Already on May 25, the openHAB Foundation (opens new window) hosted another Smart Home Day colocated with its yearly general assembly. The event took place at Hochschule Darmstadt and was packed with some interesting talks before the Foundations general assembly was held.

As already known from the past smart home day events, we had a bunch of talks for directly openHAB related topics or such with a strong reference to the openHAB ecosystem. You will get some information about the talks in the agenda below. As the community is spread over the whole world and not everyone had the chance to come to Darmstadt, we made it possible for Dan Cunningham to join us for a transcontinental talk about our efforts and progress with the alexa skill.

Another special part of the current smart home day that should be mentioned, is the event cooperation with Hochschule Darmstadt. Invited by the organizers, a group of students attended the event and got some introduction and impressions in the smart home world (and especially the smart home world including openHAB) through our talks. Some readers may already know openHAB Foundations mission to "educate the public about the possibilities and benefits of free and open smart home solutions. Related to this we are happy in having the chance to share some knowledge and enthusiasm for this mission in this academic environment and context.

The Agenda

Below you can find a chronological overview of the agenda and the corresponding talks. If we already have the slides available you can find a link in the corresponding coloumn. See also our community forum (opens new window) for some additional informations and links about the event.

Topic	held by	Link to slides
Welcome & Introduction	Hochschule Darmstadt & openHAB Foundation e.V.	-
A short intro to openHAB for newbies	Kai Kreuzer, openHAB Foundation e.V.	Slides (opens new window)
When the Smart Home goes Public. Research on the Usage of openHAB in a University Building	Myriam Guedey, HfT Stuttgart	Slides (opens new window)
Optimisation of in-house consumption of solar energy with openHAB	Kai Kreuzer, openHAB Foundation e.V.	Slides (opens new window)
SmaC: openHAB in a smart caravan	Marius Falk, Hahn-Schickard-Gesellschaft e.V.	Slides (opens new window)
A new frontend for openHAB	Yannick Schaus, openHAB Foundation e.V.	Slides (opens new window)
openHAB Alexa: Past, Present and Future	Dan Cunningham, openHAB Foundation e.V.	Slides (opens new window)

A big thanks to everyone who has attended the event as well as to all the speakers that helped making the day a great success! There was a lot of very positive feedback on the talks. Also we would like to thank Hochschule Darmstadt for the possibility to host this event at their location.

While we will try to repeat doing such events in future, everybody should feel encouraged to organise local meet-ups or other types of events around their favorite project - it is absolutely worth the efforts!