This is what was displayed in the Paper UI of openHab:

To solve this, I had two options:

The first option was to use the PaperUI’s features of openHab to heal, reinitialize the device or remove the device.

The other option was to remove my Z-Wave Controller from my Synology, and plug in into a PC to clean it using Z-Wave PC Controller.

Use PaperUI’s feature

Select your device via the PaperUI > Configurations > Things, click on the “Edit icon” (The pen in a blue disc) and scroll to click on the “Show More” link :

There, you have access to the various features :

Try those two actions:

• “Heal the device” (See here) : it can be useful when the Z-Wave mesh is messed up and nodes become ‘lost’.
• “Reinitialise the device” : it does not hurt 😉

Wait next for a few minutes and refresh your PaperUI to check if the device is know fully recognized. 

Also check if there are any errors in the logs of openHab: events.log and openhab.log. If you installed openHab on your Synology as explained here, those logs are under the Shared Folder \\<YourNas>\SmartHome\openHAB\userdata\logs\

Install Z-Wave PC Controller

The download this software I had to find a “valid” Silabs account. Indeed, standard accounts have no access to the download section. Searching for “Silabs.com” on http://bugmenot.com, we find easily such “valid” account.

Once authenticated on Silbas.com, go to the Z-wave page here, and go to the “PC Programmer” section and click on Download Z-Wave Programmer

On the next page, click on the Download button in the upper-right corner (If it is not accessible anymore, find the msi in the attachement section of this post).

Unzip the archive and install the “PC Controller” (/bin/ZWaveControllerSetup.msi)

Clean-up your Z-Wave Controller

Now, plug your Z-Wave controller in your PC and open “PC Controller”:

Click on the Gear icon in the upper-right corner to configure the software to use your Z-Wave Controller. You should see it in the pane “Serial Port Data Sources”. Select it and click on “Ok” at the bottom-right:

Now, you have access to all the “data” (Z-Wave devices) configured previously on your controller. Here under, you can see that I have 13 nodes available:

To check which nodes are not yet available, Click on the top-left tail “Network Management”. This will show you a list of all configured nodes. For each node, one by one, select it and press on “Is Failed”. If the node cannot be accessed, it will be marked in red (See the nodes 23 and 24 here under). You can then remove it by clicking on “Remove Failed”.

For each remaining node, you could click on “Node Info”. This will collect more information than your controller did when it was connected on your Synology and managed by openHab.

You can add new devices easily, using the “Add” button. I did it for a Fibaro Heat Controller that I couldn’t add via openHab.

You can test your Z-Wave Switches using “Basic Set ON” and “Basic Set OFF”.

You can look at the topology of your mesh, using the tail “IMA Network” and by clicking on “Network Health”.

Once you have cleaned-up your controller, you can re-plug it into your NAS.

Unplug/Re-plug a Z-Wave Controller on a Synology

When you remove and replug such a controller, it usually gets a new “terminal” (=a “new port”). A terminal is physically represented by a file named ‘tty…’ in the /dev folder and is the communication channel between the system (your Synology) and hardwares like the USB devices. By default, the terminal for the Z-Wave controller will be /dev/ttyACM0. But when you remove and replug it, it can get /dev/ttyACM1.

To check which terminal is used, open a SSH console on your NAS (as explained here) and type: ls -la /dev/ttyA*

You should get something like:
crwxrwxrwx 1 openhab dialout 166, 1 Dec 31 14:26 /dev/ttyACM0

If there are several terminals, unplug to Z-Wave controller, execute the command again and note the remaining names. Next, replug the controller, list again the terminals and compare the list with the one noted previously.

If the security of the terminal is not crwxrwxrwx, then (assuming the terminal is ttyACM0) execute: sudo chmod 777 /dev/ttyACM0

If the user is not openhab, then check first that it exists via the Control Panel of your DSM: Control Panel > User.

If it does not, you have not properly installed openHab on your Synology as explained here. The package is indeed configuring everything itself. If it exists, assuming the terminal is ttyACM0, execute: sudo chown openhab /dev/ttyACM0

If the group is not dialout, check that it exits via the Control Panel of your DSM: Control Panel > Group. Use “Edit Members” to check that the user “openhab” is in that group. NB.: a group “uucp” must also exist and contain the user “openhab”.

If not, you didn’t properly install openHab on your Synology as explained here. The package is indeed configuring everything itself. If it exists, assuming the terminal is ttyACM0, execute: sudo chgrp dialout /dev/ttyACM0

Finally, to check that the right terminal is used by openHab to communicated with the Z-Wave Controller, go to its configuration via that PaperUI > Configuration > Things. Select your Z-Wave Controller and Edit it. In the “Port Configuration” part, you should see that the “Serial Port” is the terminal you found with the command ls -la /dev/ttyA*.

Add first the Bridge Philips Hue

Go to Paper UI’s Configuration > Bindings and click on the blue “+” (or go directly to Configuration > Add-ons, in the tab “Bindings”) :

In the Search box, type “Hue” to filter the “Bindings”. Click on the “Install” link on the right of the “Hue Binding” to install it :

With the Hue Binding, you can now add a “Hue Bridge”. Go to your physical “Bridge” Philips and press the button on the top as you do to pair Hue devices with the Bridge. Go next to Configuration > Things and click on the Blue “+”. Then select “Hue Binding”. OpenHab will find the “Hue Bridge” :

Select the “Hue Bridge” and click on “Add as Thing” :

If everything worked fine, you should see all your Hue Devices in the “Inbox”.

Otherwise, you will probably see the “Hue Bridge” as “Offline – Configuration_Error”. This is probably due to an issue during the pairing with the physical “Bridge” Philips. OpenHab has not been authorized to access it.

It’s possible to set the authorization manually (See Here). First, find the IP address of your “Philips Bridge” by opening the page https://discovery.meethue.com  

You should see something like:  [{“id”:”001788fffeae5fd3″,”internalipaddress”:”xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx”}]

Next, using the internalipaddress above, open the page http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/debug/clip.html and before pressing the button “POST”, type :

• /api/ in the “URL”
• “{“devicetype”:”my_hue_app#openhab”}” in the “Message Body”

In the “Command Response”, copy the value of the “username”. Go to Configuration > Things, edit the Bridge (click on the pen) and paste the value in the field “Username”

Configure next each Philips Hue device

You can select any of the Philips Hue devices appearing in the Inbox. Each selected device is added as a Thing (under Configuration > Things). There, you can link them with Items that you have previously defined as described here. 

What is not clear in the documentation of the Channels, for example with the color Channel is that you can link not only a Color Item with it, but also a Dimmer and a Switch.

Personnaly, if I define all my Items within a file (as described here), I configure my Devices by creating Links between my Items and my Things directly within the Paper UI interface.

For a Extended Color Light, my Items file (default.items) will contain:

Switch GF_Office_Light "Lampe Bureau" <light>
Dimmer GF_Office_Light_Dim "Lampe Bureau Dim" <light>
Color GF_Office_Light_Clr "Lampe Bureau Color" <light>
Dimmer GF_Office_Light_Temp "Lampe Bureau Temperature" <light>

And I configure the Links between the Thing and those Items like this :

Finally, in my Sitemap, I will use:

sitemap default label="Olympe Home" {
  Frame label="Rooms" icon="group" {
    Text label="Bureau" icon="groundfloor" {
      Switch item=GF_Office_Light label="Switch" icon="light"
      Slider item=GF_Office_Light_Dim label="Dim" icon="slider"
      Colorpicker item=GF_Office_Light_Clr label="Color"
      Slider item=GF_Office_Light_Temp label="Temperature" icon="slider"
    }
  }
}

And here is the outcome:

Go to Paper UI’s Configuration > Bindings and click on the blue “+” (or go directly to Configuration > Add-ons, in the tab “Bindings” – indeed, “Bindings” are installed using “Add-ons” developed by the community) :

In the Search box, type “Somfy” to filter the “Bindings” and find those available for this type of devices. Click on the “Install” link on the right of the one to be installed :

Once the Add-on installed, you can check that the Bindings is available in the Configuration > Bindings :

With the Somfy Binding, you can now add a “SomfyTahoma Bridge”. Go to Configuration > Things and click on the Blue “+”. Then select “SomfyTahoma Binding” and next “Somfy Tahoma Bridge” :

You must now configure the Bridge with your Somfy account (Email Address and Password). You can also define the “location” (Room) where it is placed in your house :

Once done, the Bridge appears as “Online” in Configuration > Things

And the “Somfy devices” will appear in the “Inbox” :

Each device in the “Inbox” can now be linked with an “Item” previously configured via the “Home Builder” (and saved in the file “default.items”). For example, select a Roller Shutter by clicking on the blue “V”  and click next on “Add as Thing” :

Go to Configuration > Things were the “Roller Shutter” appears now as “Online” : 

Click on the “Roller Shutter” to configure it (For each “Thing”, when you configure it, you see one or several blue circles. Each one can be used to configure the links with the various features of the devices) :

 In the case of a Somfy Roller Shutter, there is not a lot to configure. You can only select the “Item” to be used to control the “Roller Shutter” :

Once selected, click on “Link” :

Here above, I configured the link with a “Item” located in the Room “Office”. So, going to the “Basic UI” via the “Welcome page”, and opening the “Office” (member of the “Ground Floor”), you can now click on the arrows “Up” and “Down” next to the “Roller Shutter” to control it :

You can also do it via the “HabPanel DashBoard” :

The “Home Builder”

Open the Package “openHAB” via the Package Center > Installed > OpenHAB and click on the “Url” at the bottom of the screen :

A new tab should open with the “Welcome page” (To access it easily, simply type the http address of your Synology and the port 8080 or it https address and the port 8443 – or the ports you would have chosen during the installation of OpenHab)

It the “Welcome page”, open the “Home Builder” :

In that “Home Builder”, you will recreate your house, with the various Floors, Rooms per Floor and Items (Object) per Room. Later you will link each of those items with the actual “Things” to be controlled in your house (Those Things belonging to your IoT).

First, type a name for your home.

Next select all the “Floors” existing in your home. If you want to add floors not available in the list, simply type their names. Here under,  the Floors “Cellar”,  “Ground  Floor”,  “First  Floor”, “Second Floor” and  “Third Floor” are already selected and I am going to pick Outside:

Then, for each Floor added above, select the “Rooms” to be created. If you want to add a Rooms not available in the list, simply type their names. Here under, I already picked the Rooms “Laundry Room” and “Hallway Cellar” for the Floor “Cellar”, and I am going to pick the Room “Balcony” :

Finally, for each Room added above, select the Items (Objects) to be created. You can here also create new Objects by typing their names. Here under, I added one “Light” and one “Power Outlet” in the “Laundry Room” on the Floor “Cellar”, one “Light” and one “Motion Sensor” in the “Hallway Cellar”  on the Floor “Cellar”, etc… :

The settings of your home are now ready. They can be saved in an “internal DB” or in “text files”. I decided to save them in text files to be able to modify them manually more easily in the future.

The “Items”

To save the “Items” in a text file, click on the button “ITEMS”. The settings will be shown on the rights. Click on the floating button “Copy” in the top-right corner of the settings pane. Next, paste those settings in a file name “default.items” created (e.g. with notepad++) into the folder /openHAB/conf/items of the Shared Folder “SmartHome” :

The “Sitemap”

Copy also the settings displayed when clicking on the button “SITEMAP” (These are the links between the Floors, the Rooms and the Items. They will be used to display a basic screen with all the items). Save them in a file named “xxx.sitemap” – were xxx is the name of your home, to be found in the settings of your sitemap (highlighted here under in green : “olympe”) :

To see the outcomes, go back the the “Welcome page” :

And there, open the “Basic UI” where you will see your sitemap. Click on it to display your home :

When your “Items” will be linked to “Things” (as explained later), you will be able to click on them here to control them.

The “HabPanel DashBoard”

The HabPanel DashBoard is a advanced UI which can be highly customized to display screens much more sexy than the basic UI (See various samples created by end-users here). You can even create custom dashboards specific for each of your interfaces : Tablet, mobile, PC screen, …

To create a dummy dashboard, click on the button “DASHBOARD” and copy the settings going to be displayed on the right :

You should see a link “”Paste the content in this config page” at the bottom of the settings.

Open that link and paste the settings there :

Go back to the “Welcome page” and click on “HabPanel” to open it :

I said that this is a dummy HabPanel because it is not useful at all IMO. You will for sure change it completely to offer a more relevant display.

The “Paper UI”

Now that you have described your house (Floors and Rooms) and its content (Items), it’s time to link the “Items” with “Things”, the actual devices to be controlled.

Go to the “Welcome page” and select “Paper UI” :

NB.: you can review all your Items under the entry Configuration > Items of that “Paper UI” :

NB.: you can also define your location under Configuration > System :

The principle of the “Paper UI” is quite simple : you must install “Bindings” to be able to detect your devices. Ex.: a “Somfy Tahoma Binding” to detect your Somfy blinds, a “Hue Binding” to detect your Philips Hue bubbles, etc…

Once a Binding installed, you can use it to add a “Thing” corresponding to the physical “Bridge” used to access your devices. Ex.: the Tahoma Bridge, the Hue Bridge, etc… 

This Bridge (Thing) must be configured to become accessible by openHab (Usually its IP address, your login/password, etc…). Once this configuration done, all the devices accessible via the Bridge will be detected and added into the “Inbox”. If some devices are not detected automatically, they can sometimes be added manually.

Each device available in the “Inbox” can be added as a “Thing” and linked with an “Item”. As soon as an “Item” is linked with a “Thing”, it can be used to control the related device. What can be done exactly (Switch On/Off, Open/Close) depends on the type of “Item”.

The type of each Item (“itemtype”) is defined in the config file “default.items” created previously (See the documentation of OpenHab here for the details). As far as the Bindings are managed here via the “Paper UI”, each item follows this pattern:

itemtype itemname "labeltext [stateformat]" <iconname> (group1, group2, ...) ["tag1", "tag2", ...]

An itemtype, as you can see in the documentation, can be Switch, a Dimer, a Color, a Rollershutter, an Image, a Contact, a String, a Number, a Group, etc…

• A Switch can be turned on or off
• The value of a Dimer can be set between 0% to 100%,
• A Rollershutter can be open or closed completely or partially,
• An Image can be set with a picture,
• A Contact can have the status Opened or Closed depending on the position of a related Door or Window,
• A String can be assigned with text such as the name of a radio or a song currently played by a device,
• A Number can be assigned by a sensor (temperature, illuminance, …). Depending on the type of Number, it must be noted “Number:Illuminance”, “Number:Temperature”, …
• The itemtype Group is used for the Floors and the Rooms. But not only. They can also be defined with this pattern:

  Group[:itemtype[:function]] groupname ["labeltext"] [<iconname>] [(group1, group2, ...)]

• A Group can be used to calculate a sum or an average of values. Depending on the computation, it must be noted “Group:Number:AVG” or “Group:Number:SUM”
• A Group can also be used to control several “Items” together. In such a case, the status of the Group must be defined as a function (AND, OR, NAND, …)  of the status of each Item. Ex.: Group:Switch:OR(ON, OFF), 
  Group:Rollershutter:OR(UP, DOWN), Group:Contact:OR(OPEN, CLOSED), …

See for concrete samples on https://www.beatificabytes.be/tag/openhab/