I've used many home automation platforms but actually HomeSeer was not one of them. Maybe just a case of great minds think alike or fools seldom differ.
well what you're wanting/asking for is basically all in HomeSeer 3.... however things are making a big change for v4 which takes away a lot of that functionality and dumbs it down a lot....
I appreciate HE as a platform along with many of its advanced capabilities. What frustrates me every day is the lack of some key basic capabilities that would make the platform so much more usable.
Such as? Hubitat was designed as an "automation" system not a control/presentation system. The current dashboard and mobile app are after thoughts tacked on due to community pressure not by design. I think in ways they cheapen the hub and probably cause stability issues as it's a hub with finite resources and it should be concerned only about device management and automation not presentation.... but just my opinion.
Why would you use different labels for different items? Creating another field to define a device would require a foundation platform level change. That would be a gargantuan task to undertake. Why would you want to name a device differently based on where it is integrating to? You can re-name the device once it is in google home or alexa. If you're thinking that it needs to be renamed in Google Home because google home organizes devices into rooms, so you don't need the room name on the device...well, how would you know which "lamp" was the bedroom one when you first sync your devices over if you have three named "lamp"? What you're suggesting has no real practical application.
Use a description device name to help with device management.
"Contact Sensor - Family Room - Right Window"
"Color Bulb - Family Room - Table Lamp"
The Device Name already exists but I can't see any place where its actually used other than when you don't add a Device Label.
In the Family Room section of your Dashboard you might not want every Device Tile to be labeled Family Room... but rather Table Lamp or Ceiling Fan.
When using Voice Assistant you need to use a unique name but may not want to say "Alexa, set the Family Room Table Lamp to Blue" rather than "Alexa, set the Color Bulb Family Room Table Lamp to Blue".
If something like enabling the device list to be sorted by the device name would require a foundational change than we should all be concerned about platform.
Then that should be done in the app, not the device. Adding it to the device itself would require a fundamental change of how the system identifies devices. What you really want is aliasing inside of the dashboard app. That is a lot more doable than changing the structure of the device database. And you can do this with CSS.
You don't have to. As @Ryan780 points out, you can rename devices in the Alexa app. I want to point out that you can group devices with specific Echos in the alexa app. In the Family Room simply say, "Alexa, set the lights to Blue" or whatever.
Also, if you rename them before syncing them to Alexa, you wouldn't be able to tell which of the three "Table Lamps" you have is the one for the living room. Alexa has to manage it.
My whole point of using a label for Voice and TTS. They should have unique labels like "Family Room Table Lamp" or "Right Family Room Window" but those aren't great Device Names.
Listen, HE already has Device Name and Device Label. For a start, how about letting us use them.
Why aren't those great device names? All my devices have exactly one name. That makes it easier to remember what to call them. What else would you name the Family room table lamp other than family room table lamp? I think you're overly complicating this.
Yes, Alexa and Google allow you to group a bunch of lights in a room together and just say "turn on the lights" but what neither of them do is allow you to say "turn on the table lamp" you must reference the device by its unique name such as "Family Room Table Lamp".
I do, BTW, find this quite annoying with both Alexa and Google Home.
If you are sitting in the Family Room, speaking to the Echo Device called Family Room which is grouped with a bunch of devices who's names all start with Family Room all in a group called Family Room, why isn't either of these assistants smart enough to allow the user to say "turn on the table lamp".
Uhh. No they didn't. Dashboards were initially from @kewashi who ported his HousePanel and then Dashboards as you now know it evolved from that.
There were never any "initial" plans for an app. That was pressure from community to have an app.
[EDIT] - So I went back in my email time machine and I see yes, there was plans for a mobile app and dashboard way back in very early release. So I stand corrected @Ryan780
What if in the HE management interface, you want to keep all your Sensors together or Color Bulbs Together. You might name devices "Sensor Contact - Family Room - Right Window" or Bulb Color - Family Room - Table Lamp". Naming conventions like that may not be necessary when you have 25 devices but when you start to hit 100+ it's an absolute necessity but those names are terrible for dashboard, voice control or TTS.
I agree you should be able to add your own label to a dashboard device tile (which we can't do today) but why not let the user set the device label such as "Table Lamp" for all their Table Lamps at the device so they don't have to go into every single dashboard and enter the label (unless they want to override the default label).
