Device naming & room placement recommendations

[scorp508]

As I add more devices to the system I'm starting to think I need to do a better job of naming conventions as well as floor/room placements. For example a Z-Wave binary switch has the root device, the central scene device, and the actual controllable device all related to it.

Would you place all three of those items in the actual room? Or would you place only the device you use for remote control in the proper room, then move the others into some kind of virtual utility closet so they do not clutter up things like HS Touch?

For example here are a couple devices in our mud room and kitchen. There are more, these are just a sample. You can see what the poor kitchen starts to look like in HSTouch when only the "Dimmer" devices are the ones you can use to remote control the units.

Thanks for the advice or tips on what you've found helpful.

[mrhappy]

I personally wouldn't keep the root devices visible, they are largely meaningless and you can hide them in the web UI and they will not appear in HSTouch so that will bring the list of devices down. The others are a bit more difficult as you might want to know about the scene keys, although if not then hide them also (or have a room for the scene keys just so you can refer to them together).

[Uncle Michael]

On the Setup/Custom tab you will see that 'Floor' and 'Room' are just the names HST has chosen for the more generic Location 1 and Location 2. You are free to name them whatever you want. Nonetheless, it is still nearly impossible to find two orthogonal categories that are appropriate for ALL of your devices. I tried naming mine 'Broad' and 'Narrow'. That works pretty well for me, but some plug-ins that import devices continue to insist that one of the categories must be Room.

I'd recommend you give it your best shot. Maybe you will be the one to discover the perfect solution. At least you'll know you tried.