Best practices for my Google Home device names (cross room)

General
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Hi folks,

Not 100% Node-RED related, but had a lot of fun today because my node-red-contrib-google-smarthome is finally running. Even my Google Home Mini device - which is lying in my basement unused already for several years - is now finally being used :champagne:.

But not sure what is the best way to call my device names, in order to be able to use powerfull sentences afterwards. For example @Paul-Reed - who helped me last day to climb out of the Google Home hellhole - advised me to use Lights devices instead of Switch devices, because then I can use sentences like:

  • switch off all of the lights in the garden
  • do I have any lights switched on?

If anybody has other tips, please share them here!

And I have another related question. I have two christmas trees: one in the kitchen and one in the dining room. In the afternoon I managed to switch the christmas tree in the dining room on/off, via a speach controlled Shelly Plug S. To do that I used "dining room" as a postfix in the device name:

image

But - based on Paul's advise - I am now wondering whether this is correct. Should I perhaps drop the "dining room" postfix in the device name, because the device already belongs to the "dining room" room (see 'room hint' field). Because I assume I am allowed to have multiple devices with the same name "christmas tree", as long as they are located in separate rooms??? And it would be nice if I could also turn on/off both christmas trees using a single sentence. Perhaps a Google Home Mini device (that is also located in the dining room) might be smart enough to figure out (when I only say "Turn on the christmas tree") to turn on the christmas in the same room, i.e. in the dining room? Not sure about that? On the other hand, when I use my Android smartphone to turn on/off my christmas tree, Google has no idea which christmas tree I am referring to...

Thanks!!
Bart

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Correct on being able to use same device names in different rooms. I do that with lights and fans so I can use the room name in my command "turn on dining room main light" vs "turn on living room main light". Not sure about on room though I know that works for lights "turn off lights" just turns off the lights in the associated room with my mini.

Not sure if both devices address named "Christmas tree" that you could control both (probably depends on the answer to self room determination) You could use a virtual device that links to both Christmas trees or a scene as another option.

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Yes, that's correct

Also correct

"Turn on all of the christmas trees" or "Turn on both christmas trees"

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...and of course "Turn off both Christmas trees in five minutes"

or even

"Turn on both Christmas trees for one hour" (after 1 hour google will switch them off again)

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I had a similar discussion with myself and decided to use the device friendly name for registering the devices in the Google nodes and then change the names in Google Home. That way I can identify the device in my MQTT nodes but can still tell Google to 'turn on the Christmas tree lights' ( only have 1) or 'turn on the living room front light' or as Paul says 'turn off the living room lights'.

I must thank Paul for his suggestion on timing as I had not even thought of doing that.

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Seems that Google also understands instructions like “set a timer for 5, no wait, 9 minutes”. And when you say “make the alarm one hour later”, it will edit a current alarm rather than creating an entirely new one...

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