Things

The most basic component or concept of openHAB 2 is a “Thing”. Things for openHAB are simply home automation objects it can interact with or get data from.

Examples:

• A Phillips Hue light bulb is a Thing which openHAB can control - turning it on or off, setting its color or brightness.
• A home automation sensor (like my NodeMCU Kube pictured here) is a Thing which provides data like temperature, humidity or motion events to openHAB.

OpenHAB can control many different things, including smart TVs volume, channel or source, and even the sun and the moon are Things that provide data like sunrise/sunset time, sun elevation, or the moon phase, all of which can be used within openHAB to control other Things (for example, turn on the living room sconces when the sun begins to set).

Channels

A Thing will usually provide at least one channel to control a feature or get data from it.

For example …

• a Hue light bulb will have one channel to control its color, and another channel to control the color temperature,
• a smart TV will have several channels for things like volume, channel, input source, picture adjustment or guide interaction.

Note: There is a specific type of channel on some things, called “triggerChannel”. We’ll skip those for now, but you’ll see them, when we set up the sunrise/sunset events later in the series.

Add & configure your Things via the Things section.

Automatically discovered & configured Things: The Inbox

Newer devices and services have means to perform a discovery on them.

If your installed binding supports discovery, it will present its found Things in the Inbox section. All Things you will find there are usually already configured for you.