I have a large number of Lutron Caseta devices, including both switches and dimmers. Homey supports integration with them and it works really well. Homey can even recognize events from the switches (e.g., when a switch is turned on), which other home integration devices such as Alexa cannot. This means that Homey can build flows around switches being turned on and off.
However, when importing the devices from the Lutron app, Homey only reads the device name, not the room name. The Lutron device organizes all the devices by room. This means that there are multiple devices called ‘Main Lights’, but each is separated into its own room. So there is a Kitchen Main Lights, and a Master Bedroom Main Lights. When imported into Homey, I ended up with 12 devices all called ‘Main Lights’, all configured in the ‘Home’ zone. In Homey, if you go into the Advanced Settings, you can see that Homey is getting the area from Lutron. With this information, they could either map the rooms and place the lights in the right room, or they could append the room to the name of the device.
What happens when the same room has two different names in Lutron and Homey? Then this feature will be counter productive. So you need some manual coordination (naming conventions) between the two. For the time being I suggest you add a number or letter to the description of “Main light”. That also is more clear in flows, as the name of the room is not shown in the flows.
Definitely understand the need to synchronize the names between Lutron and Homey. I think of this as a good thing, not a bad thing. As it is, in Lutron I called it Media Room when I initially created it, but in Homey I called it Family Room (probably because some of these names were suggested to me). Reconciling these two would be great so that we only have one name across the different apps for the same room.
I’m not sure I understand your proposal. Adding numbers to the rooms would require me to remember a numbering scheme for the rooms. I’d have to know that “Main Lights 14” refers to the kitchen lights and that room 14 is the kitchen. When talking to Alexa, I’d have to say “Alexa, Turn on Main Lights 14”, even when I’m in the room and the Alexa is bound to that room. I’m not sure how that doesn’t make my life worse, not better.
As for the flows, I think the solution here is also obvious - include the name of the room in the flows. Having to uniquely name every device in every room is hard and leads to a mouthful with the voice assistants. “Alexa, Turn on Living Room Left Coffee Table Lamp” is very specific, but is a lot harder than “Alexa, Turn on Left Lamp”. And they need you to be very specific, so you have to remember the exact order in which you created all the qualifiers.
My suggestion was merely that Homey make that easier during the integration with Lutron.
I came to the conclusion it’s so much easier with Homey to use unique names for every device.
I added the zone name, like, main lights kitchen, main lights dining.
This means using short zone names as well.
Starting to come to the same conclusion, but it seems to be a cop out. The more similar devices I add to my home, the more ‘unique’ names I have to create. This, plus the fact that i’d like to be able to custom sort my home and my devices, leads to a very odd naming convention
1 First Floor
1.1 Living Room
1.1.1 First Floor Living Room Ceiling Lights
1.1.2 First Floor Living Room Accent Lights
1.1.3 First Floor Living Room Table Lamps
1.1.4 First Floor Living Room Television
The number of workarounds for deficiencies in the UI is getting overwhelming. It would be nice if Athom put their development backlog online so users could get a sense of what work they are prioritizing. Even nicer if users could up-vote the features they wanted.
I don’t think there is a real solution, the problem exists in any program environment. Identifiers shall be unique, understandable, and short. And when using context like 1-floor,1-room.ceilinglamp you have somehow to remember or to get clear the context when you just use the identifier ceilinglamp.
I don’t mean to disagree with you in public, but the idea of unique names is a very technical way of thinking about it. I’m a software architect and UI designer - I consider it bad form when we expose technical concepts or ‘limitations’ to our users. The ‘limitation’ in this case would mean there could only be one Peter in the world. But there are many, and what makes them unique is their context. In this case, the room and the floor gives the item context. We are talking about a consumer product here, and we can’t talk in terms of uniquely named items - that is something that the software should abstract for the user. The device should attempt to adopt the language of the users, not force the users to adapt to the language (or limitations) of the product.
In any case, for the users to have to provide a unique name is unnecessary. The application could build a unique name for the users on the fly. Rather than present 10 ‘Main Lights’ in a flow card, they could present a compound name built from the context. E.g. First Floor → Living Room → Main Lights. Meanwhile, when navigating the rooms or device map, it would show up as “Main Lights” in the “Living Room”, instead of showing up as “FirstFloor.LivingRoom.Main Lights” in the “Living Room” room on the “First Floor”. The name of the device in the room could be different from its unique name (which the application could build for us).
I generally think of the Homey UI as very usable - it’s a very well-designed application, particularly the flow cards. So the suggestions of uniquely naming each device as a workaround to a UI defect struct me as odd and not something that the other applications require to function correctly.
True for me also - I don’t typically have multiple light zones in most rooms. The exception is the kitchen which has multiple zones (main lights, island lights, over the sink spots etc). However, I do have multiple lights in my house named the same - each room has a ‘main lights’ that refers to the overhead lighting. This makes it easier when I ask Alexa (which I have in each room) to ‘Turn on the main lights’). It’s easier for guests as well - they don’t have to know the room name in order to turn on the lights (is it ‘Family Room’, ‘Living Room’ or ‘Media Room’?)
As for your final comment, I hope Athom does not think of its users as complaining. An antagonistic view of their customers has doomed many companies. Much larger companies, such as Microsoft, publicly publish their enhancement list and ask their users to vote on enhancement requests.
Well, we agree, as I indicated that uniqueness can also be achieved by indicating the context. But then the user has to specify somehow the context too. Even in the case when having Alexa in every room: when I am in the room and notice the kitchen lights are on, I have to say “kitchen main light off”. Some times for people it is just easier to walk to the physical switch
Actually, with an Alexa device in the room, I can say ‘Turn On the Lights’ which will turn on all the lights in the kitchen or ‘Turn on the Main Lights’. This works because the Alexa knows that it is in the kitchen, and it is smart an looks for all devices called ‘lights’. I can also say, “Turn on Kitchen Lights” or '“Turn on Kitchen Main Lights” in any room (including the kitchen). I don’t need to have the device called “Kitchen Main Lights” for that to work - just the room name and the “Main Lights” name.
