AsTeRICS

# Environmental Control

AsTeRICS has many plugins for environmental control like KNX, EnOcean, IrTrans, Phillips Hue or OpenHAB. Check the Plugins page and filter by Home Control.

On this page you will find some tutorials of how to use such plugins to control your environment and how to create and accessible user interface for it.

# OpenHAB

OpenHAB is an Open Source Home Automation SW that let’s you control light, heating and other appliances of your Smart Home. Such appliances or devices are called things which are represented as items in a user interface. OpenHAB provides several user interfaces and means of voice control.

Accessible User Interface

This tutorial explains how to control an OpenHAB instance and it’s configured items by an AsTeRICS model and how to create an accessible user interface for it using AsTeRICS Grid.

TIP

This tutorial is based on OpenHAB v3.x but should also work with OpenHAB v2.x

  1. Read the OpenHAB concept page (opens new window)
  2. Install OpenHAB (opens new window)
  3. Download the openhab2 demo configuration zip file (opens new window).
  4. Restore the demo configuration using openhab-cli (Linux) by entering sudo openhab-cli restore demo-conf-openhab2.zip in the command line. On other systems extract the .zip file and copy the conf/items and the conf/sitemaps folder to your OpenHAB config folder.
  5. Start OpenHAB
  6. Download OpenHAB model (opens new window) or Open OpenHAB model in WebACS (opens new window)
  7. Start the ARE (ARE.exe or start.bat or start.sh)
  8. Open model in ARE or Upload model from ACS
  9. Start model in ARE
  10. Open the OpenHAB Basic UI of the Kitchen (opens new window)
  11. In the ARE GUI: Click on Item Light_GF_Kitchen_Ceiling ON or Item Light_GF_Kitchen_Ceiling OFF. You should see the switching of the item in the basic UI accordingly. Screenshot: OpenHAB Basic UI of Kitchen and ARE GUI with buttons to control OpenHAB items. Animation showing light and roller shutter items switched on and off and the temperature slider changing the temperature
  12. Change a value in the basic UI, you should get an event in the event visualizer of the ARE GUI.

# Accessible UI

You can use AsTeRICS Grid to create an accessible UI for controlling your Smart Home using OpenHAB.

  1. Open AsTeRICS Grid (opens new window)
  2. See AsTeRICS Action: To know how to execute an action of an AsTeRICS model in a running ARE instance.
  3. Click Download from ARE
  4. In Component, select openHAB.1_c
  5. In Send data
    1. Select actionString
    2. Set item name and state value, e.g. @OPENHAB:Light_GF_Kitchen_Ceiling,ON or Light_GF_Kitchen_Ceiling,ON (See plugin documentation)
  6. Test action by clicking on Test Action
  7. Click OK to save the action.

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