First tests with HABpanel (PanelUI)

Because openHAB2 is an open system, its possible to add new user interface modules, e.g. dashboards. There is an very promising, but early prototype of HABpanel “PanelUI” which is worthwhile to have a look on. I will keep updated this article if there is progess on that tool. This post is just an outlook.

Prerequsites

If you want to check it out, download the .jar file  from github and drop it into your addons folder. I added the entry “panelui” in  file <conf>/services/addons.cfg. Afterwards it will be installed automatically.

# A comma-separated list of UIs to install (e.g. "basic,paper")
ui = basic,paper,classic,panelui

Please be aware that its currently a prototype and persistence is still restricted to browser and not saved on the server at the moment, see forum contribution by the author of PanelUI in openHAB2 community.

From this community source I have taken two screenshots to demonstrate the big potential for smartphone and tablet usage:

PanelUISmartPhoneFormat   PanelUITabletFormat

How to test it

Its very simple: You find this GUI in your browser by your entry openHAB2 URL, in simplest case

http://localhost:8080/

PanelUIStart

You will be requested to add a new dashboard.In next pictue there is already this one I created for my first test.

PanelUI_NewDashboard

Lets create now “Frank2”, With edit button PanelUI_EditButton  you wil get an “Add widget” Button which currently allows you to add following widgets:

PanelUI_Widgets

Each created widget possesses a configuration button PanelUI_ConfigButton where you should define your widget, in case of switch gadget:

PanelUI_ConfMenu

For other widget types you are able to modify color or orientation. Please try it – it’s so simple that no more description is needed.

The size of widget can be changed via the white triangle in lower right corner. Via drag&drop you can change the arrangement of widgets.

Finally go to “run mode” PanelUI_Runmode and you will admire the result:

PanelUItest

Many thanks to user “ysc” for this wonderful addon!

 

 

Powerful tools: PaperUI and Karaf

In openHAB1 all topics are stored in configuration files. That’s still possible and (partly) necessary in openHAB2, but the target of the project team is to administrate things, items, links (channels) etc. by a GUI called PaperUI and storing the data in an internal database.

PaperUI is one of the provided options in the “Welcome menu” shown when launching openHAB2 GUI in your browser (preferred is Chrome) with address “http://localhost:8080&#8221;

WelcomePanel

Hint: At first we will use BasicUI and PaperUI only, later we will talk about HABmin which has to be added as addon.

PaperUI starts with a menu where you can configure your openHAB2 installation:

PaperUI_extensions

In the example above we see the bindings extension  panel. In addition there a menu points for configuration (things, items, services and bindings), preferences etc.

All things identified by the Discovery service are shown in the Inbox panel. The Control panel is a kind of presentation GUI for items. There is an excellent introduction for PaperUI in this Youtube video by Kai Kreuzer.

One of my biggests issues as newcomer in openHAB2 was to understand how the items and things amanaged by PaperUI (and Discovery service) correlate to the configuration files. It seems that PaperUI only creates topics in its internal database. Nothing is written into configuration files automatically. But the manually created configuration files are still processed. Furthermore, what about the channels and binding information if we still use openHAB1 bindings? What is the really content of openHAB2  repositories?

You can querry this information in two ways:

  • configuration menu in PaperUI and
  • Karaf console

PaperUI is the preferred way, but currently there are still some gaps because PaperUI is still in beta phase. The good message is that the functionality will be increased step by step. Therefore, let’s use the Karaf command console in parallel (you get this in your  command window where openHAB2 was started (start.sh or start.bat):

Karaf_start

Typing “help” provides more than 300 possible commands. Don’t worry! For our needs just a handful of them is sufficient for our smarthome project – but we have to know the right ones.

Let’s start with “help smarthome” (sometimes it works better to write the topic partly only):

Karaf_HelpSmarthome

This gives us a first impression about the powerful set of commands.  By the way, you can optionally omit the prefix “smarthome:”, just type “help things”:

Karaf_HelpThings

.. or “things list”, “items list” etc.

In this way you are enabled to manage your things by commands! See this example:

Karaf_Things

You can remove things or clear the repository completely. Similarly you can access and manage your items, links, things, inbox etc. Again, the abbreviated version “things list”, “items list” etc. is allowed. In my case it was useful to get the correct names of Channels.

Karaf_Links

There are a lot of other helpful commands provided. Please try “config”, service”, “system” and “feature” in your console. With “feature:list” you get all available features. You can even filter for a certain feature:

feature:list | grep milight

Finally, we should mention the log commands. The log file can give you more insight what happens (or don’t work) in your openHAB2 setup.

Karaf_HelpLog