Christos Georgiadis

In this post we will see how we can control items i.e. lights from one openHAB instance to another using a Zigbee button and MQTT.

openHAB recently passed into version 3 which comes with a complete revamp of the GUI and a massive rewriting of the backend code. There are mainly two protocols that we will be using in this guide.

Zigbee is a well established smart home protocol that gains more and more traction especially due to lower prices compared to competitive protocols i.e. ZWave and MQTT is also a well established lightweight IoT protocol that facilitates message and data exchange between IoT devices and systems.

Introduction

It took me too long to actually put some effort to understand what Things, Channels, Items actually are, how they are all related to each other and to the openHAB bindings. They are rather simple ideas and you are better off spending a bit of time clearing those concepts in your head. Here’s a simple explanation