Newbe Vera user trying c7 ....As the topic Said , Where do i Choose what room a device should be in? cant find it anywhere.
Its essential to have devices in rooms for easy fast access in a dashboard without Having to scrolling Thrue 50 devices since there is no real Phone app for Hubitat .
/ Mattias
There are not really rooms in Hubitat, at least not on the device level. However you can be careful in naming your devices and rules to group sets of devices. For example, all the bathroom devices could be prefixed by "Bath" so you get Bath Fan, Bath Light, etc.
You can create as many dashboards as you want, and place any number of items that you select into each dashboard. This is where you can group things into rooms. Those groups don't have to be rooms, some people have a dashboard that groups batteries, some group their locks, or you can mix and match whatever items you wish.
There are a couple ways to create dashboards, the first is to go to the Dashboard tab, click the + sign in the upper right corner. This does not allow you as much control as the next method. But it is the quickest way to get a single new dash.
The other option is to go to the Apps tab, click on the Dashboard app, and add a new dashboard. This allow you to select/edit which devices to use (and you should only select what is needed) and gives you the options like passwords and some other management items. I prefer this method over the other, but you still end up using both menus no matter what because you have to go back to the Dashboard tab to create and edit your tiles.
There are both I-phone as well as Android phone apps. They work just like the competitor's phone apps, so I am not sure where you got that information. In addition, you can (in Android at least) pin a Chrome tab to your phone's main screen, and use that just like an app. Pinning a tab is nice because it takes you right to a particular dashboard, you don't have to go through that extra menu layer.
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Ok.. sound odd without rooms but ok i get it that its all about automation and nerver use your Phone .
But still there are times when i want to use Iphone or Apple Watch to change some device.
One thing is like u wrote to use 1 dashboard for Each room but its rakes way to long time to load them so its not an option because of that...
Having all devices in one dashboard menas scrolling until your fingers bleed.
It would really help of u could have like viritual button (that u name a room... kitchen for ex) and then when pressning it it pops up a new dash with whatever u want there....
Could not be so much work for developers and suddenly a much more functonally app..
Looked again at appstore and Hubitat oblygt has a dashboard app and no regular app..
Before i migrate all devices from Vera must know how to deal with rooms in any Way...
Thanx you for answering!!!
/ Mattias
If you only select the relevant devices you need for each dashboard this speeds it up.
My main dashboard has 42 devices and takes 3 seconds and another with only 6 takes less than 1.
I do however have a link saved on the main screen of my phone that uses the browser not the app so this also speeds it up.
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Iām not a developer, so TBH I never really know when statements like this are accurate or way off the mark.
But I have to ask, if it were that quick and easy, why wouldnāt they have done it already?
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It may be worth browsing through this topic to see some of the approaches people have taken.
Also, with the comment you made about pressing a button and the devices for that room showing up, you can include links to other dashboards as tiles (buttons) on a dashboard. Some people setup a main dashboard that is fairly simple with a few key details such as date and time, weather info, etc, then include links to their other room-based dashboards or whatever breakup they have chosen. That may suit what you are after...?
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Yes its strange , all Other platforms i know use rooms and easy fast access to devices.
Nuff Said of this, it is what it is.
I think i Will try with links to other dashboards WHO are rooms..
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That is how most people that want a room representation do it - separate dashboard page per room.
As mentioned above on the dashboard settings page on the hub, make sure you don't have 'use all devices' selected, and just select the devices you want on that page. It makes dashboard page loading much faster.
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Or you could do it at Google Home or Alexa level, placing them in rooms.
If I could add one more thing, it would be to keep in mind that the hubās admin interface and any (optional) user interfaces (which would include dashboards) are not the same thing.
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You might want to look at homebridge.
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I realized there were no "rooms" when I set up my first Hubitat hub the other day.
But short of rooms, I wish there was a way to add some extra metadata on devices. E.g., a set of tags or at least a free-form text field called "Location".
My use case: I've got 120+ devices, some installed, some placed for experimentation, some extra. I use rooms in SmartThings to help me find the particular device. I'd like some hint as to where some devices are physically located. I really don't want to fall back to a Google sheet to do this.
I already have most devices named in the form of "room thing", e.g., "Basement Left Window" is a contact sensor on the window. I've got "Closet Dimmer" and "Closet Motion Sensor" for the light and the motion sensor that controls the light. Those last two are in the room "Front Hall", and that's the light in the hallway to the coat closet.
I'm going to have to make a better attempt at device naming as I move things from SmartThings to Hubitat.
But some devices are named based upon what they connect. The smart switch in the family room is called "Christmas Tree", because that is what it's used for 2 months of the year. "Alexa, turn on the Christmas Tree" works really well. It's in the room "Family Room". I don't know a better name to use for it. And it's nice that the name is the same in Alexa as it is in SmartThings.
Well I've always felt somewhat restricted by rooms. I'd have liked to be able to have my devices appear in more than one grouping
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I agree, I want a way to do grouping but rooms don't make sense to me. Sometimes I'm referring to the things in my Living Room, sometimes the First Floor, sometimes anything "Inside." Rooms imply that things can only be grouped in one way. I found the feature annoying on ST. And what about things that aren't room based? Should I create a room called "Attic" for my HVAC system just because the unit is in my attic, even though it actually heats/cools my whole house? Or things outside... have a room called "Outdoors" just because I don't have any other option? I'd much rather a tagging type system.
I do just want to mention speaking as a developer (not directed at you), why is it people who are not developers love to tell developers what is easy vs. hard? Do you tell your surgeon which operations are easy too? As a developer I HATE when people tell me something is easy as though they know. If it's so easy, go and do it yourself! That's what goes through my mind. The fact is when you don't know the code, don't know the architecture, and don't know the system no one can say whether something is easy or hard. Yeah adding a textbox called "Room" is easy. Oh but actually you want a whole new screen to create rooms and manage them? Oh and all the device list pages should have group by room options? Oh and in 3rd party apps they should be able to do things by room so all the APIs need to be updates? Oh and Rule Machine should now let me choose all devices in a given room? Oh and Simple Automations too? Oh and... Oh and... See how a "simple" request easily becomes 2 weeks of work? Sure, a textbox that does nothing other than let you enter text, 5 minutes of work. An actual room management system, it's a lot of work. But that said, even if it is easy... ease doesn't make something a good idea. I'd prefer much more of a tagging/grouping system. I don't think I'd use rooms and therefore would personally prefer they spend their efforts on other things I would use.
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There is this app if that helps at all . I am not personally using it.
I must admit most of my other controllers support categories for devices, sometimes several eg room, floor, area, type of device e.g all thermostats. It's very useful.
Iām a HW guy. We always tell the SW guys itās easy. Lol.
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You know, because if I can do the hard work of conceptualizing it, the rest (your part) must be easy /s
(to be clear, 100% supportive of you and other developers, just being sarcastic).
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What Iāve learned of most things in life is the devil is always in the details!
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And for every hour of developing, there is usually 3 hours of validation and debug!
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That is the obvious solution that would solve everyone's classification problems, and I hope it is on the official roadmap.
Even a minimal first release that helped you organize the device list, and nothing else, would be great.
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