Can I have two devices called "fan" and | Home Assistant | Page 1

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 12:07 AM

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I tried setting both to have aliases of "fan" but the response is "Sorry, there are multiple devices called fan." Which, sure, makes sense.

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"turn off the office fan" results in "Sorry, I am not aware of any fan in the Office area."

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Any tips? 🙂

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 3:47 AM

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have you tried aliases of 'office fan' 'bedroom fan' ?

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 4:19 AM

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I did, but VA still tracked "Office" as an area, so "office fan" didn't get triggered and there is no "fan" in the office area.

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I guess I could do like "my office fan" and "my bedroom fan". I was hoping there was a way to have same-named devices in different areas, though. Doesn't seem very hard to write, so I'd be real disappointed if we can't. 😕 But then again, the "Delete Alias" button doesn't even work so maybe I have my sights set too high? haha

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 4:26 AM

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are the fans actual fan.entity_id or are they switches that turn on fans ?

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 4:26 AM

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They're switches.

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 4:29 AM

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that may be where the issue is as it will be expecting a device in that domain. What may work is to set an automation with a sentence trigger. so 'turn on bedroom fan' trigger >>action>> turn on the fan 😉 I know it's not perfect... but if it works 🙂

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 4:30 AM

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Is there some switch-related wording I can use?

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 4:33 AM

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i'm not 100% up on this side of things - so there may be other ways around it. 🤔

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 4:34 AM

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I dunno why it's always you that helps me, but I'm glad you do. 🙂

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 4:36 AM

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lol .. thanks 🙂

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im just trying now with the fans i've got here which are also on switches

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 4:38 AM

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Giving them aliases "my office fan" and "my bedroom fan" also work. It's kinda lame though.

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 4:39 AM

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yeah as soon as I use 'sitting room fan' it's not aware of any fans

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 4:40 AM

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But it feels like it should, right?

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I guess I could go digging around in the source code...

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 4:42 AM

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yes... i would expect it to check to see if there is a 'fan.entity' in the area and if there isn't then check to see if there is a device called 'fan'

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 4:42 AM

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I kinda wanted to make a VA version that would allow for interrupting the normal workflow via the events somehow.

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 4:42 AM

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or an alias with the name fan

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 4:42 AM

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Yeah, I expected the same.

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 4:45 AM

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i'm sure i've come across something similar before.. just trying to remember ... perhaps it was with lights... as none of my lights are light.entity but all classed as switches

gray dove Aug 26, 2024, 4:48 AM

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I got pr merged that's fixing exactly this. It's in dev already, should be in next major ha update.

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 4:48 AM

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Oh really? So it was supposed to do that and it just had a bug? That explains things perfectly.

gray dove Aug 26, 2024, 4:50 AM

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It was unimplemented functionality. Now, if your assist device has area assigned, it will pick device in that area, if name/alias isn't unique.

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I wanted to do it badly for couple months, so I dug that in 🙂

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 4:51 AM

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aah! Well, a man after my own heart.

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I guess that frees me up to make the interruptable VA version, hehe

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 4:55 AM

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just found another solution 😉 In the device entity page you can click on the settings cog and change the switch to a fan... this works 🎉

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 4:56 AM

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Well look at you...

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 4:56 AM

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undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 4:56 AM

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Okay, I changed my office fan from switch to fan.

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"turn on the fan" resulted in "Sorry, I couldn't understand that". "turn on the office fan" worked though.

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Ah

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"turn on the fan" from a VA located in the office works 🙂

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 4:59 AM

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i guess i should change all my switches to lights too 🤦‍♂️

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:00 AM

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Well, until this patch goes in. Then it sounds like we can use aliases.

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:01 AM

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tbh I don't really use voice for my own purposes 🤣 so i can live without... but should make things more organised haha

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:01 AM

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It comes in handy every now and then

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:02 AM

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i think timers are about the only thing i use regularly

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:02 AM

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I haven't used timers at all yet.

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Just started my first one. Do you just say "Set a timer for [x]" or are there more advanced things you do with them?

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:05 AM

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nope thats it ... you can pause them and cancel them too .. and set multiple ones. but i've not got that advanced

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:06 AM

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Well i set a timer for a minute and a minute later... nothing happened.

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I must be doing it wrong 😅

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:09 AM

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on the s3box?

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:09 AM

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Yeah. "Set a timer for one minute" resulted in "Timer started" and then nothing.

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:10 AM

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have you got on_timer_finished: in the va block and then something triggering to happen

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:11 AM

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Oh, no. I haven't looked into timers at all. So it fires of a single event when the timers up? Hm. What have you got yours wired up to do?

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:13 AM

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ive got it to call a script that flicks a switch template on and plays a single beep.mp3 whilst the switch is on , displays a page saying timer finished blah blah .. tap screen and switch goes off ..beep stops lol

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:14 AM

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Hah. Okay, well that's pretty single purpose 😂

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I would want to figure out how to make it really general purpose. "Set a timer to [x]" and then it does x.

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Hm... I guess if I did the word parsing myself and looked for keywords and parameters... yeah, I think you could do that.

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"Set a timer for one minute to turn off the office light." and it would. I could probably wire that up.

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:16 AM

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oh you can do that anyway

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you can set turn off office light in 1 minute

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*say

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:18 AM

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Oh, so it's not a one-trick pony. Good.

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:19 AM

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nope and it is all done from the ESP locally

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well the timer part is

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:19 AM

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How do you tell it to, say, turn off the office lights in one minute?

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:20 AM

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should - just say it

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:20 AM

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"set a timer for one minute to turn off the office lights" => "Sorry, I'm not aware of any device called a timer"

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:21 AM

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just "turn on office light in 1 minute"

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or *off

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and it should say "command recieved"

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:21 AM

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Oh, that worked

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:22 AM

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it's all good stuff ... when it works lol

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:23 AM

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hehe

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Thanks again for all the help.

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:24 AM

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your're welcome as always 👍

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:25 AM

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I got a couple of atom echos. I was gonna start fiddling with them. You put a VA on one of those yet?

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:26 AM

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i've got one i use for testing , they're ok as a mic and nice and small. speaker sucks though

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:27 AM

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Is the mic better than the Box S3?

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I'm half a meter away and it only understands me half the time

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:28 AM

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my boxes work ok from up to 5m - you haven't still got the plastic screen protector on have you ?

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:28 AM

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Nope.

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Lemme check.....

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:28 AM

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hmmm

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:28 AM

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nope

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My LED blaster only worked up to 1.5 meters, too.

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I figured they were just crappy parts.

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:30 AM

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yeah ... i think the IR is a bit weak ... i noticed in the first box i had the screen over the led was quite dark and the newer one is much lighter... as if they tried to improve it by making it more transparent

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:31 AM

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Do you have a public config for your atom echo?

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:33 AM

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i think the only ones are just stock ones that i've edited to add manually without using the flasher ... https://github.com/BigBobbas/esphome_firmware/tree/main/M5 Stack Atom Echo

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:34 AM

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Thanks.

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:36 AM

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rn_image_picker_lib_temp_2efba101-3303-41e7-99bf-fc4400fb82e3.jpg

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this is my echo's current state lol

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:36 AM

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It's a wee bit bigger than mine.

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:37 AM

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sounds better though 🙂

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:37 AM

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You use them as media players then?

upper fractal Aug 26, 2024, 5:38 AM

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i don't ... i just can't resist experimenting ... so was just seeing if could replace the speaker ..and yes.. you can

undone pelican Aug 26, 2024, 5:38 AM

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haha

gray dove Aug 26, 2024, 1:02 PM

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upper fractal

Oh I use same speakers. 🙂 they're decent.

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On the aliases - I thought it would be nice to stop bothering saying "main bedroom top light", while I'm in freaking main bedroom, and say just "turn off top light", or "turn on the purifier". Hence PR.

#Can I have two devices called "fan" and