https://www.openhab.org/blog/2025-12-22-openhab-5-1-release.html

#openHAB

Puuh, Upgrade von #OpenHAB Version 5.0.3 auf 5.1.0 unter Debian Linux ... und es hagelt im Anschluss "communication error"-Meldungen und Binding-Issues im Webfrontend. In den Logs nix Offensichtliches zu finden. Zwei oder drei Neustarts (auch die ganze VM), keine Besserung.

In der Verzweiflung nochmal die gleichen Pakete mit "apt install ... --reinstall" drübergebügelt, und es läuft plötzlich direkt ohne Probleme.

Sowas macht mich dann doch etwas stutzig 🧐 ... das hatte ich jetzt schon mehrmals bei OpenHAB.

#openhab Wechsel von Raspberry zu Debian VM hat keine 5 Minuten gedauert, dank openhabian Backup. Damit hab ich nicht gerechnet 🔝

Plus: openhab 5 schleift soviele Ecken und Kanten, dass es mittlerweile grandios einfach ist, ein "smartes Home" ohne Datenschutzprobleme oder Vendor-Lockins zu haben 👍

Starting to think that using #OpenHAB for my "smarthome" for my case is kinda overkill…

I have some sensors (temperature and humidity), some reed switches for windows and possibly I'll add thermostats for heating batteries (because here, even with 0°C outside, the central heating works for all the money and it is impossible to sleep and work without all opened windows). All things are using #ZigBee so my #server uses some ZigBee coordinator dongle and #zigbee2mqtt with some MQTT broker inside. I already able to read all necessary data from sensors by reading the right MQTT topics.

And the OpenHAB just communicates with my MQTT broker and displays some nice widgets on the Web UI. This is cool, because I don't need to think about how to work with MQTT and how to output data — all somehow works "by magic".

But the price is very big. The OpenHAB eats near 600 MB of RAM and swaps a lot (near 1 GB for now). It is a largest memory consuming service in my server, which has only 2 GB of RAM (and a RAM prices already increased here  ). And also it's sandbox takes near 3.5 GB of SSD space.

So, do I really need not to think about how it all works under the hood while wearing out my SSD or get some services OOMed if I disable swap and start e.g. using BorgBackup? Looks like the game is not worth the candle. I can literally pick #EclipseMosquitto #C library, unwrap some memories about how to use CGI and get the same nice page with sensors data and some logic inside. But with a waaaay less memory footprint and with possibility to open this page from #Dillo  

#SelfHosting

Send Text Messages to Samsung Smart TV (C/D Series: https://community.openhab.org/t/send-text-messages-to-samsung-smart-tv-c-d-series/167547

Samsung TVs (C and D series from 2010-2011) have a hidden MessageBoxService that lets you display popup notifications on screen. Yep - my 32C6000 still works: "old, but not obsolete" [T-800]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qLvUsovORI

#openHAB #SamsungTV

At this weekend I finally established another network in my home — a ZigBee network. A looong time ago (in 2010 year) I touched the ZigBee networking in my university (ITMO, previously IFMO, in Saint-Petersburg) — these times it was a new technology, not used widely. And as a student I have some fun time playing with ZigBee main router, supplemental router and end-devices. You can view old photos and screenshots of old software on a my extremely old blog: http://h0rr0rr-drag0n.blogspot.com/2010/04/cc2530zdk.html (and read a blogpost, if you understand Russian).

It is kindly fascinating, that now, after 15 years, I can just buy some ZigBee-powered devices from AliExpress (using Black Friday discounts) and connect them to the network inside my house right in the way I did it in the university 15 years ago!

Sadly, although I bought native supported main router device, based on the EFR32MG2 with some software from Ember (EZSP v8) inside, the OpenHAB doesn't support this device natively — it supports it, but since my server is running NetBSD, I got problems with some bundled with OpenHAB things. Looks like some native libraries (rxtx-java) don't have bundled NetBSD versions. And the same library in the repository built for Java 8, not for Java 17.

So, I decided to use Zigbee2MQTT, not to build the necessary Java library myself. It was kinda scary — use program, which connects my ZigBee network via ZigBee USB-dongle to the MQTT server — which is written on JavaScript  . Not on the C (as I can totally understand, for a such low-level program, operating with embedded devices) or at least on the C++/Perl/Python/whatever. But, looks like it works good enough, if I don't try to pair the device in wrong mode (my window sensors has two modes to pair them with network: first "common" mode causes zigbee2mqtt to silently crash and the second "compatible" mode works without problems).

And I could understand now, why people has so much problems with smart home security. Installed MQTT server mosquitto — it allows unauthenticated connections by default. Installed zigbee2mqtt — it allow connections to frontend without any password by default  

At least these two services don't each much memory: 1.2 Mb for Mosquitto and 75.6 Mb for ZigBee2MQTT.

For now, my ZigBee sensors works pretty well and robust, like these devices from university 15 years ago 

#HomeAutomation #OpenHAB #ZigBee #HomeLab