Example of a use for devices alias/friendly names would be physcially labelling devices (e.g zigbee bulb 1, 2, 3, etc.) then having corresponding labels in Home Assistant.
Doesn’t sound out of the ordinary, but what I propose is a friendly name option. From there you can change the name you see in Home Assistant for the device such as “ZIgbee Bulb 3 → Top Front Left Living Room Lightbulb”. That way the same can be super descriptive but the device id (which will be used for automations) relates to the original id independant of the alias.
Why?
So you can have friendly names in the UI, but inventory style names for the ID.
Allows moving devices between locations/uses without breaking automations (from changing the name).
This is the feature request: name / device abstraction in a structured way.
No home automation is ever finalized Needs change, new ideas emerge, new devices come in and current ones may need reassignment. When you have enough scripts / automations / etc., it will suddenly make sense. P.S. I’m a programmer, so there’s that as well, I guess I can’t help it.
Ideally, Voice Assist would also use this “friendly” name. I want to be able to ask, “which devices are available in this room?” and get friendly names, instead of the device names (as these adhere to a strich naming convention including room, manufacturor, device and an id).
I would like to have a friendly name / alias that is not the device name.
Device name is needed for me to identify the device and the location and it maps with the sonoff/shelly/tuya/etc… name. Is ok not to change it.
I’d be interested in this too, and perhaps explaining my specific usecase might clear it up.
I have quite a lot of ESPHome devices with names like…
Fan Controller 24ca0c
Smart Plug V2 9d345e
Supersensor d6e9f0
I like this sort of naming for the device because it’s unique and clearly identifies each device.
However on the other side, in various rooms, I might want names like…
Workbench Fan Controller
Theatre Overheat Lights
Garage Supersensor
These would be used in dashboards, automations, etc.
The feature would be a way to “assign” the latter names to the former, while still having the former show up as the actual device name everywere in HASS. It would also then allow swapping, say, Smart Plug V2 9d345e to Smart Plug V3 f8eac3 easily without rewriting all the automations, cards, etc. tied to that smart plug, since they would be tied to the alias name, and flipping which alias name maps to which “real” device name would be a single setting/value.
Currently there is no clear way to do this. You must either change the actual device names (and, specifically, the entity IDs) or use the unique device name in your automations, forcing one or the other. The feature would allow both to coexist.
Perhaps I’m missing the point. I think the problem above is that a single ESPHome device could have all three of those listed above. Devices (thus device names) and entities are not necessarily related.
Are you mixing up devices and entities? I just swapped out an ESP8266 with an ESP32 and used a new devcie name but kept the same entity ids for the functions it was performing. No need to update automations or dashboards.
Needs change, new ideas emerge, new devices come in and current ones may need reassignment. When you have enough scripts / automations / etc., it will suddenly make sense. P.S. I’m a programmer, so there’s that as well, I guess I can’t help it.