Device Alias

📢 Feedback Feature Requests
1

It would be nice if HE had the ability to configure alternative names for Devices and then use those rather than the Device Label with apps like Dashboard, Notifier, Echo Skill, Etc...

I like to name all my devices so they're manageable. For instance, "Contact - Family Room - Right Window". But that doesn't look very nice on a Dashboard and "The Contact Family Room Right Window is Open" doesn't is a very friendly announcement.

So it would be nice to utilize an alias or friendly name for each device. In the case of the above example the friendly name might be "Family Room Right Window".

Thanks, Glenn

1 Like
2

I thought the Device Label was the alias... The Device Name is one field, and is used in all apps if there is no Device Label supplied. If there is a Device Label defined, it is used in all apps and the Dashboard.

3 Likes
3

It is; kind of. This has come up multiple times and (from my perspective at least) the Device Label isn't the solution. Here's why:

Because the HE Devices UI doesn't allow devices to be grouped by room or category, I, and I suspect others, name devices using a [room or location] [device or function] naming convention such as "Master Bedroom Ceiling Fan" or "Kitchen Counter Lighting". This makes it easy to find devices in the device list but the label is silly on a dashboard that's organized by room name.

So assuming I have a "Kitchen" dashboard with all of my kitchen related devices on it, having a "Kitchen Counter Lighting" tile on my "Kitchen" dashboard looks silly and adds visual clutter that doesn't need to be there. An alias that allows me to name the "Kitchen Counter Lighting" something short such as "Counter" (the dashboard's lighting icon conveys the function) makes everything simpler and cleaner.

5 Likes
4

Yes, I would also like the Dashboard App to allow me to set the Tile Name independently of the Device Name/Label. Seems like a common request.

5

While not the most elegant, I use a CSS entry to change the name on a tile that would otherwise look kind of weird

div[style^="grid-area: 2 / 1 / 3 / 2"] .tile-title:after {
	content: 'House Power';
	visibility: visible;
	display: block;
}

This sets the name of tile at row 2 column 1 to “House Power”

I don’t change my dashboards often so I don’t mind “hacking” it with CSS

2 Likes
6

Exactly!

There's a CSS workaround for HE dashboards but that's a ton of work, very hard to maintain and not supported on all platforms.

In addition, you can't use %device% with notifier unless you don't mind hearing something like "the contact sensor family room window left was opened".

An alternative would be to Label things they way you want to see them so Family Room Lamp, Dining Room Lamp, Master Bedroom Lamp would all be labeled Lamp.
But this then Alexa and Google wouldn't work because they need every device to have a unique name.

7

This seems to only work on desktop browser and really hard to maintain.