What is Reddit's opinion of openHAB?

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Not OP but it looks like the app openhab

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.openhab.habdroid&hl=en_US

> We don't have a TV subscription (I may or may not have a 10TB Plex library) so MythTV isn't a deal breaker for me :)

MythTV was an example of the flexibility of a binding not existing, but it didn't stop me from creating an integration. There is a Plex binding, though I haven't used it personally.

> How are the apps for OpenHAB? Any "beautiful" apps that are nice to use or are they all very clunky "home-grown" looking apps?

I started using GreenT just like HowInTheHell for my web browser GUI. With the release of 1.7, they also released an updated Android app OpenHab with Material design that looks pretty good. Again, it is all Rest style APIs so if you're so inclined you can build your own GUI. I haven't found a d-pad style button layout, so I'm looking to use webview to display a page where I've built the layout I want displayed. Also relatively easy to add or change icons if you don't like the existing ones.

> What kind of hardware are you running OpenHAB on? I have a gaming rig I could set it up on but it's one damn power hungry system and I prefer to keep it off/asleep when not in use.

Currently it is in a Debian VM on my ESXi server. I've heard people use RaspPi (possible bug with ARM CPUs?) and my CPU/memory usage is minimal, so it doesn't take big hardware.

To me the learning curve was a bit steep, only been at it 2 weeks after work and after kid time, but it has started to click and now I've got more ideas than time. Also it is 100% free so if you don't like it, you're just out a few hours of learning something new.

There is anopenHAB android app. When on the same wifi network it can connect directly to the your openHAB server which is installed on the pi. To get it to work over the internet they recommend https://myopenhab.org/

I found setting up openHAB to be very challenging. You definitely need to know how to code and work in linux terminal. The GUI is deceiving, it tricks you into thinking you can configure everything from there but in reality you have to get into the files and manually code everything.

For anyone curious, the git overview on this software doesn't say what the program does only what it was written in. Click here for info on what this software is for. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.openhab.habdroid

Pretty neat. I have definitely thought of doing this. I haven't been able to come up with an elegant way to mount a phone on the wall while plugged in, otherwise I wish I could use this as a physical switch/color chooser for my hue lights.

I was also thinking about setting up tasker on my nexus player to be the main server/brain of my home automation set up.

The other thing I am looking into is setting up an [www.openHAB.org](openHAB) server, which I just learned about last night. There is [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.openhab.habdroid](an android app) for openHAB that can control things in your openHAB environment, but there is also another app, [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=treehou.se.habit](3Hou.se) that can act as a remote for openHAB servers but also has a tasker plugin. I haven't set up my openhab server so I can't comment on it yet.

Thanks for sharing the phone idea!

HabDroid (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.openhab.habdroid) uses Google's voice recognition and populates the VoiceCommand variable. From there you can build your logic.

Also the Amazon Echo is a good interface. If you have a small number of devices you can use the Wemo bridge (http://hackaday.com/2015/07/16/how-to-make-amazon-echo-control-fake-wemo-devices/). You could go the IFTTT route, or if you are ok with python you could create your own Alexa skill (https://github.com/anjishnu/ask-alexa-pykit). I went with the custom skill.

This guy put an Echo-like interface on a RPi-like board: http://sammachin.com/the-10-echo/

Well, if you want a nice gui and the option to control more than just your amplifier, you could install OpenHAB on your server, set up some switches with preconfigured commands and you have a nice web gui for all your devices.

And for Android there is also the OpenHAB app which you can use to connect to your OpenHAB server.

I use it at home and it's awesome, you can easily create some switches for on/off which execute your command with the Exec-Binding for OpenHAB or you could even use the Serial-Binding to directly talk with your serial device. For volume you could even create a slider instead of up and down buttons.

Might take a short time to get used to the configuration but it's really simple actually, you can just use the example files if you need a template. And their wiki is also huge.

Assuming you want to build stuff yourself, rather than buy off-the-shelf consumer stuff, this is how I started :

• Get a Raspberry Pi and set it up with openHabian. This will be the control centre of your setup. It's a Linux distribution built around OpenHab and there's a companion iPhone/Android app
• OpenHabian has facilities to install Mosquitto (a message broker that your various gadgets can send and receive messages via) and Node Red (a nice web GUI for programming logic flows such as "when the light switch sends a message to Mosquitto turn off this lamp")
• Get some ESP8266 micro controllers (dirt cheap little CPUs with built in wifi), breadboard, Dupont wires, and a starter kit of electronic components (resistors, transistors etc). You'll probably find NodeMCU compatibles such as Wemos D1 to be easier to start with, they are ESP8266s with some extra circuitry that means you can connect them directly to your USB port for programming and directly connect your inputs and outputs
• Install Arduino software and set it up for ESP8266 development

Then have a bash at doing something simple like this to get you started

If you want to control mains devices, I'd suggest starting with some remotely controlled sockets like these. You can control them via IFTTT which in turn can receive commands from OpenHab. Once you get more confident you can usually flash the firmware of the switches to enable them to be controlled directly via messages sent to Mosquitto and cut IFTTT out of the picture.

The general advice is to start with something small and simple and expand from there.

Nah that's a pretty good question. There's a few ways to interface with it. Generally you might want to give your macbook a static IP. Then you can use the openhab app (iOS and Android) or even just interface with items through a web browser.

For instance, on my local network, if I go to

192.168.0.101:8080/CMD?BedLights=OFF

Hopefully that answers your question, but if you were asking how to actually get openhab connected to switches and such, that all happens in the bindings. I wrote up a little tutorial to another respone. Looking at what you want to connect to (whether it be hue, wemo, nest, you name it) just search this page to find your device and it usually has pretty good instructions on how to actually make the connection with the physical device.