Documentation for 'Rooms'?

That misses my point though - I'm not looking for another layer in the hierarchy - I'm looking for multiple, overlapping containers. With Alexa, I can even put a single device in a group to use it as an alias. E.g. "main fan" as a group containing just "living room fan", letting us say "main fan on" or "living room fan on" and have both work. Using a hierarchy (e.g. "fan belongs to livingroom and living room belongs to upstairs") is much more restrictive.

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We understand this need. It is simply the case the Rooms is not the realization of it, not intended to be. And, as was stated when Rooms was introduced, it is foundational, and not the end of the story by a long shot.

What you're describing is what internally we call a "view". Patience is warranted...

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I for one think the inclusion of rooms to create a super simple pseudo dashboard in the Hubitat app is awesome. My wife loves it already. I am curious to see where it goes, because it doesn't do much more than that right now!

It's not a problem at this point - the synergy between what Alexa does and what Hubitat does works pretty well. The Alexa app is a passable control panel and it integrates voice well (except when I say "hall lights off" and it turns ALL lights off, but that's a different problem.)

The only thing you guys could do that would make this whole thing MUCH easier for me (and probably lots of people) would be to actually utilize the Device Name and Device Label fields, by putting them both in the table (so we can sort by either), and then letting us use "Name" with names like "Hall, Front" or "Lock, backdoor" so we can sort our lists logically, but we can use labels like "Front hall' and "Back Lock" that are more readable, and optionally use those when we export to Alexa and make dashboards.

Hallway. :wink:

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What you're describing, both in this post and the earlier one, is focused on names and aliases. It's not at all clear what you are really up to. Sorting lists is for what purpose?

There is an existing convention in the hub about device name and label: Label trumps name in UI contexts. If a label exists, it is the "displayName" of the device, and if not, the name is the "displayName". I can see offering a selectable choice for that. But there is downside to what you're suggesting: complexity. More choices means more way to become confused by too much information. Adding another column to the devices page doesn't strike me as a good UI design. Perhaps providing a selectable option with respect to "display by name", "display by label", "display by displayName", but again, for many users that would be a step in the wrong direction. Right now, the table uses "display by displayName".

Food for thought....

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or THE hall lights :slightly_smiling_face:

Really? Other people don't normally name their devices to sort together?

I have 122 devices, and the UI shows 8 at a time on my phone and 12 on the screen. If I click on one and go to its page and then return, it goes back to the top of the stupid list. It's annoying as hell, and even worse when the devices are in whatever random-seeming order they'd end up if they all had friendly names.

So I give the devices rational labels. Locks start with "#", virtual switches with "-", motion sensors with "@" (all which sort to the front of the list), and picos start with "~" and sort to the end. The others are named like "Hall front", "Hall side", "Kitchen Ceiling", "Kitchen Island", "Kitchen Table", "Bathroom Ceiling", etc. That clusters them by room or purpose, and makes them easy to find even when I have to scroll through 15 pages of devices over and over (and over and over and over) again.

The problem is that these are the names used when exporting to the Alexa skill, and when creating dashboards. So I am constantly having to give these things friendly names by manually editing them in the Alexa app and the dashboards and stuff.

It would be hugely helpful if I could use my naming convention so I can more easily find devices, but ALSO give them a "friendly name" that would be used for end-user displays without me having to do that by overriding them over and over again manually?

I didn't find that phrasing reliable on alexa or google when I tried that. I had to get a wording that was NOT at all like "all".

I'd add that giving me an option to sort the list by name instead of label (or name if label doesn't exist), would solve the problem. It would also be a huge help if you modified the UI code so when you click "<< Device List" from the device page, it returns to the same part of the list you were on, even on phones. (This works on Chrome on my desktop, but goes back to the top of the list in Chrome on my phone.)

I would even prefer it if the device link opened in a new page and closed when you hit save or cancel. That way you could easily open multiple devices and compare them by flipping between the tabs.

Can always CTRL-click the links.

I do on the computer, but that doesn't work on my phone when I'm walking around trying to get things paired and configured. It was a big thing 2 years ago when I converted from SmartThings and had to re-setup all those devices, but my system has been pretty stable so it hasn't been a big deal.

Long press, open in new tab? :slight_smile:

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I find sorting the device list by rooms is ideal. Makes everything so easy to find. I only wish that the table sort settings were kept when you reload the page.

Room is only handy for recording where to go and look for the device if it starts to be defective like low battery etc. When you have a hundred IOT devices you sometimes move them around and don't always want to be changing the device name for triggers etc. if the move is only temporary. Nice to be able to change the room in the drop down in Hubitat. However it would also be nice to be able to pass the value as a %room% parameter along with lots of other parameters relating to the device.

My response depends of whether you are referring to Rooms as they are currently implemented or the future prospects for the concept. As they are currently implemented, I'll admit the use is limited, compared to the potential. But in the future there are more uses than just capturing the physical room for a device, there are opportunities for dashboard layouts (with some imagination), room-based automations such as presence or motion detection, making the setup of lighting and other device groupings easier utilising the room allocated at device creation, etc.

I can't remember if this statement was made about Rooms, but I know for other features Hubitat will often release an early version to gauge peoples response and appetite for more. It would be nice to ramp up the chat around Rooms to hopefully see more in this space, if there is not already work being done to expand this capability.

Simon

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Yes I believe they said this when they released rooms. User feedback/requests for how to make use of rooms is welcomed since they were (and still are) primarily just a β€œfoundation” for future development.

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Certainly is tempting to start a more forthright thread to gather a clear list of requests in this space.....

Gotta head to work but I look forward to seeing the new thread later :wink:.

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Hopefully this provides a light at the end of the working day... :slight_smile: Or you have a great day at work.....

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