Hey all, be interested to see how everyone is using the Category & Labels? Be great to share what others are doing as there is alot of possibilities now.
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Basically I’m not using them.
I’ve set up floors for my areas but have no use for them. And they are displayed upside down on the areas page (level 1 should be displayed above level 0).
I have not set up any categories or labels as I use YAML for automations and scripts and already have groups set up for things like binary sensors and lights (e.g. all lounge room window and door contacts, all lounge room lights, etc…).
That’s great if you want to operate that way.
I’m trying to figure out how to use categories. For example of have automations that turn lights on and off when doors open/close. Adding labels is easier, but what would category organisation would i consider? no point using the area is in as the category as you can already assign automations to areas.
I was thinking Door Sensor as the category name?
I’ve set up a few labels & categories, but decided to go slow and determine when & how such categorizing would be useful.
Type of Automations:
- Motion
- Switch
- Presence
- Contact
- Timers (shut off devices after a period of activity)
- Climate (heating schedules)
OK, that was useful - but then there are types of entities, devices, scenes, & labels for groups or types of lights/devices to consider.
I got to a point where the Cramden “Homina, homina, homina” started to be uttered, and decided to stop until actual needs come into play. I can see where going too far in this regard w/o a purpose in mind would only cause MORE confusion in the long run.
Love the flexibility that these options offer, but not all options that are available are necessary for every one of us to find useful or necessary, IMHO.
FWIW
I have my automations and scripts in categories (kinda named after my areas). Within each category, I have labels attached that describe what the automation and/or script does and anything I might need to remember by just glancing at the automations. So, nothing ground breaking. I also have a label attached to the ones that run only when I’m at home, so I can filter those out quickly as they are obviously my most used.
However, at the entity level, I did find one novel use for labels: Attaching a Router or End Device tag for my Zigbee entities. Allows me to quickly filter for just routers or just end devices easily. I’ve done the same for my z-wave and WiFi devices as well. So, if I want to see just my WiFi devices, I just filter on that label. It’s faster than looking at the integration and picking out which ones have WiFi devices.
I’m still looking for other ideas to use labels and categories for though.
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yeah after looking at my automations i decided to try and categorise them on the theme of the automation.
For example i have lights that turn on outside based on person detection, so for me this is a security theme automation. The same for my water leak notifications
I have alot of lights that trn on when doors open and close or motion is detected, so figured this was House Lighting
Things like vacuum automations i figred this was house Cleaning.
I use labels to describe whats been used in th automation ie Motion Sensor, Contact Sensor, Lighting etc
I’ve been trying to do the same thing. But, tbh, I don’t know how much I’ll actually use them. This is kinda what I’m doing (same as you I guess?)
The age old IT question of picking a naming convention. I’ve seen some weird ones and probably been responsible for a few in my time.
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It was one of the most requested features, yet people are unsure how to organise them now with this new features
It was one of the most requested features, yet people are unsure how to organise them now with this new features
With the array of experiences having hands-on with HA, there’s no surprise. It ain’t the requesters that are unsure, I’d wager.
I’m using floors with no labels.
I have a few labels for areas that signify ‘larger grouped areas’.
I have a few labels for entities.
My goal is to create template lights that represent each floor/area for voice control that utilizes zwave multicast. This will ensure all lights and switches turn on in parallel, instead of in series.
It also makes voice assistant setup easy because you don’t need to create groups on the voice assistant side if you use Alexa or Google home.
I’m also using labels to bin entities for my remote page, basically allowing me to use auto entities to auto-generate buttons for source and surround sound mode.
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I’m thinking of maybe using labels to replace yaml groups since yaml groups don’t get unique ids which has always kinda bugged me. I used them for devices of different types for example climate devices, switch devices and vacuums all in a devices group.
Now just have a label on things called devices instead for easy switch off control.
For me I’m still working through my organizational system but I’m trying not to be redundant. I could add a label to a switch called Switch but I can also search for switch. to get at the same thing (and that’s how I’ve been doing it forever).
I think labels can get out of hand, just like tags on websites, you can have too many and just clutter things up even more. Just like over-engineering, you can over-organize too!
Right now I’m using them lightly to see what I find useful. My favorite feature is categories so far, I can categorize my automation as “Trigger”, “Schedule” and “Action”, which eliminates the need to prefix those words to my automation name.
Labels are still in the air. Right now I’m only using them for my “SMART” stuff, this is stuff I create that is smarter than simple “if this then that” type of automations. I label them as SMART Controller or SMART Dependency, which actually is kind of helpful.
Scripts are all YAML, I don’t use the UI for that. I’ve considered doing the same with Automations but haven’t made up my mind. If categories prove to be invaluable then that may weigh on my decision one way or the other.
One thing I wish were possible is the ability to hide labels. They make the entities page etc a mess.
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put in a feature request
The label and category stuff is still kind of fresh for me and I’m still finding my legs, but I did find another good use for them today that was quite handy. I labeled all my Rachio zones as “Irrigation Valve”, which makes it easier to find on the entities list but also to search all valves on a template sensor to see if any are running - the alternative would have been to give them all a type of valve and have duplicate entities in my Rachio controller.
I did a lot of labelling when they first came out, but the filter system is so clunky that I rarely use them. Why can’t we just type a label name in the search box?
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I’m not after the UI filtering, I just use code filtering and for that it’s come in handy.
Having the ability to add labels into yaml code is what is needed. Currently when writing customisations / integrations for things (especially that are then used by others) I end up having to prefix an identifier into the sensor etc name/unique_id.
Being able to instead to this like (below) would be beneficial:
Now:
hs_grid_imported_daily:
unique_id: hs_grid_imported_daily
name: HS Grid - Imported Daily
source: sensor.power_meter_consumption
With Labels:
grid_imported_daily:
unique_id: grid_imported_daily
name: "Grid - Imported Daily"
labels: "Huawei Solar, Utility Meters"
source: sensor.power_meter_consumption
Also makes the accompanying cards and other sensors, such as for Energy Usage/Billing tracking, integration agnostic… potentially allowing users of other integrations to reuse them more easily if all using agnostic sensors like grid_imported_daily
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