I’m just starting out with Hassbian and home automation in conjunction with Google Home and one of my first Z-Wave devices is the Aeotec Smart MultiSensor 6.
I’ve paired 2 of them with my Vera Edge Hub, calling one “Kitchen” and the other “Entertainment Area” as this is where the sensors will be. Hassbian has recognised them after a reboot which is great.
My first question relates to the dashboard icons. As you can see from this Picture, the icons are called “UV Sensor”, “UV Sensor 1”, “Temperature”, “Temperature 1” etc, with the first one being the Entertainment area, and the ones with the number “1” being the Kitchen sensors (I paired the Entertainment Area one first, rebooted Hassbian, then did the 2nd sensor).
What I would like to be able to do is have the icon read “Kitchen Temperature”, “Entertainment Area UV” etc etc depending on location and what the sensor is (Temp, Humidity, etc).
How do I change the names/titles on the dashboard? I gather it’s something I need to add to the configuration.yaml file but not sure what I need to write.
It likely has to do with the entity_registry.yaml.
When certain types of devices are discovered by HA it creates an entry in the entity registry based on a generic name generated by the node name set up in your z wave controller.
You have two options.
You can manually edit the entity_registry.yaml file to change the device names to what you want.
Or what I like to do is go to the z wave configuration menu in HA and rename the node to something more informative. You should do this anyway just as a matter of course because as your network grows it’s harder to keep track of which devices are which node. Then I rename my old entity_registry.yaml to entity_registry.old and restart HA. at that point HA recreates the entity_registry file again from the new node name information and hopefully you will have better and more usable names.
All of the above is based on using a local USB z stick so YMMV using a Vera hub.
I did have a look around before posting and couldn’t find “Z-Wave” anywhere.
When I click on “Configuration” on the left hand side, I get this view.
I can click “Customization” and rename individual units, but it’s probably doing the same thing (only a different way" where you said to manually edit the enitity_registry.yaml file.
I can do this, but you did say that the z-wave menu method was a good thing to do.
If I go to “Integrations”, I still don’t see any Z-Wave option as shown in this screenshot.
Is there any advantages in getting a z stick over a z-wave hub like the Vera Edge? When I first got into home automation and bought aeotec smart switch and needed a hub, I wasn’t aware of HA or using Pi’s etc and just looked at hubs such as Vera and Samsung SmartHomes and since Smarthomes wasn’t available (natively) in Australia, I went with the Vera Hub.
I like how I can set schedules and look at power usage. Is that something I can do with a z stick if I change over? Or should I get a z stick and run both it and the Vera Edge??
Thanks
EDIT: One quick question. I’m new to this forum and just noticed I had 3 messages saying that my post was hidden by community flags as spam and multiple community members flagged this post before it was hidden.
It appears my links to the products I was talking about are the issue. The only reason I put a link to the product was so that if anyone needed to know what product I was talking about in order to understand my issue and respond appropriately could go to the product page and check it out.
Is that wrong? I thought it would make it easier for someone so they knew exactly what product I’m using.
Certainly don’t want to offend anyone. In the meantime, I’ll go back and remove the links if editing on those posts is still possible.
I don’t use the Vera but my understanding is that you need the internet for it to work (as I said I could be wrong about that…) so the advantage would be that everything on your network is local. so if your internet goes down then your devices still work.
I don’t think the vera does anything specifically with power usage in and of itself (does it?). I would think that those functions would be provided by the devices themselves. If that’s the case then if the device was supported by OZW then the power usage functionality would supported by HA.
Scheduling in HA may not be as easy as using the Vera but I’m sure you could write equivalent automations to fill in the gaps.
Lastly, I don’t know anything about spam policy. Maybe because you’re so new & posting too many product links so soon? I’ve posted a few product links and it’s not been an issue.
I just wanted to say “Thanks” for all your help guys.
I also found this video to be useful too. I’ve started creating groups and moving some of the sensor icons down. Looks good.
All I need to do is to figure out the “yr Symbol” one. I know it shows the forecast but not sure what the “1” next to it means. In the video, his icon is a sun peaking from behind rain clouds and his number is “40” - I think this is just a “random” number as the yr Symbol doesn’t really have a value (unless 1 = sunny) etc.
So now I’ve got my web view customised in a better way, I have some more ideas/wishes relating to Google Home and the “Smart Switch 6 Sensor”. These include:
Being able to ask Google “Hey Google, What’s the temperature in the Entertainment Area” and for it to interrogate the appropriate sensor unit and reply back.
Have Google Home play a custom message (eg “Someone is at the front door”) when the motion detector on a specific unit is tripped.
Should I continue with that in this thread, or start a new one for each?
If we continue on in this thread, I’d prefer to do one at a time, and in this case, do the interrogation of the temperature from specific units would be the first.
