Rule names are restrictive in that you canāt use a lot of characters in the title. This makes it very hard to manage them, as you often have to open each Rule to see what it does, especially if you manipulate a lot of devices in the rule.
Iāve solved that to a degree by using emojis. I put one as the first character of each camera name. When you get used to your selections, you can tell what a multi-event rule does just by reading the emojis. Here are the camera names I commonly use:
Detection off at night for 3 cams (headlights - I fall back to a 24/7 Sense motion sensor):
Precautionary āOutdoor Cams onā at Sunrise, in case I manually turned power or detection off sometime before that:
Ect.
NOTE: This may not be compatible with other platforms including Home Assistant, Alexa, Google, etc. (unless they ignore the emoji). So test one before editing many!
PLEASE NO! I first thought this was a WishList item and was going to therefore request it be optional. However since it is only a tip, I can choose not to use @#$%^& Emojisā¦
Seriously, it is really hard to remember what every rule does and everything affects and there are limited characters allowed, besides space, and takes so long to read each description to find the one I am looking for. This is so well organized and makes it easy to find things and know what a rule does at a glance and what devices it affects. I may only use this for my most critical devices, but it is freaking genius organization. I love it! It solves so much IMO.
Thank you for sharing the idea with me, I LOVE it. Itās cool that some donāt like it, nobody is forced to use it, but for those of us like me (with over 200 devices), this makes it so much easier and quicker to understand everything at a quick glance and will save me time, effort, and make my devices better organized visually and such. I am so glad this is possible! Seriously, thank you for sharing this tip and idea with me.
Do you still have the text version you used previously to compare side-by-side with the emoji verion of your most complex rule? It would be interesting.
Mine arenāt complicated but hereās the format I used:
The text version of the complex rule simply said āPwr Cycle 7 cams @ 4:30 AMā. Problem is, I had to open the rule to find out which 7 cams. Some cams are on other vendorās plugs.
It really got confusing when I would do things like set rules to reactivate cameras that I might have turned off during the day. Some of those even had two tiers of rules, like once a tree shadow disappeared in mid-afternoon, and in case I turned if off again (blowing leaves, whatever) Iād set a rule to turn it on again just before sunset. I had to open most of those to see what cameras they affect, and after I opened a few, I forgot which cameras were set to do what. I actually created a spreadsheet at one point to try to keep track. That was always outdated, so didnāt work well.
Now I just look for the cameraās icon to see what rules affect it. SO much simpler!
Do emojiās affect being able to call the devices on Google or Alexa? Have you tried? Like would you have to figure out what the emoji name is and call that as part of the camera name when you ask Google or Alexa to stream the camera or lock a door lock or whatever else you would do with Google/Alexa with a device?
Yeah. I have done that for some devices, though when I move devices around or rename them, Alexa wonāt update the name automatically if you manually overwrote the name in Alexaā¦which isnāt a really common issue, but I have had to go in and manually fix several device names (particularly when I moved houses), so I have been hesitant to do that ever sinceā¦but even so, I am curious what Alexa or Google require when there is an emoji in the name, or what they say in the announcements, like if you turn on person detection announcements for the cam, will it say the name of the emoji or just skip it? I am curious.
I only have experience with Alexa. I have a torchiere floor lamp named ā Torchiere lampā. I tell Alexa via my Wyze Band to āTurn on Torchiere lightā It turns the Plug on and off, no problem. I think it ignores emojis.
I realize this is an old question, but it made me curious since @peepeeppointed here from another topic. I changed the name of a Wyze Bulb Color by adding emoji to the name in the Wyze app and then looked at the bulbās settings in Google Home, which reflected the change in the āName from Wyze Homeā field. When I asked my smart speaker to turn on the bulb for a minute, it responded by telling me that it would do so but used the non-emoji name I had previously assigned it in Google Home, so I think that answers your question.
In order to get Google Assistant to respond with what it was going to do with the voice command, I had to move the bulb into a different virtual room for the test and then specifically ask it to turn on that room for one minute. Interestingly, if I try renaming that room by adding emoji, then Google Home warns me: āMay not work with voice commands.ā This didnāt happen when I tried adding emoji to the device name in google home.
Tangentially related name quirk
Iāve also learned through previous experience/experimentation that Google Home/Assistant voice commands can use at least three different names to refer to a single device, depending on how itās configured. Google Home knows the deviceās room, the deviceās name itās assigned in Google Home, and the deviceās name it brings over from the third-party app where it was initially configured. If I have a single smart bulb in a room, for instance, I can ask Assistant to control it using any of those three names.
I use emojis for group labels. Adds a little bit of color to the main home tab. I donāt use the emojis for the device names because I do use Alexa. If I have everything in groups then I donāt even notice that the devices donāt have special labels.
Torchiere lampā. I tell Alexa via my Wyze Band to āTurn on Torchiere lightā It turns the Plug on and off, no problem. I think it ignores emojis. 