I'm starting to collect a rather large number of devices in my network and it's getting somewhat confusing. Particularly being able to identify and track the location of some of the devices. I know that I can set a room name for each one, but what if I have dozens in the same room? Where are they? What are they supposed to do?
As a suggestion: I would like to see a "Description:" text area in the devices configuration pages. There, I could document what the device is doing, where/when I bought it, and exactly where I can find it.
Can you give some examples of how you are currently naming your devices?
I know that no two setups will be the same, and I probably don't have as many devices as others, but I'm having a hard time understanding how what is already available in the UI is not enough to properly name any number of devices. (And I'm including your other post about Z-Wave DNIs in this general concept as well. I have no idea what any of the various 'internal' numbers of any of my devices are. The single Device Label is all I use to identify my devices.)
There are many different ways to name/identify/describe your devices. I use Device Label as my 'name.' In Hubitat, Device Label is the name that shows up in rules, logs, etc, so that's where I want my most friendly name. I have mine structured as [Room] [Placement] [Sub-Placement] [Function]. An example that uses all would be "Reading Room North Wall Left Receptacle."
I use Device Name as an internal descriptor. I use it to identify the Manufacturer and Model Number of the device, along with the device type. Battery devices also get the battery type, quantity, and last change date in the Device Name field. An example here would be "Aeotec GP-AEOWLSUS SmartThings Water Leak Sensor [CR2 x1 2023-01-03]".
For some reason, I can't get my screen share tool to work properly, but this is an older version of my Devices tab from a couple of years ago to show how it all looks in the Devices tab:
@672southmain: Sounds great! Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with working with groovy. Can you point me to some directions on how to incorporate this into my Hubitat system?
@JB_TX: Interesting technique. I'll have to go over my device list and see what I can do to get more info into it.
Sure. No knowledge of Groovy is needed. Jean May (@thebearmay) wrote this user-contributed community app and made it installable by Hubitat Package Manager ("HPM"), of which I assume you are familiar.
Just launch HPM, click the Install button, search for Note, and this will be the first item that appears.
If you need more info about installing and using HPM, just ask.
I give all my devices elaborate names that include the location, the kind of device, the device's sun sign, its favorite color, and its key childhood traumas. Nonetheless I agree that some kind of a field for free-form notes would be extremely useful for facts that I want to retain, but do not need to be listed in every context where the device name is listed.
I agree with the suggestion to add notes.
I saw a lot of guides that suggest naming devices like 'livingroom_moodlights_smalllamp_rightside_switch' but those names look bad on the Dashboards.
I went the other route, and i renamed my sensors called 'LivingroomTempHum' to 'Livingroom' because on the Dashboards no one other than me cares about individual sensors.
People just want to see the room name and the celsius degrees, so the only text needed is
'<room_name> °C'
It would really help me though to have another field where i can store some more metadata.
@672southmain: Thanks a mil for the tip about Custom Device Note app! Although I'm a relative newb to HE, was able to figure out how to load, install, and use the app. Love that I can now add content like battery info and notes to my devices.
Only one thing I'd still like to see is a way to do something with that content other than just see it in the HE devices page. I access http://192.168.1.137/hub2/devicesList from a script in a webpage for my homebrew dashboard. That data does not show the contents of the device data section where my new notes are being stored. That data is also not available through Maker. I'll post this issue in the Custom Device Note v2 thread to see if there's a way around this.
