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...?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
iOS has an interesting Zone concept that I wish Hubitat would borrow - along with the more traditional Home / Floor / Room organization. In the iOS Home, you start by grouping devices into a "typical" Home / Room structure. However, there is a secondary organization known as a "Zone" and rooms can also be placed into Zones. So, for example, a Zone could be a floor of a house (First Floor Zone, Second Floor Zone, etc.) where you put all your rooms. But floors can also be in multiple Zones, so for example, I have a Zone for each of Basement, First Floor, Second floor into which I've grouped Rooms. But I also have an "indoors" and "outdoors" zones - so, e.g., a Bedroom can be in both the "Second Floor" and "Inside" zones and I can tell Siri "Turn off all inside lights" or "Turn off all Second Floor" lights.
I have a dashboard for each room. Then I have a main dashboard with a group for each room. The groups are set to indicate ON if anything in the group is ON. Above each group tile I have a half height dashboard link. Each room dashboard has a dashboard link back to the main dashboard. Itās not fancy but it works for me. Here's a pic.