Naming your devices

Niles has no screen where you add rooms or devices. It reads the names you give your devices in Zigbee2MQTT, and those names are the house: the room, what the device is called, and what you say to reach it. Name things well once and Niles picks up every new device on its own.

The ruleCopy Anchor Link

Every device is named room/device:

kitchen/ceiling
living_room/floor_lamp
hallway/motion
office/blind

• Lowercase letters, digits and _ only.
• _ for spaces: living_room, not living room, Living Room or living-room.
• One /: everything before it is the room, everything after it is the device.

A device whose name breaks the rule is ignored, not guessed at. Niles's log says skipping Z2M device with friendly_name "Kitchen Ceiling", and the device doesn't appear anywhere until it's renamed. A brand-new pairing named after its address (0x680ae2fffe7ac3e5) is ignored the same way.

Choosing the namesCopy Anchor Link

Rooms are what you say. living_room is "the living room", kitchen is "the kitchen". Use the same spelling for every device in a room; living_room and livingroom are two different rooms to Niles.

Devices are what you'd call them out loud, without the room. Niles puts the room in front when it speaks, so kitchen/ceiling is "the kitchen ceiling", and kitchen/kitchen_ceiling_light would be said clumsily. Keep them short and tell similar ones apart:

Niles works out what a device is from what Zigbee2MQTT says it can do, not from its name. A door sensor called office/garden is still a door, and a lamp doesn't have to be called "lamp". The name is only for people.

Things that aren't in a roomCopy Anchor Link

Repeaters and the like have to go somewhere. Put them in a room of their own, such as system/repeater, and hide that room from the dashboard in Settings → Rooms. Niles ignores a repeater anyway: it has nothing to switch.

GroupsCopy Anchor Link

A Zigbee2MQTT group follows the same rule: living_room/ceiling for a group of the living room's ceiling bulbs. Niles then shows and switches the group as one device, and hides the devices in it, so "turn on the living room ceiling" is one command to the group rather than one per bulb.

The group is whatever is in it:

• Bulbs make a light. Plugs among the bulbs are fine; they take the on and off and ignore the rest.
• Blinds make a blind. Its position is the average of where its blinds last said they were.
• Plugs make a plug.

A group that mixes blinds with bulbs or plugs, or holds anything else, is ignored, and so is a group whose name breaks the rule (a flat table, say). Their devices stay as they are, each on its own.

Lamps on plugsCopy Anchor Link

A lamp plugged into a smart plug is, to Niles, a plug: it's switched only when you name it. To make it one of "the lights", so room switches, scenes and "turn off all the lights" include it, pick it under Settings → Lighting → Lamps on plugs.

RenamingCopy Anchor Link

Rename a device in Zigbee2MQTT's own web page (open the device and use its rename button) and Niles follows within seconds. Two things to know:

• Rules use the name. A rule made for office/door stops matching if the door becomes study/door, so rename before you make rules, or open the rule afterwards and pick the device again.
• Another hub still reads the same Zigbee2MQTT? Tick the rename dialog's option to update its entity ID as well, so it follows the new name too.

Devices that don't come from Zigbee2MQTTCopy Anchor Link

• WLED strips are named in Niles's own settings, with the same room/device rule.
• Add-ons from GitHub name their own devices and usually ask which room in their settings; the Bambu Lab add-on, for example, puts office/printer in the room you pick.
• The LG TV and the Sonos speakers are placed in a room in their own settings.

Quick checkCopy Anchor Link

After renaming, the device should appear in its room on the dashboard within a few seconds. If it doesn't, the log will say why. Search it for skipping Z2M device and the name you used.