Best Practices for Naming Your Smart Home Devices – Learned the Hard Way

General
,
22

great tips, thanks

1 Like
23

I try to be as consistent as possible with my naming conventions, but I find that sometimes the names on the device cards sometimes defaults back to their original names. It’s a pain to have to go back and rename them sometimes.

2 Likes
24

For automations I have prefixes like

Detection : Device, Action, [time or day specification]

Time :

Voice :

Button :

I find that this keeps them organized in my automations page.

5 Likes
25

Glad to hear it stuck with you – that was the plan!

But honestly: we throw tons of money at cars for comfort, safety, and fancy assistance systems… and at home? For most people, “automation” ends at the thermostat. Architects, builders, and craftsmen barely even think about Smart Homes.

And to be fair – I wouldn’t even claim my house is smarter than my car yet. With a Tesla in the driveway, that’s like trying to outsmart the class nerd… pretty tough challenge. :rofl:

I just want to help change that. Thanks for the feedback – much appreciated!

And always remember: If your car is smarter than your house… you’re driving into the future while living in the past. :red_car::house:

4 Likes
26

Good question! Basically, there are three layers: technical names, device card names, and what you actually say to Siri.

Siri doesn’t care about the technical stuff – “Hey Siri, turn off the living room light” will always work.

Personally, I trigger Scenes with Siri – that feels cleaner. Still fine-tuning my setup, but once I’ve nailed it, I’ll share more tips!

And always remember: If your car is smarter than your house… you’re driving into the future while living in the past. :red_car::house:

3 Likes
27

Yeah, that’s definitely annoying – a “smart” device forgetting its own name doesn’t feel very smart at all.

But just to clarify: in my post I was mostly talking about the technical device names, not the device card names. For automations and scenes, it’s the technical names that count – the card names are more like nicknames, and those sometimes like to reset themselves.

And always remember: If your car is smarter than your house… you’re driving into the future while living in the past. :red_car::house:

2 Likes
28

I am just starting my new smart home with mainly Aqara products.
This is a really useful insight - Thank you

1 Like
29

So this is great. This has become even more important as we move into voice control using Siri, Alexa etc. The abreviations need to be easy to remember and say. I am still trying to solve this to make it easier as my smart home has KNX as the backbone, 1Home as the Voice server/ bridge into the matter IOT world. So one must be able to have it consistant between these systems and use natural language e.g. Siri switch on the main bedroom light etc. It gets even worse as as some of our smart appliances only work with Alexa and we primarily use Apple.

3 Likes
31

In my case, since I use different brands, I also keep a short prefix dictionary for device types, similar to what you suggested. For example:

So I usually write it as: [Brand] - [Type] - [Location/Friendly name]

Examples:

  • AQ – DS – Main Entrance → Aqara Door Sensor at the main entrance
  • AQ – WS – Kitchen → Aqara Window Sensor at the kitchen window
  • GV – LED – Kitchen → Govee LED strip in the kitchen
  • SL – LT – Bedroom → SmartLight bulb in the bedroom

That way I always know: brand + type + location at a glance.

6 Likes
32

This is really helpful, thank you!

2 Likes
33

Thanks for sharing. This is very helpful.

2 Likes
34

How does this naming convestion work with voice command using google home app for example

can you say turn on “light” or "lt’

35

Hi, I’m not entirely sure how this works with Google Home, since I’m mostly using Apple. But in Aqara there’s a difference between the technical name of a device and the display name you see on the dashboard or card.

For example, a socket might technically be called loft.socket.1, while on the dashboard it simply shows up as “Designer Lamp.”

In Apple Home, I usually reference rooms instead: “Hey Siri, turn on the light in the kitchen.” I also use a lot of scenes, and of course their names are completely independent of the technical names of the devices they control.

I hope this helps!

36

I’m with you on basically everything, but one thing I didn’t quite understand is why keep everything lower case?