Adding Rooms to a dashboard

Is there a way to add a Room to a dashboard, which will then approve all of the devices included in that room to the dashboard devices?

There isn't, though it's possible rooms will become more used in the future. (Some apps like Room Lighting can use them to make good guesses about what automations you want to create.) For now, in Dashboard, you must select each device individually, and that list is not sorted or grouped by room.

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I'd like to see Rooms included in the way dashboards work as well, but would be interested in how you would like to see Rooms being used in dashboards?

Since I started using Hubitat, before the Rooms feature existed, I created dashboards based around rooms in my home. Living room, dining room, office, bedroom, etc. Just to make it easy to figure where devices lived and so anyone looking at them can make easy sense of it.

The functionality I'm looking for is when configuring a dashboard to be able to select a Room and any device associated with that room becomes a valid device to add to the dashboard. It would just make it much easier and I don't have the extra step of configuring a dashboard to accept every device I add. I actually expected that to be an early implementation of the Rooms functionality.

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I just started playing around more with my hubitat and was trying to do the same thing. I'd like to be able to click on button and turn on a bunch of lights on/off for a specific room.

Maybe scenes do that? But when I try to use configure it it only allows one device to be added. Not very useful.

You can setup an activator device for a Room in Room Lighting, which you could then add to your dashboard. The same was true for the older groups and Scenes App.

You mean a virtual device with a toggle rule? I got the virtual device added but it doesn't show up on the list of available devices in the dashboard.

When adding any device to a dashboard you need to include it in the configuration for the dashboard first. Have you done this step? You can access the dashboard configuration page from the Apps page.

Hubitat can be infuriatingly confusing with it's UI. I found that you can't just add devices from the dashboard, you have to get to it from the left hand menu via: Apps -> Dashboard settings [the little gear for the dashboard to configure] -> Go to App button -> Choose Devices button. THEN the devices become visible. Why can't they just make this settings area reachable from the dashboard settings screen???

Hubitat team needs a UX designer to make this interface better. I love the promise of hubitat but the user experience sucks.

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The only one of the major dashboard apps which I know can bring in an entire room's devices as a group is hubiVue.

Instantly populates the new dashboard with tiles for each device, which is mighty slick compared to manually doing it yourself!

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Including the entire hub’s rooms and all devices in the room… smart little wizard isn’t it !!

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I'm not going to deny I would also like this option, and that many of us have elements of the UI that we would like to see adjusted or improved in some way.

That said, I can at least understand the rationale behind how it has been designed, or at least my potentially flawed understanding of it. Some things to consider are:

  • You get access to a devices Event History from a dashboard tile. So, with access to all devices from dashboard itself, this could include the ability to see the Event History for a sibling or for a parent with a mobile device
  • There are various situations where dashboards may be used, such as rental properties or commercial settings
  • Devices provide updates to the dashboard when events occur, so (I expect) it would not be ideal to have chatty devices, or at least a lot of them, linked to a dashboard

So the current setup provides both a security feature by allowing for only those with limited admin access to control who has access to what devices, while also providing some oversight to the performance of the system.

Now I'm not saying these objectives couldn't be achieved through other methods, or by providing options for those who are comfortable with a more open system. In the end I'm happy to work with this setup given the control it provides to the broader user-base, allowing other areas of the platform expand, such as device compatibility.

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For convenience, dashboards setup by room often include global devices which are not specific to a room. Also, not all devices in a room may be suitable for incusion in a dashboard. So the pick and choose would occur anyway.

Furthermore, how many time one will start a dashboard from scratch. My guess is you make a dashboard once and modifiy it as time goes. So the room inclusion would be only a one time shot.

I agree though that sorting the list by room would be an improvement as well as the ability to do it from the dashboard itself.

Yes and no. If the dash app you're using happens to make it easy to import by room (only a handful of them even come close to qualifying), then you feel empowered to create new dashes on the spot. For example:

  • When houseguests are visiting;
  • For each kid sharing sleeping quarters;
  • To accommodate various activities;

And when the app in question also permits user-level permissions, as alluded to above (this is something even fewer formally manage -- namely, hubiVue, HomeHabit and ActionTiles), it's a simple matter of giving out the unique link/URL for each dash to the intended mobile/sub-user.

So, yeah, I routinely whip up new dashes on the spur of the moment when someone comes to stay a few days.... not something I would ever devote time to doing in the native DB app on HE, sadly.

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