To install and run OpenHab on your Pi I am recommending you use the apt-get approach, these instructions are taken from the OpenHAB Wiki, so it may be more up to date and have additional options. I also contribute to changes in the wiki every now and then so this may get out of date but in general be correct. This page does highlight the addons needed for the guides on my site.

Shopping List – things you need to do this.

1. Install Java if 1.6 or higher is not already installed. The following will display your current Java version.

   java -version
   

2. Add the openHAB Bintray Repositories key to the apt-keyring
   using wget:

   wget -qO - 'https://bintray.com/user/downloadSubjectPublicKey?username=openhab' | sudo apt-key add -
   

   or using curl:

   curl 'https://bintray.com/user/downloadSubjectPublicKey?username=openhab' | sudo apt-key add -
   

3. Add openHAB apt repository to the apt sources list (Note: the current openhab.list file will be overwritten)

   echo "deb http://dl.bintray.com/openhab/apt-repo stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/openhab.list
   

4. Resynchronize the package index

   sudo apt-get update
   

5. Install the openHAB runtime

   sudo apt-get install openhab-runtime
   

6. If you have more than one OpenHAB binding with a USB device (Z-Wave, RFXCOM, etc), refer to [[symlinks]]
7. Start openHAB – manually
   1. Init based on sysVinit (e.g. Debian 7 / Ubuntu 14.x and earlier)

      sudo /etc/init.d/openhab start
      sudo /etc/init.d/openhab status
      

   2. Init based on systemd (e.g. Debian 8 / Ubuntu 15.x and higher)

      sudo systemctl start openhab
      

8. Start openHAB – at system startup
   1. Init based on sysVinit

      sudo update-rc.d openhab defaults
      

   2. Init based on systemd

      sudo systemctl daemon-reload
      sudo systemctl enable openhab
      

9. Install the add-ons / bindings as you need them. To follow these guides install the addons below. Feel free to add any other you may need or want.

   sudo apt-get install openhab-addon-${addon-type}-${addon-name}
   

   Install these addons:

   
   sudo apt-get install openhab-addon-binding-http
   sudo apt-get install openhab-addon-binding-ntp
   sudo apt-get install openhab-addon-binding-weather
   sudo apt-get install openhab-addon-binding-zwave
   sudo apt-get install openhab-addon-persistence-logging
   sudo apt-get install openhab-addon-persistence-rrd4j 
   sudo apt-get install openhab-addon-binding-mqtt
   sudo apt-get install openhab-addon-binding-exec 
   sudo apt-get install openhab-addon-binding-squeezebox 
   sudo apt-get install openhab-addon-binding-xbmc 
   

   A list of all available packages can be retrieved with

   sudo apt-cache search openhab
   

10. Configure your system as outlined here: configuration.
11. If you wish to use a USB zwave stick or other USB/serial device you will need to add the “openhab” users to the “dialout” group:

    sudo usermod -a -G dialout openhab
    

    and then reboot.

12. Test it, point your browser to http://localhost:8080/openhab.app?sitemap=yourname and you should see your sitemap. Replace localhost with the IP of your Pi if you are running headless.

To enable all your nodes to communicate we are using a protocol called MQTT, on the pi we are using Mosquitto as the broker to support this. The broker allows nodes to publish information or subscribe to get information when it is published.

MQTT uses simple channels to dictate where messages go, here are some examples:

HOME/Garage/DoorOne/State
 HOME/Garage/DoorTwo/State
 HOME/Garage/Temperature

The structure of the channel is up to you, just keep it short and logical! In these articles I will have them set to how I like them, feel free to change them as you need. To install Mosquitto on your Raspberry Pi run the following commands.

sudo apt-get install mosquitto mosquitto-clients

Now you have it installed lets test it to ensure it is working. You can do this in a few ways but I’m going to use mqtt-spy. Head to the github site and download the latest version (0.3.0 at the time of writing). Once you have it open it up and ensure a default configuration is created.

Now you can add in your nice new broker. In the connections menu select new connection. The Server URI is the IP address of your Pi running OpenHab. To get this if you do not have it run ifconfig in a SSH session. Click on Apply and the Open the Connection.

If everything is good you will have a new green tab at the top of the window, this is the connection to your Mosquitto broker instance. Right click on the tab and select Show Broker Statistics to see the $SYS channel and data. This is a good indication of traffice going to and from the broker and you have a connection up and running from another machine.

To test subscribing and publishing make a subscription to test/my/channel in the new subscription section and press enter. In the publish section enter test/my/channel as the topic and Hello World as the data (what else…). Press publish and you will see it turn up in the subscription you just made.

mqtt-spy is a handy tool to have around so keep it in your home automation toolbox.

You now have Mosquitto installed and running on your system. Next we need to configure OpenHab to work with MQTT to send and receive messages.