On our most recent IoT Podcast episode, Brent called in to our voicemail hotline asking how to name devices in the smart home. Brent decided to call one of his lights “mushroom” (maybe it’s a Super Mario Bros. themed room?) and his digital assistant is having issues correctly interpreting the name. Having set up scores of devices with different naming schemes, we have some advice for Brent, and everyone else.
The key is to keep it simple and don’t get “cute” with your device names. The more you stray from that strategy, the more likely it is that your digital assistant will essentially choke on your custom device name.
Stacey actually recommends using device names with two or three syllables, having had more success with that requirement. And it makes sense: The more data, i.e. syllables, a digital assistant has to work with, the better the chances it will correctly interpret the name.
The approach that has worked best for me is to call devices by some intuitive name. So the lamp next to my TV, for example, is called “TV light”. I have two office lamps with multiple bulbs in each and I name each bulb by its position on the lamp stack. So I have a “left middle” and a “right middle” bulb that I can turn on independently from the top and bottom bulbs on each lamp.
This makes it easier to use the lights, not just for me, but for anyone else in my family as they don’t have to guess the names. Nor do they really have to remember any personalized custom names. Once I explained my setup, they got it.
Don’t forget too that you can make life easier in your smart home with scenes, routines, and groupings for devices. By using descriptive names, I can control single devices. But by grouping that TV light with the actual television and some other lights in the same room, I can control them all collectively with the “living room” group name.
An alternative is to use the “living room” moniker as part of the name for some of the devices and just say “Turn Living Room” on. Even without a formal grouping, any device with “Living Room” in the name will be enabled.
Remember, don’t be cute: Keep your device names intuitive and descriptive!
To hear Brent’s question in full, as well as our discussion on the topic, tune in to the IoT Podcast below:
We use voice control a lot, both Echo and Siri. (We tried using Google, but it kept trying to guess what group a device should be in with results we weren’t happy with.)
We have a lot of different kinds of names and haven’t run into the problems that you indicated. We have one smart plug named “Melvin,” a scene named “ Tango,” another scene named “whiskey,“ a light named “Signal“, etc.
For guests, it’s easy. They just say “Alexa, turn on the lights“ or “Alexa, turn off the lights” in any room and that takes care of the basic issue.
We get a lot of use out of echo groups. For example, there is a small room in our house that one of us calls “the den,“ another calls “the office,“ and the third calls “the study.” We all realize what the others mean. So we just created three echo groups, one with each name, with the same devices in each group, and that takes care of it.
We have generally avoided putting the room name into the device name, because that can trip up both Echo and Siri. We find it better to make the the room name a group or room.
But as someone who is very much dependent on voice (I am quadriparetic), I have found over the last few years that different people have different strategies, and the trick is just to find the one that works for your house. Something that people will find intuitive and that whoever is responsible for system maintenance can work with.
We have found that both Siri and Echo benefit from doing the voice training. My voice slurs when I am tired, and this made a huge difference in the ability of the voice assistance to understand me. But doing the training resolved most of that.
Ye olde KISS principle is at play even with high tech – especially, perhaps.
I recently encountered a slight problem when I named the stove hood light, ¨Stove¨. On occasion (~1in10) Googleś AI will politely inform me that the stove is not currently a controllable appliance.