Ability to group areas into a larger area?

As I prepare to move my voice assistant from Amazon to Home Assistant, there is a function that I have not seen available yet and that is the ability to group Areas (rooms) into a larger Area.

For example, creating an area called ‘Upstairs’ that includes these other areas:

  • Dining Room
  • Living Room
  • Kitchen, Pantry
  • Primary Bedroom
  • Guest Bedroom
  • Powder Room

This allows me to give a general command like ‘Turn off upstairs lights’ or ‘close upstairs shades’. I can do this through adding a scene or automation, but since I’m using the ChatGPT conversation agent, I would hope that having these attributes on an Area would help voice assistant figure this out.

You can group groups.
I have an Upstairs Lights Group and a Downstairs lights Group. But I also have an All Lights Group which includes the Upstairs and Downstairs Lights Groups.

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See this “fun” (interesting) discussion: Add the concept of floors · home-assistant/architecture · Discussion #1021 · GitHub.

Thanks for the response but I’m not following how you achieved that? A device can only be set to one Area in the UI - and I don’t see where I can associate an area with another one. Are you using the Area Alias and use the same alias across the different areas?

Steve is saying: don’t use areas; use groups instead. Groups can be placed within other groups.

(Make sure to hit the correct reply button on the applicable post, otherwise it’s unclear who you’re replying to.)

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The metaphor I was used to is the one that Amazon created - their areas are referred to as ‘groups’ and you can add a group within another group. I skimmed the Github link you provided and the idea of ‘nested areas’ is a good one. in Home Assistant I have created 5 outside areas:

  • Front Gate
  • Front Door
  • Patio
  • Carport
  • Back

And the idea of combining them into a single area called ‘Outside’ let’s me control all of the lights at ones vs. going area by area (again, I can do an automation or scene that I can link with the voice command ‘turn off outside lights’.

Wait… how did I miss groups? Let me educate myself on that and I bet it solves my problem! Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

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Thanks so much for the idea. I added the Groups integration and the first thing that hit me is that I can only group like entities. I see a use for this in my home but my goal here is a bit broader. For example, I have been working with the ChatGTP conversation agent and I’m able to ask questions like ‘which shades are open’ or ‘which lights are on’ and being able to say things like ‘which shades are open upstairs’. Same with music playing in which rooms, etc. I’m also keeping an eye on simplicity and lower maintenance. The nice thing about the ChatGTP integration is that it it smart to figure out how to action the command. So little has to be built to execute the voice commands.

I don’t use the groups integration. I had forgotten about it. I use the group helper. It is easier. Here are my groups:

Yes, you can only group things in the same domain (light, switch, etc), but you can group groups because they are all in the groups domain. Some of my lights are switches and a few are lights, but my all lights group is a group of all of these groups.

(configuration.yaml):

group:
  AllLights:
    name: All Lights Group
      entities:
        - light.downstairs_lights_group 
        - switch.downstairs_switches_group
        - light.upstairs_lights_group
        - switch.upstairs_switches_group   

This creates the entity:
group.AllLights

I probably could have just as easily made the AllLights group from a helper entity. I’m not sure why I did it this way.

BTW, ChatGPT only knows about what was on the Internet two years ago. The answers about HomeAssistant are often wrong or outdated.

Thank you for the recommendation! I really appreciate that - however, I have more entities than just lights. Shades, Speakers, Thermostats, lights, fans, TVs, etc. I guess I can create groups for each type and hope that ChatGPT can parse it all out when I say ‘close upstairs shades’.

You can have as many groups as you need. A shade.group, speaker.group, etc. Then a group of groups.

What does ChatGPT have to do with this? If you are relying on ChatGPT to write your code, it’s almost guaranteed to be wrong.

I have added the ChatGPT project into my voice assistant - it has been trained on Home Assistant and it has been able to easily figure out when I’m asking for a command to be executed or just information. for example, I’m able to ask if a given window shade is open and if it is, close it. It responds with the status of the shade and if it was open, it closes it. I’m not having to build scripts or routines or anything like that. It has been consuming standard language and executing commands

Here is a link to the Github project:

Here is a great tutorial on integrating it.