Self-configuring based on mqtt - considering building if it doesn't exist?

[viking]

I'm gave a set of pro mini's and some radios to my father in law for Christmas, as a DYI present. He's an electrician and has great skills in that area however not on the software side. I use OpenHab but it's quite tedious to configure even if you're well versed in Linux and programming.

But since the sensors present themselves to the mqtt broker and I can listen in, shouldn't it be fairly easy to build a self-configuring controller based on the nodes? Simply pick out the sensor details and process the UI. At least listening would be fairly simple. It would be even better if this was integrated in to OpenHab or similar. I guess I can write a perl script to generate sitemap, rules and items but that feels like the "wrong" way around.

Any pointers?

[hek]

Could be a bit time consuming to build your own controller.

But probably more fun and you'll learn a lot in the process.