S.A.R.A.H is a configurable, extensible, open source, companion app for openHAB’s Home Automation (HA) Hub software on a Raspberry Pi (RPi) inspired by the AI home in the TV series Eureka. You just need to add some Things and you can take complete control of your home. Just download the complete image, follow the installation instructions and get up and running in minutes! From there, you can take where ever you want. You can customize your setup anyway you see fit. Works for you home, office or store!

It is intended for those of us who like to tinker, those of us who are looking for a jump start on setting up home automation and especially for those of us who are concerned with security and keeping you data within your home network. In the simplest terms, S.A.R.A.H. gives you a fully functioning system with all the basic features right out of the chute in minutes instead of months, so you can focus on the really cool stuff. Specifically, it starts with a copy of openHABian, adds a lot of configuration, MariaDB, and adds a web app that allows you to manage a template of your home, to generate the resulting rules, items, things, and sitemaps files, etc. and adds prebuilt code for a working Alarm system, Tamper alarm system, vacation mode, IP cameras, network presence devices, speech, internet radio and many more features, and provides several prebuilt interfaces for managing S.A.R.A.H. and all your Things. And, just for good measure, the openHABian base is completely standard and non-customized. All code and configurations are based on best practices from the openHAB community, where design patterns and standards are available.

There are a few key ways to use S.A.R.A.H.:

1) You can use S.A.R.A.H. ongoing to manage and maintain all your Things. This will give you the full benefit of using S.A.R.A.H. by simplifying ongoing maintenance and customization and does NOT limit all your customizations as it will allow you to integrate them, if you choose.

2) Just use it to give you a major kick-start to your Home Automation journey. Because, S.A.R.A.H. comes preconfigured with tons of features and code, you can install it, setup your home, office or store, generate the code and keep going from there without going back to S.A.R.A.H. If nothing else this will save you many months of effort in getting all the basic functionality going for you, allowing you to focus on the really cool and interesting stuff that is specific to you.

3) Download just the config files to start your Home Automation journey. You can download all the files from the download page and copy them to your openHAB setup (make sure you backup for existing files first). This will give you all the rules, items, and sitemap files, but won’t give you the full working system. It’s just the textual config files and not the interfaces or settings need to make them work. You will still need to do all the setup, but you will have working examples of fully debugged and thoroughly tested complex rules to get you started.

Choose which ever way works best for your setup… enjoy!

S.A.R.A.H. key features (release notes):

• Latest version of openHABian w/ openHAB 2.5 for the Home Automation hub (fully upgradable using openhabian-config or apt)
• Raspberry Pi OS Buster
• The S.A.R.A.H. Command Center (SCC) to visually create and manage your home’s automation
  • Create a home template where you can manage all your devices
  • A simple web interface to maintain S.A.R.A.H.’s settings
  • Generates and installs the Rules, Sitemap, Items, Things and other config files for you
• Vacation mode intelligently turns lights on and off when you’re away, based on your location & time of day
• A fully functioning alarm system, patterned after ADT alarm systems, for doors, windows & motion sensors, w/ email/text alerts
• A Separate tamper alarm to alert you when devices have been tampered with
• Weather and Astronomical data fully configured to use for coding Rules or just watching
• It can announce doors, windows and motion sensors, so you know if someone is entering or leaving your property
• A status dashboard to see the status all your Things and control your entire system
• MariaDB to persist the state of Things in your home to should you lose power, and to store historical weather data
• Comes with Speech configured and working so you can hear what’s going on
• Fully-configured streaming Internet Radio using independent sites, that resumes after voice commands
• Control all your garage doors with an optional Raspberry Pi using MQTT protocol
• Helps you overcome some of the quirks and bad behaviors that Things sometimes do
• Built-in support for IP cameras
• Built-in support for network presence devices (they tell you when someone is home or not)
• Low battery alerts to notify you once a day if battery levels drop below a specific level
• Secure remote access solution available using VPN
  
• You can control, Lights, Colored Lights, Dimmers, Heaters in bathrooms, basement and garage, Temperature, Humidity, Motion, Door/Door Locks and Window sensors, a Water sensors for your water heater and more out of the box
• All this comes in a fully tested, pre-configured, pre-coded image for your Raspberry Pi — you get best-of-breed home automation software on a well supported hardware platform
• S.A.R.A.H. is fully secured, keeping all your data within your own home network – no third party companies to worry about!

Just buy the Things (IoT – Internet of Things) you want to use, include them into S.A.R.A.H. and you’ll have a fully functioning automated home. You can find the list of tested and recommended Things to start. Where you take it from there is up to you.

A Brief History:

I started out in mid-2018 looking to automate my house in a way that would keep my data secure and out of the hands of some third party. I wanted to find something open source, extensible and that ran on a Raspberry Pi. In researching and playing with various solutions, I first dug through the remnants of x10 (a previous and long lived standard for home automation) long enough to find a seemingly working copy of code for the Raspberry Pi. But, before I got to implementing solutions, I found openHAB amid the leading contenders for the new Home Automation market. openHAB is the most open, flexible, best supported open source HA hub around, but it does take a lot of effort to get it fully up and running. I knew I had to do something to help fill that gap and I’d always wanted to give back to the open source community that has given me so much over the years.

It was an amazing journey unravelling openHAB. For months, I worked with code samples, blog entries and on-line docs. I was sucked in by the sheer magnitude of things that you can accomplish. I eventually cracked it and realized I had to make it accessible to whoever wanted it. It was just too much work to keep to myself.

Download it and give it a try. I’m willing to bet you’re going to love it. What have you got to lose? You only need a spare micro sd card and a Raspberry Pi to see what S.A.R.A.H. can do for you!