openHAB - 2

Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum

Recently I started looking into Home Automation, using a Raspberry Pi and the openHAB as platform. The website provides ready-to-go images based on Debian, named openHABian. Me being me, I decided to install the image, let it boot up for the first time, and then take it from there using Ansible as automation tool. That's a bit more effort in the beginning, but ensures that I can always just wipe the SDcard, and start over from the beginning. Especially useful if I screw up at some point during testing.

One of the first steps to do is to decide which bindings, or extensions, are needed. Bindings provide openHAB with information about what kind of hardware and input sources are available out there. The list of available bindings is long, and one can use the UI to click and install bindings, before starting to configure and link them. That process is not idempotent, but luckily openHAB also provides an API which can be used to execute the same steps, just faster and automated.