When/where to adjust the names of devices

Curious to see what everyone’s thoughts are on where/when to change the name of something. I have a couple scenarios, but 2 that jump out are tasmota and zigbee2mqtt.

tasmota devices show up as tasmota_XXXXX or something like that. Zigbee2mqtt. 0x48577489475 whatever.

So Im curious. Do you adjust the name at the lowest level? or at the last point before use (home assistant)

I have been up till now doing it in home assistant and leaving all my devices with their original unique id’s. I found this helps on some plugs/switches that maybe I change their use. So instead of deciding that my “livingroom_lamp2” module is for a lamp in the livingroom, i could switch it to a fan switch in my bedroom. Easy to just put a new friendly name on it in HA. BUT, the flip side is you end up with these random ID’s initially in HA and have to figure out which is which.

Just wondering how others are doing their naming, if they are naming it at the device (eg: tasmota config) or in something like the zigbee2mqtt interface before it goes to homeassistant. or if you just do it all in HA.

Thanks!

Remove the non-descriptive serial number type identifiers from as much as possible.

For Zigbee2mqtt, I do it in Zigbee2mqtt and enable the “update home assistant” switch. This way the only place there is the 0x48577489475 whatever identifier is in the mqtt discovery topic.

When I used Tasmota (years ago) I used to change the client_id to something descriptive but unique.

This also makes replacing devices easier. As you can delete the old one from Home Assistant and when installing the new one make it the same name. Then there’s no need to adjust any entity_ids anywhere (templates, automations, scripts, etc…).

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Thanks Tom. Was curious on what others were doing. I can see pros/cons on different ways, so was just curious :slight_smile:

I am adding 12 new zigbee sensors this week, so I think im going to give your route a shot and adjust it at the zigbee2mqtt level.