Jekyll2020-02-19T20:40:17+00:00https://www.kaikreuzer.de/feed.xmlKai KreuzerSoftware Architect and Home Automation Professional. Founder of openHAB.Smart Home Day @ EclipseCon Europe 20182018-10-29T10:14:45+00:002018-10-29T10:14:45+00:00https://www.kaikreuzer.de/2018/10/29/smart-home-day-eclipsecon-europe-2018<p>Another year has passed and <a href="https://www.eclipsecon.org/europe2018/">EclipseCon Europe 2018</a> took place in Ludwigsburg, Germany - and with it, our second edition of a colocated <a href="https://www.eclipsecon.org/europe2018/smarthome">Smart Home Day</a>.</p>
<p>The Smart Home Day was hosted by the <a href="https://www.openhabfoundation.org/">openHAB Foundation</a> with <a href="https://www.bosch-si.com">Bosch SI</a>, <a href="https://www.codecentric.de">codecentric</a> and <a href="https://www.qivicon.com/en/">Deutsche Telekom</a> as sponsors.</p>
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<p>Just like last year, the day was all about <a href="https://www.eclipse.org/smarthome/">Eclipse SmartHome</a>, its solutions and especially its community.
Not only were there again very interesting talks about the internals of Eclipse SmartHome and some of its new features. The audience also learned about cool projects that have been realised with it. The program concluded with a panel discussion about the pros and cons of different build and IDE approaches for the project - giving good insights into Maven, Tycho and Bnd.</p>
<p>As the community is spread over the whole world and not everyone had the chance to come to Ludwigsburg, the Smart Home Day presentations were professionally recorded this year by the <a href="https://c3voc.de/">CCC Video Operations Center</a>. They did an awesome job and not only provided us high-quality recordings, but also had all of them uploaded and shared <a href="https://twitter.com/kaikreuzer/status/1053999503471243264">a few minutes after the event was over</a>.</p>
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<p><img class="img-responsive" src="/img/2018-10_shd.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<h4 id="the-agenda">The Agenda</h4>
<p>The day was packed with content from 10am in the morning until 5pm in the afternoon. All videos are available on a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEGbpQEn6rvyikXIhZXmuztwgUz7V8Ufs">YouTube playlist</a> as well as on <a href="https://media.ccc.de/c/ece-shd18">media.ccc.de</a>.</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Presentation (link to slides)</th>
<th>Video</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Welcome and Introduction<br /><em>Kai Kreuzer, President openHAB Foundation</em></td>
<td><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Z-QB0N-GM&list=PLEGbpQEn6rvyikXIhZXmuztwgUz7V8Ufs&index=2&t=0s"><img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/t3Z-QB0N-GM/2.jpg" alt="Welcome and Introduction" /></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Eclipse IoT: State of the Union<br /><em>Benjamin Cabé, Eclipse IoT Evangelist Eclipse Foundation</em></td>
<td><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvD8o4ILq4Y&list=PLEGbpQEn6rvyikXIhZXmuztwgUz7V8Ufs&index=3&t=0s"><img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/PvD8o4ILq4Y/1.jpg" alt="Eclipse IoT: State of the Union" /></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://www.openhabfoundation.org/documents/2018-10_Core_Framework_Updates.pdf">Updates from the Core Framework</a><br /><em>Henning Treu, Eclipse SmartHome Committer</em></td>
<td><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdhNg-ZTe54&list=PLEGbpQEn6rvyikXIhZXmuztwgUz7V8Ufs&index=4&t=0s"><img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/fdhNg-ZTe54/2.jpg" alt="Updates from the Core Framework" /></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>MQTT Integration for Eclipse SmartHome<br /><em>David Graeff, Eclipse SmartHome Contributor</em></td>
<td><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkD8tJrGV6Q&list=PLEGbpQEn6rvyikXIhZXmuztwgUz7V8Ufs&index=12&t=0s"><img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/QkD8tJrGV6Q/3.jpg" alt="MQTT Integration for Eclipse SmartHome" /></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>HABot - a Chat Bot for openHAB<br /><em>Yannick Schaus, openHAB Maintainer</em></td>
<td><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_3U4zcD5i4&list=PLEGbpQEn6rvyikXIhZXmuztwgUz7V8Ufs&index=6&t=0s"><img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/y_3U4zcD5i4/2.jpg" alt="HABot - a Chat Bot for openHAB" /></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://www.openhabfoundation.org/documents/2018-10_BuildingAutomationAtCodecentric.pdf">Building Automation at codecentric Headquarters - A Look Behind the Scenes</a><br /><em>Christina Zenzes & Anna Backs, codecentric</em></td>
<td><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjxCG2vED5M&list=PLEGbpQEn6rvyikXIhZXmuztwgUz7V8Ufs&index=5&t=0s"><img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/TjxCG2vED5M/1.jpg" alt="Building Automation at codecentric Headquarters - A Look Behind the Scenes" /></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>SmartHome Cloud: An Open & Extensible Cloud-Native Plattform for Consumer IoT<br /><em>Mehmet Arziman, openHAB Cloud Maintainer</em></td>
<td><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtqjrZ0lDBY&list=PLEGbpQEn6rvyikXIhZXmuztwgUz7V8Ufs&index=7&t=0s"><img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/CtqjrZ0lDBY/2.jpg" alt="SmartHome Cloud: An Open & Extensible Cloud-Native Plattform for Consumer IoT" /></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Smartening a Residential Complex. The 2^5 Application!<br /><em>George Erhan, openHAB Community Member</em></td>
<td><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xct2o_up6L8&list=PLEGbpQEn6rvyikXIhZXmuztwgUz7V8Ufs&index=8&t=0s"><img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/Xct2o_up6L8/1.jpg" alt="Smartening a Residential Complex. The 2^5 Application!" /></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>The Eclipse Smart Home Automation Engine – From Open Source to Production<br /><em>Kai Hackbarth, Evangelist, Bosch SI</em></td>
<td><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBIXWbje17Y&list=PLEGbpQEn6rvyikXIhZXmuztwgUz7V8Ufs&index=9&t=0s"><img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/bBIXWbje17Y/1.jpg" alt="The Eclipse Smart Home Automation Engine – From Open Source to Production" /></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://www.openhabfoundation.org/documents/2018-10_ESH-Bndtools.pdf">Eclipse SmartHome & Bndtools</a><br /><em>Jochen Hiller, Runtime Architect, Deutsche Telekom</em></td>
<td><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7ycfWp9cbw&list=PLEGbpQEn6rvyikXIhZXmuztwgUz7V8Ufs&index=10&t=0s"><img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/V7ycfWp9cbw/2.jpg" alt="Eclipse SmartHome & Bndtools" /></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Eclipse SmartHome & Plain Old Maven<br /><em>Lukasz Dywicki, Founder Code-House</em></td>
<td><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBxCHxi1pM8&list=PLEGbpQEn6rvyikXIhZXmuztwgUz7V8Ufs&index=11&t=0s"><img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/WBxCHxi1pM8/2.jpg" alt="Eclipse SmartHome & Plain Old Maven" /></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Panel Discussion - Build Tooling for Eclipse SmartHome<br /><em>Candidate 1: Maven - Advocated by Lukasz Dywicki<br />Candidate 2: Tycho - Advocated by Kai Kreuzer<br />Candidate 3: Bnd - Advocated by BJ Hargrave<br />Moderation: Henning Treu</em></td>
<td><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92szjGgt0SY&list=PLEGbpQEn6rvyikXIhZXmuztwgUz7V8Ufs&index=13&t=0s"><img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/92szjGgt0SY/3.jpg" alt="Panel Discussion - Build Tooling for Eclipse SmartHome" /></a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>A big thanks to everyone who has attended the event as well as to all the speakers that helped making the day a great success! There was a lot of very positive feedback on the talks and it always makes a very special atmosphere to have so many passionate community members together at one place. While we will try to repeat doing such events in future, everybody should feel encouraged to organise local meet-ups or other types of events around their favorite project - it is absolutely worth the efforts!</p>
<p>You can find pictures of the Smart Home Day on Google Photos:
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<a href="https://photos.app.goo.gl/Nw3UB1aLJCqBTxg57"><img class="img-responsive" src="/img/2018-10_googlephotos.jpg" alt="" /></a></p>Kai KreuzerAnother year has passed and EclipseCon Europe 2018 took place in Ludwigsburg, Germany - and with it, our second edition of a colocated Smart Home Day. The Smart Home Day was hosted by the openHAB Foundation with Bosch SI, codecentric and Deutsche Telekom as sponsors.openHAB 2.3 Release2018-05-28T11:24:00+00:002018-05-28T11:24:00+00:00https://www.kaikreuzer.de/2018/05/28/openhab-2-3-release<p>Time flies! The last openHAB release is already more than 5 months old and much has happened since then. It is therefore clearly time to pack and ship all the nice new updates as a stable release: Here comes <a href="https://www.openhab.org/download/">openHAB 2.3</a>!</p>
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<p>All details about the included features and fixes are listed in the <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab-distro/releases/tag/2.3.0">official Release Notes</a>, but please allow me to point you to some of my personal highlights:</p>
<h2 id="localisation">Localisation</h2>
<p>A lot of effort went into translation work during the past months: Not only the openHAB dashboard, but also HABPanel and the Android app have been translated into many languages by community members all over the world. We are using the <a href="https://crowdin.com/projects?q=openhab">Crowdin service</a> for this, which makes it really easy for people to contribute - it is a perfect start for actively participating in the community!</p>
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<p><img class="img-responsive" src="/img/2018-05_translations.png" alt="" />
<small>Languages covered by HABPanel</small></p>
<h2 id="units-of-measurement">Units of Measurement</h2>
<p>Another great feature that makes it much easier to use openHAB all over the world is the new support for units on numbers. This make it now possible to e.g. use imperial units even if your sensors deliver values in the metric system. You can thus have all your temperatures shown as <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">°F</code>, completely independently from the hardware you are using - the conversion is automatically done by the framework. This not only works for simple conversions like <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">°C</code> to <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">°F</code>, but also for <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">hPa</code> to <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">inHg</code> or similar things. Likewise, you can even decide to have different representations within your own measurement system. So while your sensor might deliver data in <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">m/s</code>, you can simply define that this is shown as <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">km/h</code> in your user interface.</p>
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<p><img class="img-responsive" src="/img/2018-05_uom.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>The real power of the unit support can be seen when being used within rules: Calculations can now be done unit-safe, thus <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/25845/quick-6-six-unit-conversion-disasters">unit disasters</a> can be avoided. Even if you add <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">23|°F + 82|°F + 302|K</code> or <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">5|m + 30|cm + 0.01|mi</code> within a rule (note that the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">|</code> is used as a delimiter between the value and its unit in rules), the result is always correctly calculated. You can find more technical background information about this feature in the <a href="https://www.eclipse.org/smarthome/blog/2018/02/22/units-of-measurement.html">Eclipse SmartHome blog</a>.</p>
<h2 id="new-integrations">New Integrations</h2>
<p>We have a new record for the number of new add-ons for a release: openHAB 2.3 brings 25 new add-ons to the existing pool! This roughly makes one new add-on per week - despite this success, there are still plenty further add-ons in the review queue, so future releases are not likely to slow down much.</p>
<p>Worth to mention are the integrations with two quite widely used systems (at least in Germany): <a href="https://www.openhab.org/addons/bindings/innogysmarthome/">innogy</a> with a broad portfolio and <a href="https://www.openhab.org/addons/bindings/tado/">tado°</a> with climate and heating devices. Unfortunately, both of them do not offer any local integration, so that offline situations can not be covered.</p>
<p>A more geeky device that is great for notifications is <a href="https://www.openhab.org/addons/bindings/lametrictime/">LaMetric Time</a>: With its huge dot matrix display, it is perfect as a feedback channel to the users.</p>
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<p><img class="img-responsive" src="/img/2018-05_lametric.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Another cool addition is the <a href="https://www.openhab.org/addons/bindings/amazonechocontrol/">Amazon Echo Control binding</a>, which gives full control over Amazon Echo devices, so that you can control the media playback, use it as a text-to-speech service or trigger reports like the daily briefing or the weather forecast.</p>
<p>Last but not least: The very first binding that was written in 2010 for openHAB has finally been migrated to a <a href="https://www.openhab.org/addons/bindings/knx/">fully 2.x compatible implementation: KNX</a>! This new implementation not only makes it possible to also configure the KNX integration through the Paper UI, it furthermore supports reading information from physical KNX addresses, such as manufacturer and firmware ids and it can also ping those addresses in order to determine whether the devices are still available on the bus.</p>
<h2 id="ecosystem-news">Ecosystem News</h2>
<p>Besides the distribution of the runtime, you should also be aware of some news from other components within the openHAB ecosystem:</p>
<h3 id="google-assistant-integration">Google Assistant Integration</h3>
<p>openHAB has an officially certified <a href="https://www.openhab.org/docs/ecosystem/google-assistant/">openHAB Google Assistant Smart Home Action</a>. The openHAB Action is one of the first open source smart home integrations in the Google Assistant ecosystem and allows users to connect their openHAB instances through the <a href="https://www.myopenhab.org">myopenHAB service</a> to Google Assistant and easily manage and control their homes by voice. There is a step by step <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab-google-assistant/blob/master/USAGE.md">guide</a> on how to use the openHAB Google Assistant Smart Home Action. The Action supports lights, plugs, switches and thermostats. It comes with multiple supported languages like English, German and French.</p>
<p>Besides <a href="https://www.openhab.org/docs/ecosystem/alexa/">Alexa</a> and <a href="https://www.openhab.org/docs/ecosystem/mycroft/">MyCroft</a>, this is the third voice assistant that can be used with openHAB.</p>
<h3 id="openhab-cloud-runs-from-docker-to-kubernetes">openHAB Cloud runs from Docker to Kubernetes</h3>
<p><a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab-cloud/blob/master/README.md#openhab-cloud">openHAB Cloud</a> now supports a cloud native architecture, powered by the open source <a href="https://kubernetes.io/">Kubernetes</a> system to enable more scalable openHAB Cloud platform setups and deployments. openHAB Cloud comes with easy to use <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab-cloud/blob/master/deployment/kubernetes/kubernetes-deploy.sh">deployment scripts</a> for Kubernetes and OpenShift. The Kubernetes feature relies on containers, distributed management and orchestration, and openHAB Cloud will soon completely shift into the use of microservices designed for cloud environments. More detailed information on how to deploy openHAB Cloud using Docker, Kubernetes or OpenShift can be found <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab-cloud/tree/master/deployment">here</a>.</p>
<p><img class="img-responsive" src="/img/2018-05_k8sopenshift.png" alt="" /></p>
<h3 id="openhab-android-app">openHAB Android App</h3>
<p>The <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.openhab.habdroid">openHAB Android app</a> is very actively maintained and there were many bigger and smaller improvements over the last months, like the improved voice integration, the support for locations and maps, refresh on swipe, etc. Besides the version in the Play Store, there is also a Google-free, pure open-source version of the <a href="https://f-droid.org/packages/org.openhab.habdroid/">app available on F-Droid</a>.</p>
<h3 id="project-website">Project Website</h3>
<p>We have launched our completely re-designed website this weekend - besides being more modern and faster, it now seamlessly includes this blog, has a great <a href="https://www.openhab.org/about/showcase.html">showcase section</a> and an excellent <a href="https://www.openhab.org/addons/">search for supported devices</a> (including a <a href="https://www.openhab.org/addons/bindings/zwave/doc/things.html">complete list of all Z-Wave devices</a>).</p>
<p>For those who are interested in “offline information”, don’t miss to check out the new list of <a href="https://www.openhab.org/about/events.html">upcoming events</a>!</p>
<h3 id="community">Community</h3>
<p>As always, I would very much like to thank all our community members that contributed to all those efforts - such a progress is only possible through the immense dedication of many different people and it is a great honor to serve this community as a project lead - keep up the awesome work!</p>Kai KreuzerTime flies! The last openHAB release is already more than 5 months old and much has happened since then. It is therefore clearly time to pack and ship all the nice new updates as a stable release: Here comes openHAB 2.3!openHAB 2.2 Release2017-12-18T00:00:00+00:002017-12-18T00:00:00+00:00https://www.kaikreuzer.de/2017/12/18/openhab22<p>Half a year has passed since openHAB 2.1 and I am very happy that we still made it before Christmas, so that you have something nice to play with during the holiday season: <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab-distro/releases/tag/2.2.0">openHAB 2.2 is out</a>!</p>
<p>The most obvious change that you will immediately notice is the rollout of our <a href="https://community.openhab.org/t/new-logo-for-openhab/35140">new openHAB logo</a>, which you will now find in all our apps, UIs and websites.</p>
<p class="center"><img src="/img/2017-12_logo.jpg" alt="openHAB Logo" /></p>
<p>But the functional evolution is of course of much more importance, and a lot has happened in the past months.</p>
<p>While you can find all the details in the <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab-distro/releases/tag/2.2.0">official Release Notes</a>, let me highlight a few of those features.</p>
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<h3 id="new-features-for-setup--configuration">New Features for Setup & Configuration</h3>
<p>Huge effort went into the user experience when setting up and configuring openHAB:</p>
<h4 id="language-server-protocol-lsp-support-and-vs-code-extension">Language Server Protocol (LSP) Support and VS Code Extension</h4>
<p>One major step forward is the introduction of <a href="https://langserver.org/">Language Server Protocol (LSP)</a> support in the core runtime. This allows text editors to remotely connect and do syntax validation and content assist on our configuration files, which is specifically useful when writing rules. Since these were the main features of the former Eclipse RCP-based “openHAB Designer”, this tool has been discontinued and the <a href="https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=openhab.openhab">VS Code Extension</a> becomes its official successor.</p>
<p class="center"><img src="/img/2017-12_vscodeext.gif" alt="VS Code Extension" />
<small>Visual Studio Code Extension for openHAB</small></p>
<p>Besides the “usual” features like code highlighting, syntax validation and content assist, the openHAB VS Code Extension uses the connection to the openHAB server to provide many more great features like browsing through the available items & things, showing live previews of sitemaps and many more - you should definitely check it out!</p>
<h4 id="home-builder">Home Builder</h4>
<p>Another new tool for getting started is the <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/configuration/homebuilder.html">Home Builder</a>, which let’s you easily define the whole structure of your home (floors, rooms, objects) and then creates the according item and sitemap files by the click of a button. No tedious typing or copying&pasting necessary anymore - and the risk of typos is gone! The Home Builder is automatically installed when the “Standard” installation package is chosen, all others can install it as an optional add-on.</p>
<p class="center"><img src="/img/2017-12_homebuilder.png" alt="Home Builder" />
<small>The new Home Builder generates configuration files to start from</small></p>
<h4 id="openhabian">openHABian</h4>
<p>Talking about an easy start with openHAB, I clearly have to mention <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/installation/openhabian.html">openHABian</a>, which has just been released in parallel: <a href="https://community.openhab.org/t/openhabian-v1-4-released/37398">openHABian 1.4</a> is available for all Raspberry Pi models from 0W to 3 as well as for the <a href="https://www.pine64.org/?page_id=1194">PINE A64</a>. Its setup is smoother than ever and it by now includes an abundance of options to install next to openHAB, like Node-RED, KNXd, Grafana and FIND, just to name a few. It now also includes those directly in the openHAB dashboard, so that all of them are easily accessible from a single place.</p>
<p class="center"><img src="/img/2017-12_openhabian.png" alt="openHABian" />
<small>Populated dashboard in openHABian</small></p>
<h3 id="new-device-integrations">New Device Integrations</h3>
<p>Of course there are again <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab-distro/releases/tag/2.2.0#addons">news on the binding side</a> as well. Some bindings like <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/dmx/readme.html">DMX</a>, <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/nest/readme.html">Nest</a> and <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/plugwise/readme.html">Plugwise</a> existed before, but they are now fully rewritten and support openHAB 2 features like discovery and UI-driven configuration.
Other bindings are completely new like e.g. the (specifically in Austria) very popular <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/loxone/readme.html">Loxone</a> system or the <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/lgwebos/readme.html">webOS-based LG TV</a> support. All Apple users might find the new <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/icloud/readme.html">iCloud binding</a> very useful as it provides a very simple way to do location tracking of people (or rather their devices) and through which you can also trigger “find my iPhone” in case you forgot where you have put your mobile.</p>
<p class="center"><img src="/img/2017-12_icloud.png" alt="iCloud Binding" />
<small>Location tracking through the iCloud Binding</small></p>
<p>The release notes furthermore contain a <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab-distro/releases/tag/2.2.0#addons">detailed list of all noteworthy enhancements and fixes</a> that have been done on the existing add-ons.</p>
<h3 id="-and-more">… and more</h3>
<p>Last but not least I should mention that we also have updates for the <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/openhab/id492054521?mt=8">iOS app</a> and the <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.openhab.habdroid">Android app</a> available in the app stores - especially the Android app has evolved a lot and it is awesome to see many new contributors being involved in it - check out all the new features and fixes in <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab.android/releases/tag/2.0.0">its release notes</a>.</p>
<p>For the 2.2 release, we plan to come up with 2.2.x updates, which can potentially fix critical issues that are found, but which will more importantly add further bindings that are going to be merged during the next weeks. Our aim is to make the time that it takes for a new binding to become available to our release users much shorter than it is today. So stay tuned for further news on this!</p>
<p>I hope that you like all those updates and I really think that openHAB becomes much better with every release. This wouldn’t be possible without its great community. So let me end my annoucement by thanking all contributors that drive the project forward - be it through code contributions, work on the documentation or simply by reporting bugs and involving themselves in discussions. Merry christmas to all of you!</p>
<p class="center"><img src="/img/2017-12_xmas.jpg" alt="Merry Christmas" /></p>Kai KreuzerHalf a year has passed since openHAB 2.1 and I am very happy that we still made it before Christmas, so that you have something nice to play with during the holiday season: openHAB 2.2 is out! The most obvious change that you will immediately notice is the rollout of our new openHAB logo, which you will now find in all our apps, UIs and websites. But the functional evolution is of course of much more importance, and a lot has happened in the past months. While you can find all the details in the official Release Notes, let me highlight a few of those features.openHAB 2.1 Release2017-06-28T00:00:00+00:002017-06-28T00:00:00+00:00https://www.kaikreuzer.de/2017/06/28/openhab21<p>A few months have passed since the initial openHAB 2 release and the community has been incredibly active meanwhile. It is therefore time to push out a new stable release, so here it is: <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab-distro/releases/tag/2.1.0">openHAB 2.1</a>!</p>
<p>You can go through the <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab-distro/releases/tag/2.1.0">official Release Notes</a> to get a detailed idea of what is in this release, but as usual I will mention some of my personal highlights.</p>
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<h3 id="new-device-integrations">New Device Integrations</h3>
<p>First of all, there are of course again very interesting new bindings available. Just right for the season, we have now support for two connected lawn mowers through the <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/gardena/readme.html">Gardena binding</a> and the <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/boschindego/readme.html">Bosch Indego binding</a>. Finally you can tell Alexa to mow your lawn!</p>
<p>Looking at more widespread use cases, there are some good news for all connected light fans: There is not only support for all the <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/lifx/readme.html#supported-things">new products from LIFX</a> like the LED strips or the LIFX+, which comes with an extra infrared channel to light up rooms for IP cameras, while they still appear dark for humans. Much more important for the mainstream is the support for the brand new <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/tradfri/readme.html">IKEA Trådfri system</a>, which will for sure quickly gain a significant marketshare with prices of less than 10€ for a dimmable bulb.</p>
<p class="center"><img src="/img/2017-06_leds.jpg" alt="Hardware" />
<small>IKEA Trådfri and LIFX+</small></p>
<p>Talking about affordable home automation hardware, a very popular example is the chinese <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/mihome/readme.html">Xiaomi Mi Smart Home</a> product suite which ranges from wallbuttons. temperature sensors and plugs to curtains, human body sensors and smart cubes - all of which are now covered by openHAB as well.</p>
<p>There are further interesting integrations, which are not directly smart home related: Think of things like <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/folding/readme.html">Folding@home</a> through which you can use your computer as electric heating while helping to fight diseases - a pretty cool thing to do for everyone who heats electrically anyhow. Another example are the traffic-related integrations of <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/onebusaway/readme.html">OneBusAway</a> for live information of public transport and <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/tankerkoenig/readme.html">Tankerkönig</a> for the fuel prices of nearby gas stations.</p>
<p>Last but not least, I am happy that we eventually also have an initial version of a <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/zigbee/readme.html">ZigBee binding</a> through which it is already possible to access Philips Hue lights without requiring a Hue bridge and to use plugs from SmartThings with openHAB - many more devices to come!</p>
<h3 id="eclipse-iot-marketplace">Eclipse IoT Marketplace</h3>
<p>For everyone who is longing for even more integrations than the official openHAB distro can offer, the new <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/configuration/eclipseiotmarket.html">Eclipse IoT Marketplace integration</a> comes in handy: The <a href="https://marketplace.eclipse.org/taxonomy/term/4988%2C4396/title">Eclipse Marketplace</a> provides a catalog of add-ons from third parties, which can be browsed and installed easily - there might be many reasons for add-ons not being part of the official distro: Closed source, incompatible licenses, alpha versions, etc. The Eclipse IoT Marketplace is a wonderful service to make them visible to our users and to have a central place where everybody can publish add-ons easily.</p>
<p class="center"><img src="/img/2017-06_iotmarket.png" alt="IoT Marketplace" />
<small>Third Party Add-ons from the Eclipse IoT Marketplace</small></p>
<h3 id="system-administration">System Administration</h3>
<p>Many improvements are available for the overall system administration. We not only released a new version of the <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhabian/releases">hassle-free installer openHABian</a> for the Raspberry Pi and PINE A64 that provides many new options for tweaking the system setup. It certainly also offers the option to smoothly upgrade a 2.0 installation to the new 2.1 release (using the APT upgrade mechanism, which is also available to all other Linux setups).</p>
<p>For the first time we now also offer <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab-distro/releases/tag/2.1.0#upgrade-process">upgrade scripts for manual installations</a>, which should make the upgrade process pretty straight-forward.</p>
<p>Another cool new project is the <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab-vscode/blob/master/README.md#openhab-vs-code-extension">openHAB Extension for Visual Studio Code</a>. This is a viable alternative for editing configuration files to the Designer or plain text editors. The VS Code extension supports syntax highlighting for all openHAB configuration files, code snippets, documentation search integration and a live preview using the Basic UI.</p>
<p class="center"><img src="https://github.com/openhab/openhab-vscode/raw/master/images/openhab-sitemap.gif" alt="VSCode" />
<small>VS Code Extension with Live Preview in Basic UI</small></p>
<p>This is just the start and the development of this extension is very active - so expect many more cool features to become available soon!</p>
<h3 id="summary--outlook">Summary & Outlook</h3>
<p>I would recommend to browse the <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab-distro/releases/tag/2.1.0">release notes</a> in detail in order to find out many more interesting changes. Also note that there are many more contributions <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab2-addons/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aopen+label%3Anewbinding">in the pipeline</a>, which did not make it into the release, but will appear soon in the nightly development snapshots. To account for the fact that we see a growing number of contributions, we plan to increase the release frequency in future and thus we put efforts into automating the release process. As always, please remember that openHAB is a project that is run by volunteers - so every help is welcome and highly appreciated! A very simple first step could be to <a href="https://alternativeto.net/software/openhab/">give us a like at alternativeTo</a> - thanks!</p>Kai KreuzerA few months have passed since the initial openHAB 2 release and the community has been incredibly active meanwhile. It is therefore time to push out a new stable release, so here it is: openHAB 2.1! You can go through the official Release Notes to get a detailed idea of what is in this release, but as usual I will mention some of my personal highlights.The Anatomy of Smart Homes2017-02-20T00:00:00+00:002017-02-20T00:00:00+00:00https://www.kaikreuzer.de/2017/02/20/smarthome-anatomy<p>Scott Jenson published a <a href="https://medium.theuxblog.com/the-future-iot-building-better-legos-43047e17ad4c#.kihaq7usy">very good article</a> last week, where he nicely showed how far away we still are from the shiny Jetson-like marketing promises about smart homes. He asked us to take a step back so that we can think about the holistic shape of the “right” solution for smart homes. <strong>Let’s do so!</strong></p>
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<h2 id="missing-technology">Missing Technology?</h2>
<p>Doing a shameless shortening of his thoughts, he concluded that many issues would be solved if all devices had</p>
<ol>
<li>a smart setup that allows users a very simple way of commissioning</li>
<li>auto-arrangement through proximity-detection</li>
<li>a globally accepted way of announcing their capabilities</li>
<li>a mechanism to share their data instead of keeping it in a silo</li>
</ol>
<p>These are the technologies that we as a community are still lacking and that need to be tackled.
Only if these are in place, it will enable devices to automatically form a distributed ensemble which we all aim for.</p>
<p>While I very much agree with all his points, I believe that solving the technological issues alone won’t suffice, but that we need to take yet another step back to see the big picture.</p>
<h2 id="taking-another-step-back">Taking Another Step Back</h2>
<p>When talking about adding IoT devices to “the network”, it is out of question for most people to wonder “which network” - since we are talking about the <em>Internet of Things</em>, the network can only be <em>The Internet</em> where everything is connected, right?</p>
<h3 id="silos-and-accounts">Silos and Accounts</h3>
<p>If we have a closer look at today’s smart home devices (and also other IoT setups), the truth is that everyone uses IP, i.e. Internet <em>technology</em>. But are the devices available “on the Internet”? No, many of them effectively do not allow you to communicate in any direct way with them. Instead, they open an encrypted tunnel to a cloud service, which then acts as a portal to the device for the user - all data is kept secretly (not saying securely) in the cloud under full control of the manufacturer. Effectively, we have a big number of siloes that can be regarded as VPNs. It is important to note that these are deliberate silos - this choice is not (only) the fault of missing interoperability standards!</p>
<p>This setup is a major reason for Scotts points 1 (smart setup) and 4 (sharing data): The manufacturers do not want to give control to the users, but instead force them to create accounts at their cloud service, accept the manufacturers terms and conditions and let the manufacturer decide how and with whom to share the data.</p>
<p>This is the major issue that needs to be addressed: The mindset of people that are building IoT devices must move away from this omni-present IoT architecture. The outlook that users will have to create web accounts for every single household object (everything’s going to be connected, right?) they buy in the future is ridiculous. This works as long as only nerds with a dozen devices play around with smart homes, but it definitely won’t scale. Manufacturers must let their devices go - only if they are unleashed the devices will have a chance to communicate with each other and form distributed ensembles.</p>
<video width="100%" autoplay="" loop="" muted="">
<source src="http://www.openhab.org/assets/smarthome.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
</video>
<h3 id="internet-vs-intranet">Internet vs. Intranet</h3>
<p>Let’s for the moment assume the devices were unleashed. Is the Internet then really the best place for them? Even if all potential authentication and authorization issues were solved, we all know that all those devices are hackable. Do we really want to see them publicly listed on <a href="https://www.shodan.io/">Shodan.io</a>? Having isolated VPNs isn’t such a bad idea after all and in the case of the smart home <a href="2014/02/10/privacy-in-smart-home-why-we-need/">the most natural fit is the local Intranet</a>. What you want to have on the public Internet are services (hosted on “real” servers that are hardened against attacks) and not household devices. A good compromise is in my opinion the concept of the <a href="https://google.github.io/physical-web/">Physical Web</a>, where the discovery and authorization could be done through low-range radio like BLE, while the heavy lifting is done through cloud servers - but this really hardly applies to the smart home itself. If services of a home should be shared (this decision should really be up the user), it could be made available on any standard-compliant cloud service (i.e. no vendor lock-in), once Lego brick 3 (Standard Descriptions) is in place. Unfortunately, I am not as optimistic as Scott to have a “shared, common approach soon” - maybe for technical operability, but most likely not for <a href="/2016/03/21/semantic-interoperability-in-internet/">semantical interoperability</a>.</p>
<h3 id="a-matter-of-perspective">A Matter of Perspective</h3>
<p>Taking the perspective of the user instead of the perspective of the manufacturer definitely brings us much closer to the desired solution. But putting <em>the user</em> in the center also causes some dilemma in the context of a smart home: After all, a home usually has multiple inhabitants, furthermore there are visitors, pets, burglars (hopefully not), etc. For the home to become smart and autonomous, the devices must become an integral part of the home and must not be a property of a single user. This is another clear indicator that we are still in an early phase: Most devices are bought off-the-shelf, installed DIY and registered to a certain user, who configures it to meet his needs. The devices are the personal objects of a person; they are not a part of the home. If this person moves the house, he will take his personal belongings with him. This works as long as you have only a dozen smart bulbs, a door lock and a web cam. It won’t work - and especially it does not make any sense - for a photovoltaic system, a complex central heating, the in-wall motion sensors, the smart frontdoor,… you get the point. You are also not ripping out the wall switches and your windows when you sell a house. A smart home should be allowed to exist on its own, even if nobody lives there. What brings it into existence are its bricks and its infrastructure - including the local IP network as the communicatin backbone for its parts.</p>
<h3 id="water-electricity-smartness">Water, Electricity, Smartness</h3>
<p>Smart home features and connectivity thus have to become a matter of course, just like electricity or water - it should not be treated as something that is retrofitted by the owner; instead, it must be an integral part of a home, which in turn becomes a smart, self-organizing entity. Having the devices build a local private network would ensure data privacy and the smallest possible attack target. <strong>This</strong> should be the long-term vision when designing smart home devices. In consequence, this means that devices must</p>
<ol>
<li>not require a mandatory user registration</li>
<li>work (at least in a basic way) without a cloud connection</li>
<li>provide a local API for interaction with other devices (and not limiting access to a small set of business-oriented partnerships) and expect the same from the others</li>
</ol>
<p>In short, things should focus again on being things in the first place and not cloud-connected devices - they must be unleashed to show their full potential.</p>
<p>This might sound trivial, but unfortunately these features are widely ignored in the industry - although they would secure the adoption of smart home technology in the long-term. How can the industry possibly be influenced to see that <a href="https://jenson.org/we-need-more-communism/">a bit more communism</a> will eventually grow the cake for everyone?</p>Kai KreuzerScott Jenson published a very good article last week, where he nicely showed how far away we still are from the shiny Jetson-like marketing promises about smart homes. He asked us to take a step back so that we can think about the holistic shape of the “right” solution for smart homes. Let’s do so!openHAB 2 has arrived!2017-01-23T00:00:00+00:002017-01-23T00:00:00+00:00https://www.kaikreuzer.de/2017/01/23/openhab2<p>Three years <a href="/2014/06/16/openhab-20-and-eclipse-smarthome#esh">after initiating the Eclipse SmartHome project</a>, I am proud to finally announce the general availability of openHAB 2.0, the first openHAB release that is based on <a href="https://www.eclipse.org/smarthome/">Eclipse SmartHome</a>!</p>
<p>This release replaces openHAB 1.8 as the officially recommended runtime, only the openHAB 1 compatible add-ons will be further maintained. They are now <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab1-addons/releases/tag/v1.9.0">available in version 1.9.0</a> and can be used on existing openHAB 1.8 installations. We have reached far more than 200 add-ons in this package by now and most of them can also be used in conjunction with openHAB 2 (see below).</p>
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<p>Back in 2014, <a href="/2014/06/16/openhab-20-and-eclipse-smarthome#1vs2">our goals for openHAB 2</a> were the following:</p>
<ol>
<li>Better support for low-end embedded hardware</li>
<li>Simpler setup and configuration possibilities for “regular” i.e. not tech-savvy users</li>
</ol>
<p>So what have we achieved?</p>
<h3 id="embedded-use">Embedded Use</h3>
<p>With respect to embedded systems, the evolution of hardware was quicker than us, which made our goal almost obsolete. While in 2014 many users were using a Raspberry Pi 1 which was not ideal for openHAB regarding system performance. Now in 2017 almost everyone has upgraded to more powerful boards like the Raspberry Pi 2/3 or the PINE64, where CPU power is no longer a problem. As a matter of fact, openHAB 2 runs very decently on such boards, even for large installations.</p>
<p class="center"><img src="/img/2017-01_hardware.jpg" alt="Hardware" />
<small>Powerful hardware options for openHAB</small></p>
<p>Constrained hardware resources are therefore merely still an issue for commercial platforms. Besides the free openHAB, there are other solutions being built on Eclipse SmartHome, like e.g. <a href="https://www.qivicon.com/en/">QIVICON</a> of Deutsche Telekom. The shrinked core framework of Eclipse SmartHome proves its worth on such solutions. As a demonstrator, there is a <a href="https://github.com/eclipse/smarthome-packaging-sample">sample solution packaging</a> available, which uses <a href="https://www.eclipse.org/concierge/">Eclipse Concierge</a> as a low-footprint OSGi framework and only has an overall size of only 20MB and which requires less then 128MB Java heap.</p>
<h3 id="usability-improvements">Usability Improvements</h3>
<p>Usability has been addressed on many different levels and version 2.0 only marks the beginning of these efforts, upcoming versions 2.x will continue on this path.</p>
<h4 id="setup-through-a-user-interface">Setup Through a User Interface</h4>
<p>All newly introduced APIs and features are designed in a way that they enable setup and configuration through user interfaces.</p>
<ul>
<li>After a first start, the user can choose an initial installation package to start with. These packages define common sets of functionality for different user types. Additional add-ons can be installed at any time through the UI by a single click.</li>
<li>A major feature of all newly introduced bindings is the device discovery, i.e. the bindings will scan themselves the network/system for supported devices and offer them to the user. This heavily simplifies the integration of devices in openHAB.</li>
<li>A new rule engine has been created, which allows building simple rules through a UI, similar to IFTTT, but with the big difference that no cloud connection is required as everything is executed locally.</li>
<li>A <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/uis/habpanel/readme.html">new UI called HABPanel</a> has been introduced, which provides flexible dashboards for tablets, which can be created and modified fully UI-driven. HABPanel is specifically well-suited for wall-mounted displays.</li>
</ul>
<p class="center"><img src="/img/2017-01_uis.jpg" alt="UIs" />
<small>Usability Improvements: Initial Setup - Discovery - Rule Editor - HABPanel</small></p>
<p>These features together allow for the first time <a href="https://youtu.be/T0kzK2voy94?list=PLGlxCdrGUagyDLSdoOUAmwsf4RD7URP4u">a purely UI-driven setup of openHAB</a> - but it must be said that this only covers a small fraction of the capabilities of openHAB. A core strength of openHAB is its flexibility and the possibility to cover all kinds of special - sometimes really weird - individual use cases. To do so, the textual configuration, as known from openHAB 1, is still required and recommended.</p>
<h4 id="1x-compatibility">1.x Compatibility</h4>
<p>While these new features for beginners have been introduced, a focus has also been to have as little disruption for existing openHAB users as possible and to keep and even extend the textual configuration options. No one is forced to use UIs in future, they should be merely seen as an optional alternative. Most functionality of openHAB 1 has therefore be retained and only minor changes need to be done to the personal configurations and rules. Specifically, most openHAB 1.9 add-ons can be used as openHAB 2 as it has a built-in compatibility layer.</p>
<h4 id="installation">Installation</h4>
<p>A major obstacle in the past for many users was also the required setup around openHAB, e.g. installing Linux on the Raspberry Pi, configuring users, shares, ssh, etc.
This is all much simpler now through <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/installation/openhabian.html">openHABian</a> - a self-configuring Raspberry Pi setup, which starts off from a minimal SD card image. It automatically installs Java, openHAB, Samba and more and optionally even KNXd, Homegear, Mosquitto and others. This is definitely the best choice for Raspberry Pi users!</p>
<h2 id="feature-overview">Feature Overview</h2>
<p>So what is new in general in openHAB 2? Let me give you a rough overview:</p>
<h4 id="bindings">Bindings</h4>
<p>openHAB 2 comes with 130 bindings for different devices, technologies or protocols. 57 of them are using the new 2.0 APIs, so that they support discovery and graphical configuration. The rest are bindings from openHAB 1, which are included in the 2.0 distribution.</p>
<p>Many of these bindings support technologies, which are not supported by openHAB 1. There are e.g. bindings for <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/allplay/readme.html">AllPlay</a>, <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/miele/readme.html">Miele@home</a>, <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/minecraft/readme.html">Minecraft</a>, <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/russound/readme.html">Russound</a>, <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/zway/readme.html">Z-Way</a> and even <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/tesla/readme.html">Tesla</a>, just to name a few.</p>
<p class="center"><img src="/img/2017-01_tech.png" alt="UIs" />
<small>Some sample products & technologies that are supported by openHAB 2</small></p>
<p>Many other are currently under development or queued for review, so we can expect to reach 200 bindings by the end of this year.</p>
<h4 id="user-interfaces">User Interfaces</h4>
<ul>
<li>The visually outdated <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/uis/classic/readme.html">Classic UI</a> (which is still available as an option) has been replaced by the much more modern <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/uis/basic/readme.html">Basic UI</a>.</li>
<li>While being an external project for openHAB 1, <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/uis/habmin/readme.html">HABmin</a> has meanwhile become an official part of the project and is a very powerful administration tool, especially suited for Z-Wave users.</li>
<li>The new <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/uis/paper/readme.html">Paper UI</a> is the main interface for doing UI-driven setup and configuration.</li>
<li><a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/uis/habpanel/readme.html">HABPanel</a> is another new web UI, which specifically focuses on nifty dashboards on tablets.</li>
<li>Besides Android and iOS, there is now a <a href="https://youtu.be/IrUPL33b_jc?list=PLGlxCdrGUagyDLSdoOUAmwsf4RD7URP4u">native client for Windows 10 (Mobile)</a> available in the <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/openhab/9nmq39ctwxgt">official Microsoft App Store</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p class="center"><img src="/img/2017-01_uis2.jpg" alt="UIs" />
<small>New UIs: Basic UI - HABPanel - HABmin - Windows 10 App</small></p>
<h3 id="further-integrations">Further Integrations</h3>
<p>Besides the bindings, which integrate external system in openHAB, the opposite is possible as well: To include openHAB in an external system:</p>
<ul>
<li>A very simple integration in Amazon Echo is possible through the <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/io/hueemulation/readme.html">Hue emulation add-on</a>. This mimics a Philips Hue bridge and can also fool some other 3rd party apps that exist for Philips Hue.</li>
<li>The <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/addons/io/homekit/readme.html">HomeKit add-on</a> makes openHAB appear in iOS as a not-certified device that, once added, allow the use of any hardware from within HomeKit/iOS.</li>
<li>IFTTT integration is now offered through the new <a href="http://www.myopenhab.org/">myopenHAB</a> service that is operated by the <a href="http://www.openhabfoundation.org/">openHAB Foundation</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://docs.openhab.org/concepts/audio.html">Text-to-Speech and other audio playback</a> can now be directed to remote devices (such as connected speakers). Already supported are e.g. Sonos speakers, Onkyo receivers, Chromecast and the Kodi media center.</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="distribution-packages">Distribution Packages</h3>
<p>Besides the classic zip archives as well as the APT packages for Linux, there are by now many further alternatives how to get hold of openHAB. (Please note that only openHABian is available from today on, the other types of packaging of the final 2.0 version will follow in the next days):</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://docs.openhab.org/installation/openhabian.html">openHABian</a>: A hassle-free setup for the Raspberry Pi, starting off a minimal SD card image.</li>
<li><a href="http://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pine_A64_openHAB_Release">PINE64 image</a>: A pre-installed openHAB setup as an SD card image.</li>
<li><a href="http://docs.openhab.org/installation/docker.html">Docker</a>: A Docker container, available for both x86 and ARM architectures.</li>
<li><a href="http://docs.openhab.org/installation/synology.html">Synology-NAS</a>: Packages for the popular Synology Diskstations</li>
<li><a href="http://docs.openhab.org/installation/qnap.html">QNAP-NAS</a>: Likewise, there are installation packages available for QNAP.</li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab-snap/blob/master/README.md">Ubuntu Core Snap</a>: Snaps for the new Ubuntu Core</li>
</ul>
<p>Overall, openHAB 2.0 is a huge step forward and I would like to thank all the new contributors and maintainers that have joined the project recently, as without them none of this would have been possible. Todays release 2.0 is just a first step and many more things are to be introduced with upcoming 2.x releases - so stay tuned!</p>Kai KreuzerThree years after initiating the Eclipse SmartHome project, I am proud to finally announce the general availability of openHAB 2.0, the first openHAB release that is based on Eclipse SmartHome! This release replaces openHAB 1.8 as the officially recommended runtime, only the openHAB 1 compatible add-ons will be further maintained. They are now available in version 1.9.0 and can be used on existing openHAB 1.8 installations. We have reached far more than 200 add-ons in this package by now and most of them can also be used in conjunction with openHAB 2 (see below).openHAB 2.0 beta3 Release2016-05-22T22:00:00+00:002016-05-22T22:00:00+00:00https://www.kaikreuzer.de/2016/05/22/openhab-releases<p>Some time has passed since the openHAB 2.0 beta2 release and a lot development efforts were done - so it was clearly time to <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab-distro/releases/tag/2.0.0.b3">release openHAB 2.0 beta3</a>. I see that many openHAB contributors and users are moving over from 1.x by looking at the activity in our forum and there has been very positive feedback regarding the stability.</p>
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<p>This is also clearly indicated by the heavily increased number of <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/features/bindings.html#compatible-1x-add-ons">1.x add-ons that were successfully tested</a> and thus included in the openHAB 2 distribution - we have reached 80 add-ons now, complementing about 40 add-ons that were built for openHAB 2 right from the start. We are therefore getting much closer to having the openHAB 2 runtime as a full replacement for the openHAB 1 runtime for all existing users. When using textual configuration, it is fairly similar to setup and use.</p>
<p>Two missing parts are being heavily worked on:</p>
<ul>
<li>A <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/">new openHAB 2 Documentation website</a> has been created with some initial content, which will grow heavily in the coming weeks to make it easier for newcomers to get into openHAB 2.</li>
<li>The <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab-distro/issues/66">Debian packages</a> are now produced by the build and it will soon be possible to install openHAB 2 through a simple “apt-get” on Linux.</li>
</ul>
<p>Besides offering the comfort that people are used to in openHAB 1.x, there was of course also a lot of activity on the core framework (i.e. Eclipse SmartHome). This has specifically gained momentum since the end of last year, which can be nicely seen in the Github statistics.</p>
<p class="center"><img src="/img/2016-05_esh-stats.png" alt="Rule UI" />
<small>Commit activity on Eclipse SmartHome</small></p>
<p>This activity resulted in <a href="https://github.com/eclipse/smarthome/issues?q=milestone%3A0.8.0.b5">337 merged pull requests</a> since the beta2 in January, which makes Eclipse SmartHome one of the most active projects in the <a href="http://iot.eclipse.org/">Eclipse IoT</a> space.</p>
<p>Besides many small improvements and evolution of the binding APIs, a lot of work went into the Paper UI through which it is now possible to configure bindings and services as an alternative to the textual configuration files.</p>
<p class="center"><img src="/img/2016-05_paperui.png" alt="Rule UI" />
<small>System configuration through the Paper UI</small></p>
<p>Other features are a fully re-implemented <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/features/bindings/lifx/readme.html">LIFX binding</a>, which now requires less system resources, an update Philips hue binding, which now also supports alarm and color cycle options as well as a greatly enhanced <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/features/bindings/sonos/readme.html">Sonos binding</a>, which can now handle speaker groups, play notifications and many more things.</p>
<p>Two bindings that have by far the largest user base have been ported to openHAB 2 and now fully support discovery of devices, which is very useful in both cases, which are Z-Wave ad Homematic. Z-Wave supports a huge list of devices already and Chris is doing a phantastic job to maintain them in a dedicated <a href="http://www.cd-jackson.com/index.php/zwave/zwave-device-database/zwave-device-list">device database</a>. For Homematic, this is not even necessary since the binding directly queries the Homematic CCU2 for the device meta-data and builds the openHAB-internal representation dynamically at runtime.</p>
<p>Last but not least, I would like to mention the <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/features/bindings/digitalstrom/readme.html">digitalSTROM binding</a> - this has been developed by the <a href="http://www.software-quality.fh-koeln.de/iemwiki/index.php/Hauptseite">FH Köln</a> and is by far the largest contribution in terms of lines of code and complexity of the integrated system.</p>
<p class="center"><img src="/img/2016-05_ds.jpg" alt="Rule UI" />
<small>digitalSTROM actuators</small></p>
<p>My favorite new additions are no bindings though - they are the native <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/features/io/homekit/readme.html">integration with HomeKit</a> as well as with <a href="http://docs.openhab.org/features/io/hueemulation/readme.html">Amazon Echo by emulating a hue bridge</a>. In the past people were using additional software like the ha-bridge or the openhab-homekit-bridge. Now this is fully integrated into openHAB and you can easily use Siri or Alexa for accessing anything that is connected to your openHAB installation.</p>
<p class="center"><img src="/img/2016-05_echo.jpg" alt="Rule UI" />
<small>Amazon Echo now works with openHAB</small></p>
<p>The last good news about the beta3 release is that it is included in the SD card image that I have prepared for the <a href="http://www.pine64.com/">PINE64</a>. The PINE64 IoT package will be sent out to the backers starting later this week and it will directly ship with openHAB 2.0 pre-installed. For all other PINE64 users, who just ordered the board (most have already received it), the image will also be made available for download, so that you can flash yourself an SD card - it has never been easier to start with openHAB!</p>Kai KreuzerSome time has passed since the openHAB 2.0 beta2 release and a lot development efforts were done - so it was clearly time to release openHAB 2.0 beta3. I see that many openHAB contributors and users are moving over from 1.x by looking at the activity in our forum and there has been very positive feedback regarding the stability.openHAB Foundation2016-05-21T22:00:00+00:002016-05-21T22:00:00+00:00https://www.kaikreuzer.de/2016/05/21/openhab-foundation<p>After many months of preparation, it is finally done: We have started the <a href="http://www.openhabfoundation.org">openHAB Foundation</a> on May 20 as a non-profit organisation for promoting Free software for smart home in general and openHAB in particular!
In a good Silicon Valley style, we have chosen <a href="https://twitter.com/openhabfdn/status/734467779697475584">my (certainly automated) garage</a> as the most suitable location.
I am very grateful for having been unanimously elected as their president by the founding members.</p>
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<p>The openHAB Foundation is meant as a successor of the <a href="/2014/06/16/openhab-20-and-eclipse-smarthome/#ug">openHAB UG</a>, which will be closed down in the course of this year.
Being set up as a membership-based association, this will greatly boost the flexibility to get new people on board to better promote and support openHAB. Besides the regular members, it is also possible for companies to join the foundation. Another huge benefit is that the foundation is officially non-profit and thus sets the right frame for its activities.</p>
<p>Please note that creation of such an association is a process and we still have to do a few steps before we are fully operational and able to accept new members.
So please check back regularly and best follow <a href="https://twitter.com/openhabfdn">the foundation on Twitter</a> - we will keep you informed!</p>Kai KreuzerAfter many months of preparation, it is finally done: We have started the openHAB Foundation on May 20 as a non-profit organisation for promoting Free software for smart home in general and openHAB in particular! In a good Silicon Valley style, we have chosen my (certainly automated) garage as the most suitable location. I am very grateful for having been unanimously elected as their president by the founding members.Smart Home Technology at EclipseCon France2016-05-17T22:00:00+00:002016-05-17T22:00:00+00:00https://www.kaikreuzer.de/2016/05/17/eclipsecon-france<p><a href="https://www.eclipsecon.org/france2016">EclipseCon France</a> is less than three weeks away from now and I am very much looking forward to it! It is the first time for me to attend an EclipseCon in France and also to visit the city of Toulouse - my main encounter with the French Smart Home community has been an <a href="http://www.kaikreuzer.de/2015/04/01/recap-of-eclipse-iot-days-grenoble/">Eclipse Day in Grenoble</a> last year, which was much fun.</p>
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<p>In <a href="https://www.eclipsecon.org/france2016/session/home-automation-reloaded">my session “Home Automation Reloaded” at EclipseCon France</a>, I will cover different topics around smart homes:</p>
<ul>
<li>Diving into the Smart Home market means dealing with the huge interoperability issues that everyone comes across sooner or later. It is important to see <a href="https://ianskerrett.wordpress.com/2016/04/22/can-open-source-solve-the-too-many-iot-standards-problem/">why Open Source is a suitable way to address this</a>.</li>
<li>An introduction to the concepts and the architecture of the <a href="https://www.eclipse.org/smarthome/">Eclipse SmartHome project</a> follows. A special focus will of course be on the very latest developments like the user interfaces for system administration, the new rule engine as well as all the work that is going on around voice enabling smart home solutions through features like text-to-speech (TTS), speech-to-text (STT) and even natural language processing (NLP).</li>
<li>As it is usually best to learn from example (and people love live demos!), I will also bring real hardware with me and use <a href="https://github.com/openhab/openhab-distro#introduction">openHAB 2</a> for demonstration purposes.</li>
</ul>
<p class="center"><img src="/img/2016-05_screenshot1.jpg" alt="Paper UI" />
<small>openHAB automatically discovering devices</small></p>
<p>As openHAB 2 is still in beta phase, I am currently working hard on getting a beta3 out. There have been tremendous efforts on the code since the beta2 release and thus I believe it will be a major milestone towards a first stable release.</p>
<p>Besides the many new features that come officially with the distribution, I have now also introduced experimental features that can be activated. The new rule engine is such a feature: It is fully controllable through the REST API, and it is therefore possible to create graphical rule editors, which construct and edit rules as JSON structures - for advanced use cases, it is even possible to send Javascript as part of the rules. Many further possibilities will follow, like full support for JSR223 (alternative script engines) or the integration of CalDAV servers for rule triggering and the integration of the existing openHAB 1 Xtext DSL rules (which use Xbase).</p>
<p class="center"><img src="/img/2016-05_screenshot2.jpg" alt="Rule UI" />
<small>The new experimental rule editor</small></p>
<p>The openHAB 2 beta 3 will also be the one shipped with the <a href="http://www.pine64.com/">Pine64 IoT package</a> - this will allow the quickest start with Eclipse SmartHome ever - simply insert the SD card, power it up and all is ready to start playing! If you are interested in learning more about the Pine64 board: Come and see me at EclipseCon France, I will have one with me!</p>
<p class="center"><img src="/img/2016-05_pine64.jpg" alt="Pine64" />
<small>The Pine64 is the cheapest way (just $15) to get started with Eclipse SmartHome</small></p>
<p>You see that a lot of fascinating things are going on - and this is just about one project in the Eclipse IoT space, while there is a lot more to discover at EclipseCon France. So don’t miss to register for the conference asap and meet me and the rest of the Eclipse community in Toulouse!</p>Kai KreuzerEclipseCon France is less than three weeks away from now and I am very much looking forward to it! It is the first time for me to attend an EclipseCon in France and also to visit the city of Toulouse - my main encounter with the French Smart Home community has been an Eclipse Day in Grenoble last year, which was much fun.Semantic Interoperability in the Internet of Things2016-03-21T17:46:00+00:002016-03-21T17:46:00+00:00https://www.kaikreuzer.de/2016/03/21/semantic-interoperability-in-internetI had the honor to participate in a <a href="https://www.iab.org/activities/workshops/iotsi/" target="_blank">workshop on IoT Semantic Interoperability (IOTSI)</a> organized by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and hosted by Ericsson in Santa Clara.<br />There is no doubt that interoperability is a huge issue today and the idea of the workshop was to analyze the situation, define potential ways forward and especially to bring relevant people and organisations together to ignite discussions and cooperations. A huge number of people applied for workshop and many had to be rejected in order to keep the workshop at a reasonable size.<br /><br />As a result, there were representatives from many major organizations and corporations:<br />Allseen Alliance, ARM, Deutsche Telekom (me), Eclipse IoT (me as well), Ericsson, Google, Huawei, IETF, Microsoft, NIST, OMA, Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF), Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), Oracle, SmartThings, ZigBee Alliance, and many more.
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A natural reflex when being confronted with the heterogeneity in IoT is to ask for establishing a standard. One of my favorite xkcd comics nicely illustrates this:<br /><br />
<center><img border="0" height="226" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IkOtgR3jYOM/VvA0r1CbqoI/AAAAAAAAJPw/yaPqH4QtJ6wVS_CXKrxEulkQ13n5GtmvQ/s400/standards.png" width="400" /><small><a href="https://xkcd.com/927">https://xkcd.com/927</a></small></center>
<br />Interestingly, the reality is even worse. With IoT <a href="http://kaikreuzer.blogspot.de/2015/04/recap-of-eclipse-iot-days-grenoble.html" target="_blank">on the top of the Gardner's hype cycle</a>, new consortiums are created at a speed never seen before - market consolidation has clearly not yet started.<br />
<center><img border="0" height="358" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--vZF_p1CPJw/VvA0TjiuOPI/AAAAAAAAJPs/PGA3vPYvapEc5mChSsI5Yiyx0DxsTtS0A/s640/consortiums.png" width="640" /></center>
<br />Significant efforts already went into every single standard/consortium/product - clearly no one is willing to give up on this investment and nobody expects this from the others for the same reason. The discussion is therefore more about translation between the different ecosystems and this makes peer-to-peer communication schemes across systems very unlikely, since they have different data models, interaction models and different security mechanisms, which are simply incompatible. As detailed out <a href="https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2016/03/Kai-Kreuzer-A-Pragmatic-Approach-to-Interoperability-in-the-IoT.pdf" target="_blank">in my IOTSI position paper</a>, there is clearly a need for an intermediator like a home gateway.<br /><br />Major parts of the discussion were in my opinion more on the technical interoperability (how to send an ON/OFF boolean value from one system to another) than on the semantics. I would claim that <a href="https://www.eclipse.org/smarthome/" target="_blank">Eclipse SmartHome</a> is quite a step ahead of many others as it offers technical interoperability of dozens of systems out of the box and it has an architecture that was designed to support exactly this. When briefly demoing the Tesla binding, I was asked how realistic this is as people seemed to believe that this is merely a marketing showcase. Being able to answer that it is productively used by people (e.g. for smoothly working with an EV charger) and that it addresses their real needs is something where Eclipse SmartHome clearly stands out from many research projects or consortium works.<br /><br />Nonetheless, from my point of view we have so far only reached a technical interoperability, since the developer, system admin or end user is still the only one that knows the semantics of certain actions, like e.g. what a switch in the app REALLY does (no, it does not switch a smart plug, it switches e.g. the radio plugged into it) - this meaning is not formally available to algorithms, but exactly this is required to bring more advanced features, such as voice control, machine learning or artificial intelligence - and it is a prerequisite to achieve semantic interoperability.<br /><br />One thing I have learned is that "ontology" is a word most people are afraid of and thus its use is avoided as much as possible. The reason for this is probably that it has many facets that make its concept fuzzy and difficult to grasp and that it feels that you need to be a scientist to deal with it. Interestingly, these are exactly the problems, an ontology tries to solve: It captures a commonly agreed vocabulary, which makes all the implicit assumptions, that are inherent to a natural language, explicit.<br /><br />An ontology is therefore the foundation that is needed for semantic interoperability, since it makes sure that the meaning of words is the same across different systems. TNO did a major work in this regard on behalf of the European Commission in the domain of smart appliances by extracting the commonalities of more than 20 established systems and creating <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/smartappliancesproject/ontologies/reference-ontology" target="_blank">the SAREF ontology</a> out of it. The ownership of SAREF is currently <a href="http://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/103200_103299/103264/01.01.01_60/ts_103264v010101p.pdf" target="_blank">transferred to ETSI</a> and it will play an important role in the semantic definitions within the global oneM2M specification. It therefore seems to be a promising candidate for introducing semantics in Eclipse SmartHome.<br /><br />An interesting aspect of providing semantical information to applications is that the notion of a device becomes almost irrelevant. As argued in my position paper, on an application level we are rather talking about services and information - exactly the same way as you would regard any other web service on the Internet. The difference for IoT applications is the fact that the services have locality. <a href="https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2016/03/IAB_WhitePaper_OpenGeospatialConsortium.pdf" target="_blank">The "where" is therefore vitally important</a> and it must be an integral part of any IoT semantic.<br /><br />Introducing semantical concepts is going to be an interesting way forward for Eclipse SmartHome and although there will be challenges, I am confident that something great will come out of it. If you are an expert in this field and want to help on reducing friction in IoT interoperability, please join me on the journey!<br />Kai KreuzerI had the honor to participate in a workshop on IoT Semantic Interoperability (IOTSI) organized by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and hosted by Ericsson in Santa Clara.There is no doubt that interoperability is a huge issue today and the idea of the workshop was to analyze the situation, define potential ways forward and especially to bring relevant people and organisations together to ignite discussions and cooperations. A huge number of people applied for workshop and many had to be rejected in order to keep the workshop at a reasonable size.As a result, there were representatives from many major organizations and corporations:Allseen Alliance, ARM, Deutsche Telekom (me), Eclipse IoT (me as well), Ericsson, Google, Huawei, IETF, Microsoft, NIST, OMA, Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF), Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), Oracle, SmartThings, ZigBee Alliance, and many more.