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OpenHAB – vendor and tech agnostic open source automation software for your home

openhab.org

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Re: OpenHAB – vendor and tech agnostic open source automation software for your home

#32
post #30

OpenHAB suffers from the developers reinventing the wheel every 2 years. I started using version 1 for automating my house in 2015. I didn't bother with the UI, since I'm running a web based dashboard I wrote myself, but the underlying "hub" and plugin infrastructure combined with the REST services and the HTTP eventstream API let me combine my custom scripts and devices (which speak MQTT) with stuff from hardware ve…

Deutsche Telekom is using OpenHAB as the basis for its smart home offering and hired some of the core contributors to OpenHAB. Maybe this lead to the fast depreciation cycle. The same thing happened to Angular: its primary developers where using it for Google internal projects and they also introduced breaking changes all the time.

Re: OpenHAB – vendor and tech agnostic open source automation software for your home

#33

I have had an openhab install running in a rpi without any issues for several years now. Everything in the home is MQTT-based (Tasmota firmware on the switches) and it sends messages to the broker to control stuff. The local reliability is rock solid and cannot be faulted. However the initial config is quite a learning curve though, and is pretty user-hostile IMHO (they appear to have basically just put a web UI on t…

> appear to have basically just put a web UI on their java inheritance tree with zero thought given to making it understandable

Exactly my impression. I used to work for Thingworx, more industrially oriented, and that's what was done there (also a java object astronautical culture), with an additional layer of generics to double complexity. They had some great ideas but any user would need a training class to be productive.

Re: OpenHAB – vendor and tech agnostic open source automation software for your home

#34
post #30

OpenHAB suffers from the developers reinventing the wheel every 2 years. I started using version 1 for automating my house in 2015. I didn't bother with the UI, since I'm running a web based dashboard I wrote myself, but the underlying "hub" and plugin infrastructure combined with the REST services and the HTTP eventstream API let me combine my custom scripts and devices (which speak MQTT) with stuff from hardware ve…

I had similar experience.

They pushed people out of text files into the Paper UI and some DB. And I was constantly fighting the configuration.

Moved to Home Assistant, and so far it is good (but they also try to force usage of UI and some DB instead of pure and simple text files, which is again annoying).

Re: OpenHAB – vendor and tech agnostic open source automation software for your home

#35
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agree with most points, recently upgraded to OH 3.x though and I have to say they have abstracted a lot of their complexity (particulary like the new semantic model) HomeAssistant I found harder to use for a very very specific reason, it didn't have a MySensors binding. thats it :/ so yes in general HomeAssistant is better, until it doesn't support what you want.

HA claims to offer MySensors integration: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/mysensors/ Does that not work or is something missing?

I've used it and it works great, even works with automatic discovery.

Re: OpenHAB – vendor and tech agnostic open source automation software for your home

#36
post #33

I have had an openhab install running in a rpi without any issues for several years now. Everything in the home is MQTT-based (Tasmota firmware on the switches) and it sends messages to the broker to control stuff. The local reliability is rock solid and cannot be faulted. However the initial config is quite a learning curve though, and is pretty user-hostile IMHO (they appear to have basically just put a web UI on t…

> appear to have basically just put a web UI on their java inheritance tree with zero thought given to making it understandable Exactly my impression. I used to work for Thingworx, more industrially oriented, and that's what was done there (also a java object astronautical culture), with an additional layer of generics to double complexity. They had some great ideas but any user would need a training class to be prod…

> with an additional layer of generics to double complexity

In 2022, I just don't understand Java development. It feels like a whole ecosystem just insisting on itself as everything else moves on.

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