I’ve recently taken the plunge into the world of home automation with OpenHAB2, and I must say, it’s been both exciting and a bit overwhelming. After setting up my Raspberry Pi and installing OpenHABian, I decided to explore the demo mode to get a feel for what’s possible. I stumbled upon some documentation suggesting that I could manually add demo files to specific folders like /etc/openhab2/sitemaps and /etc/openhab2/items, but I’m not entirely sure if that’s the proper way to switch between modes like “beginner,” “expert,” and “demo.” Does anyone have a step-by-step guide or best practices for this?
On another note, I’ve been experimenting with integrating my Hikvision IP camera into the system. The camera sends HTTP data when motion is detected, and I’ve managed to parse some of the XML data coming through port 39501. My goal is to trigger a virtual device or sensor in Rule Machine based on this motion event. I’ve looked at some sample drivers, but I’m still not entirely clear on how to decode and parse the incoming messages effectively. Any tips or pointers would be greatly appreciated!
Lastly, I’ve been trying out the HabPanel UI as a replacement for my old OpenHAB Control Panel setup. While it’s impressive out of the box, I miss some of the customization features I had before, like transparent icons and a custom color picker. I’d love to know if there are workarounds or community-developed solutions to bring some of these features over.
Overall, it’s been a fantastic learning experience, and I’m eager to dive deeper into OpenHAB2’s capabilities. If anyone has insights or recommendations, I’d be happy to hear them!