FHEM on Windows

FHEM on Windows

The following description will show you how to install FHEM on Windows on a separate USB-Drive, without any Windows-registry modifications. You can use the internal HD for installation too, and you can register fhem as a service, see below.

Install FHEM:

    Download the latest fhem-X.Y.zip package from http://fhem.de#Download (currently it is fhem-5.8.zip), and unpack it into a directory where you have at least 350MB+ free space. I will use F:\tmp for this purpose, after unpacking the .zip file we will have a new directory F:\tmp\fhem-5.8

Install perl:

    Download a Strawberry perl Portable-Edition (this version won't generate Registry-Entries, and can be installed on USB disks) from http://strawberryperl.com/releases.html, and extract it into the previously created directory, in our case F:\tmp\fhem-5.8 My file was called strawberry-perl-no64-5.24.1.1-32bit-portable.zip

Start FHEM:

    Open a command line window (cmd), change to the previous directory, and start FHEM:
      C:> F:
      F:> cd \tmp\fhem-5.8
      F:\tmp\fhem-5.8> mkdir log
      F:\tmp\fhem-5.8> perl\bin\perl fhem.pl fhem.cfg
    Note:
      There is no visible output and the command won't terminate. You probably have to confirm a Firewall exception (Do not block), as FHEM opens a Web-Server Port.

Connect to the FHEM Web frontend (FHEMWEB):

    Start your browser (Firefox, Chrome or Safari are preferred) and open
      http://localhost:8083/fhem
    You'll see a smiling-house icon on a light-yellow background.

Update FHEM to get access to the latest development version (recommended but not mandatory):

    In the browser window, on the FHEMWEB page, in the command line (upper text input field, right of the smiling house icon), type in the following 3 commands one-by-one, confirming each one with Enter:
      attr global backup_before_update 0
      save
      update
    Note:
    • the last command will take a while (around a minute), and after finished it will ask you to "shutdown restart". Ignore this, and just type shutdown in the FHEMWEB command line.
    • Switch to the command line window, and restart FHEM with the last command, i.e. arrow up and RETURN or type in again:
        perl\bin\perl fhem.pl fhem.cfg

Install FHEM as a service (better to install perl on the internal hard-disk for this scenario):

    Terminate fhem by typing shutdown again in the FHEMWEB command line. Install the missing perl modules by typing in the command window:
      F:\tmp\fhem-5.8> PATH=F:\tmp\fhem-5.8\c\bin;F:\tmp\fhem-5.8\perl\bin;%PATH%
      F:\tmp\fhem-5.8> perl\bin\cpan -i Win32::Daemon
      F:\tmp\fhem-5.8> perl\bin\cpan -i Win32::Console
    Install FHEM as a service
      F:\tmp\fhem-5.8> perl\bin\perl fhem.pl fhem.cfg -i