Goal

The goal for this post is to properly configure my.openHAB to access your sitemap without being on the same wi-fi network. my.openHAB is a hosted service that allows us to access our home-automation from anywhere.

What you need

• The sitemap for the garage system from previous posts

my.openHAB registration

You will need to go to myopenhab.org and register for an account. After you have done this check your email to confirm it. Without confirmation you will not be able to use the features of my.openHAB.

Install the openHAB Cloud Connector

Go to the PaperUI (raspberrypi:8080/start/index) and click on Add-ons. Select the MISC column and click INSTALL on the openHAB Clound Connector.

Setup persistence

Create a file called myopenhab.persist in the persistence file of your openHAB installation (sudo -u openhab vim /etc/openhab2/persistence/myopenahb.persist) with the following contents:

Strategies {
    default = everyChange
}
Items {
    * : strategy = everyChange
}

What we have done here is to say that we will update all of our persistences for every change. This will allow my.openHAB to pick up our Item states every time they change.

Provide your secrets to my.openHAB

my.openHAB requires two pieces of information, a UUID and a secret. These values can be found by running the following two commands:

cat /var/lib/openhab2/uuid
> YOUR UUID PRINTED HERE
cat /var/lib/openhab2/openhabcloud/secret
> YOUR SECRET PRINTED HERE

Keep these values secret! Go to the Account section of myopenhab.org (visible when you hover over your email) and click update. Then, you should restart your openHAB service

sudo systemctl restart openhab2.service

After some time the tab on the header of myopenhab.org will go from Offline (shaded red) to Online (shaded green). When this happens you can navigate to your sitemap remotely by going to https://home.myopenhab.org/basicui/app?sitemap=myhouse. You can see the status of your garage door and control your garage door remotely.

Congratulatons! You have configured my.openHAB to control your home automation from anywhere!