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A while ago I upgraded openHAB from version 2.4 to 2.5. That comes with the usual share of problems, but eventually I got it working.

For an unrelated project I wanted to use the OpenWeatherMap setup I have to improve the daily weather forecast with icons.

The binding provices ids for the current weather condition and the current weather icon. That can be used to load the icon from the OWM website. Went to my setup and added two new Items:

String	homeCurrentConditionID	"Current condition ID [%s]"	{ channel="openweathermap:weather-and-forecast:home:current#condition-id" }
String	homeCurrentIconID	"Current icon ID [%s]"		{ channel="openweathermap:weather-and-forecast:home:current#icon-id" }

Used Ansible to deploy everything to the Raspberry running openHAB. And then wondered because only the "homeCurrentConditionID" item came online, not the "homeCurrentIconID". After searching around and browsing the community forum, it turns out that the "icon-id" channel is new in 2.5, and will not automatically installed if the OpenWeatherMap binding was already used in 2.4. WT* ...

One has to remove all the OWM things ("openweathermap:weather-api:home" and "openweathermap:weather-and-forecast:home") and reinstall everything, in order to get the new channels working. That is really unexpected, and not user friendly.

After mumbling a while over my options I went ahead, created a new backup, and then removed the two items. One did get stuck along the way, a long Java trace appeared in the logfile, and I had to force remove it. Then - for good measueres - I also uninstalled the binding, and restarted openHAB.

Afterwards I re-deployed my Ansible Playbook, which installs the binding, takes care of the binding configuration, and adds the Things again. After everything came online, the homeCurrentIconID Item is also populated. Why is everything in openHAB so complicated?