade

[@Volvoamazon62]

Ha, you have true good arguments to use this. I have a smart home system, mainly for my central heating, and it started with the name 'RWE Smart Home', then it became 'Innogy' and now it is 'Livisi' and recently got an email that support will be terminated in 2024. There you are with your expensive system with smoke alarms, smart switches, smart thermostats etc. So my next smart home system will be self build! Thanks for the video!

[@ProTechShow]

It looks like openHAB has a binding that can talk to a LIVISI controller directly. The documentation says "This binding communicates directly with LIVISI SmartHome Controllers (SHC) and not through the LIVISI cloud services" so perhaps you can use that to keep using your existing devices once LIVISI pulls the plug on their end? www.openhab.org/addons/bindings/livisismarthome/

[@Volvoamazon62]

@@ProTechShow Thanks. Yes, that's why I came here. Got an email from livisi, aimed at openHab and ioBroker users. So I searched what that was and found this video. They don't care about international customers, so their emails are all in German, so I neglect them often. But this time this got my attention 😉. Very interesting...

[@gew12]

Top video ... One of the best I've ever seen and I've seen many tech videos

[@ProTechShow]

Thanks!

[@gew12]

@@ProTechShow No ... I thank you

[@svengeukens7949]

Great video and this helped me a lot. Thanks man. p.s.: your English is much better than mine :-)

[@ProTechShow]

Thanks 🙂 I have have an advantage on the English - it's my native language. I can barely speak much of anything else so I'm always impressed by people like yourself who can speak multiple languages!

[@Felix-st2ue]

One small update. The mobile app does use the new main UI now. You can still use the old sitemaps but you no longer have to

[@ProTechShow]

Is this an iOS thing? I got excited for a moment, but on my Android app it still relies on the old sitemaps. Hopefully it will come soon!

[@Felix-st2ue]

@@ProTechShow I am using the android version. On the menu button on the top left corner you can switch to the openHAB3 UI. But in the end you could also just bookmark the Page of the UI.

[@ProTechShow]

Ah, brilliant! I missed that. Thanks!

[@quebirt]

about the time I heard "thing" and "item" I decided that I'll stick with HomeAssitant for a while longer I think.

[@Hennagrepf]

Very good intro! Thanks for sharing!

[@ProTechShow]

Thanks. Glad it's useful! 🙂

[@billbill5712]

Hello, do you know what they mean when they want to make a project delta with openhab? thnx

[@ProTechShow]

What's the context? Normally in computers a delta refers to changes that have happened between one state and another.

[@dmmikerpg]

You can use a VPN to connect to your home network, THEN access the web ui, or SSH tunnel.

[@ProTechShow]

I've used both in the past, but this is now my preferred method: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pp-4oaKur7Sprpo

[@dmmikerpg]

@@ProTechShow Oh, yeah, Kemp Loadmaster would be great for that, although I'd rather have a Free with a capital F option

[@factfilenews]

Quality content 👍

[@ProTechShow]

Thanks!

[@earlsimpson333]

What camera is that you used in the demonstration?

[@ProTechShow]

It's a Foscam C1. Used to use it as a baby monitor as it was half the price of a video monitor and basically the same thing minus bunny ears!

[@dacianfd8418]

Can i install on Windows 7 ?

[@ProTechShow]

openHAB itself probably won't care. It will mostly depend on whether Java runs on Windows 7. It isn't supported, but "not supported" doesn't always mean "won't work". I don't recommend it, though; especially if you plan to make it accessible remotely - that would be quite a security risk using Windows 7.

[@nickwatson3121]

Does openhab work if your computer is turned off?

[@ProTechShow]

Whichever device openHAB is installed on must be powered up (could be a spare computer, NAS, or Raspberry Pi). You don't need to be logged in to openHAB with the web UI open or anything like that - it will keep running in the background.

[@Felix-st2ue]

Great video. However I would really recommend (especially Linux users) to use docker. It makes those whole install instructions for anything way shorter and easier. Basically "these are the mandatory parameters and now run" no download this or copy that etc...

[@ProTechShow]

Thanks! I see the appeal, but I don't personally like Docker for openHAB (I use it for a couple of other things, though). I've had a few bindings in the past that had issues with Docker and I prefer to have more control over my installation. If you've seen my other videos, I don't always like how openHAB handles things out of the box and make a few of my own tweaks (particularly for the cloud integration). That would probably work with Docker, but a good example of why I like to maintain control is Log4Shell - when that came out I could patch the vulnerability out of my installation immediately rather than wait for a new Docker image. More importantly for me was at the time I had bindings that required openHAB 2, so if I'd been using Docker I would have been a bit stuffed and have to choose between functioning devices and patching a serious vulnerability. I appreciate I'm probably not your average openHAB user, though; and they might be perfectly fine with Docker.

[@Felix-st2ue]

@@ProTechShow Hi, I really appreciate the appeal. I do get, that you do have more control if you install stuff yourself. However it's always a question of audience. The average person might not follow news of security issues and a lot of people probably don't maintain an active patching schedule. I am willing to bet that half of the openhab users only update java if something brakes. Especially those who needed an a guide to install a JDK. The best thing with docker is that it's transferable. You don't need to learn new stuff for different images. Just have a look at the parameters and run it. And also for security purposes it's really easy to put something behind a reverse proxy and use internal networks. However I do acknowledge that some bindings need tinkering. I had to run my container with MacVLAN so that it gets its own IP in order for the Sonos binding to work. That was because upnp isn't routed.

[@pascalb704]

👏Thanks a lot.

[@ProTechShow]

You're welcome!

[@squarekopf8901]

outstanding ...good job

[@ProTechShow]

Thanks!

[@lewiskelly14]

Why openHAB over Home Assistant?

[@ProTechShow]

openHAB supported significantly more of my devices at the time (HA supports most now, but it lagged behind each time), it has more flexible deployment options that better suit my existing environment, and Java seemed like it would be better for me than Python to develop custom integrations as I have a little more experience with it and I can develop straight from Windows without the need for VMs or WSL which makes it easier to do across different devices.

[@asdkjh4370]

HA is ridicolous - developers playing politics games , stability issues and litterally all the time something broken.

[@allan640]

The number of I.T pro's and Enterprise I.T experienced people all seem to say " I don't want my shit on your cloud " lol...wonder why (As an Enterprise I.T pro myself of over 10 years)

[@ProTechShow]

Haha. We've seen how they cut corners on their clouds and don't want to be dealing with that when we get home from work, too! Funny that I said in this video I don't want my home to stop working if a company goes out of business... and the very next month Smartlabs/Insteon happened. I feel bad for their customers, but at least with openHAB if it breaks I know it's my fault and I can fix it.

[@allan640]

@@ProTechShow Perhaps, depending on the cloud provider. Personally, I find it both frustrating and slightly amusing that the internet is supposed to be or at least perhaps once was decentralized. The larger it becomes and the more market valuen it gains the more people want to control it. If AWS went down at one of its major data centers for any number of reasons the impact would be significant. Not just for Amazon but for anyone who uses that platform for SaS, IaS or other clever acronyms. And of course, when the network links fail, your hospital who has cloud host may have some medical records but probably not all. Or if that same hospital is victim of a data breach, the amount of information that could be exposed epic. And then your other point, Vector Robot is a great example. I have one I bought it for penny's on the dollar because Amazon wanted to ditch the robots before the company went under. Of course they did, the robot lost the best part of its AI, but others have open source projects now bringing him back to life. But, those steakholers for many organizations like cloud services for the cost, some lack of liability in many cases and of course that itch, if they dont pay or treat their nerds right they will leave without sharing those little details of configuration that... Frequently make a huge problem at some point :)

[@llF0XIl]

All this just to add a bulb...? Make yourself a favour and use home assistant or smartthings

[@ProTechShow]

No, this is a starting from scratch tutorial and I use an LED strip to demonstrate some of openHAB's concepts. If you've already got a functioning system, adding a bulb takes a matter of seconds. SmartThings is something I would personally avoid as it's reliant on cloud services, and having your lights or heating fail to work because your internet dropped or their servers had a problem or they decided to pull the plug on it is just a ludicrous place to be. It's also something that used to happen a lot (reliability issues); and while they've solved some scalability problems and added limited local control there are just some basic things I think should never be reliant on the cloud, and living comfortably in my own home is one of them. Home Assistant is a perfectly fine option. openHAB supported more of my devices more quickly, and it's easier for me to build my own integrations with, so I use openHAB. If Home Assistant does what you need that's fine too.

[@asdkjh4370]

I moving to Open HAB - from Home Assistant which become politically inclined community - "Developers" banning russian developers:))) Not very profesional and another thing is security holes in integrations and complete lack of stability.

[@henriktoth56]

Complete bollocks. I've been using HA for 5 years now, with hundreds of small automations without any issues whatsoever.

[@captgrant]

I was OK with watching this until you mentioned JAVA. Java should continue to be de-commissioned and replaced with Html 5.

[@ProTechShow]

I think you're mixing up two different things. It doesn't use Java applets (yuk) on the client side. It uses HTML5. The backend services are written using the Java programming language. HTML5 is a markup language rather than a programming language and cannot be used to write backend services.

[@stephenremillard9462]

Same here

[@ProTechShow]

​@@stephenremillard9462 Read my reply to the other comment. It's confusing server-side Java with client-side Java applets. If you think server-side Java is obsolete, consider that Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Amazon, eBay, and KZbin are all using it.

[@enzanto]

@@ProTechShow but i read that java bad now! (sarcasm)

[@ProTechShow]

@@enzanto 🤣 At least it's a change from the usual Java Vs JavaScript confusion!