Generic switch names show up in Rule creator and control center

Attila,

I understand what you are showing me. My devices are assigned to rooms and scenes.

You guys need to publish a manual that describes all this.

I'm not an IT professional and I feel like I need to be one to set up your Zipatile and use it. I would rather have someone explain what an endpoint is and how the tree for the devices work than submitting a ticket and having someone do it for me. I won't learn to do this with the next switch I add if someone does it for me. Does that make sense?

Thanks,

Alex

Alex, it makes sense. We all learned what and how we could. Not everything is documented, some things you will need to figure out yourself (with the help of community of course).

Attila,

That is not a good enough answer. This Zipatile cost a lot of money and to say its OK that documentation is lacking is frankly ridiculous.

Please don't misunderstand me, I think the Zipatile is a great product with a lot of potential and everyone has been very helpful in support when I file a ticket. I just seems to me that you need to be an IT professional to use and set it up.

How can I get help from the community when you mark my question as answered when it is not? No one will respond with any input. That is why I posted the question here on the community. To get help.

Alex

double post deleted

Hi Alex, Only Zipato internal team can mark any post as answered and Im not one of them. Guess they were thinking the answer is good enough.

To be perfectly honest, you are not the only one that is asking for documentation and guides. The thing is that the whole system is so huge that they are not capable to do a guide for everything. This is why not everything is documented. On top of this when they are loaded with buds, they do not cope with the normal work they need to do and then this is what happens. And on top of this they are trying to implement new features...so it is a never-ending story...

Zipato has ten-thousands of controllers sold and it is a huge platform.

Understand that this is not good enough answer for you, but hey-ho, we are all community members and we are helping as and when we can.

And even we have unanswered questions and tickets open. Just ask Alberto or David...

Agree with Attila, and what I was trying to explain below. Attila, David and some others are recognized as Power Users by Zipato due expertise on Zipato system and time invested to help others in this forum, we are the first ones to request information to Zipato and even create guides for others to follow, we don't get paid to help or to defend Zipato's issues. We will gladly help on what we can, just keep that in mind.

I don't have comprehensive knowledge of other controllers, but I feel like the whole sector is in a beta phase of development. Generally speaking, these are not consumer-friendly products that will start doing what you want five minutes after you get them out of the box (or even five hours, or perhaps five days...). I'm not sure whether home automation will ever be like that, given the infinite number of combinations of devices and rules. Definitely, more documentation would be good. But I've accepted that things would probably not be better with other controllers (some require much more low-level programming than the Zipabox does).

It seems to me like Attila was probably on the right track as regards your problem - it happened to me at the beginning and it's confusing.

(Zipato could and should fix this by applying the name you input when adding the device to all the levels in the device tree, surely?)

Or you can use CTRL+SHIFT+3 and via the advanced device manager assign name and room to each device and level as you require.

what is this ctrl shift 3?

Adrian you haven't hear of it? Cant believe but hey-ho, we all learn at some stage. It is the advanced device manager that opens up a big window of all devices. It allows for a lot quicker configuration of all devices and endpoints. Give it a try and you'll see. Definitely useful for your company in the future...

Hey, what is your strategy at installations? Install it first at client home and configure, or first configure in advance, install in place and do network heal? 'Due to my previous experience I'm inclined to do the 2nd option as it allows for 1st stage error finding before even at customer premises...Let me know.

Never heard of it either! Looks interesting.

While we're mentioned rooms, is there any way to rename a room? I somehow ended up with two Main Bedrooms.

Not that I've ever found rooms to have any practical purpose...

Rooms have practical use on the android or iOS apps. You can allocate all wrongly associated devices to the correct room and after remove the wrong room via API call. delete /rooms/{room}

And how do you use them on the Android app?

The problem is, I don't know which Main Bedroom is the right one because they have the same name :-)

I'd have to create a new "Good Main Bedroom", reassign all devices, then delete both Main Bedrooms, and then create another Main Bedroom, reassign and delete "Good Main Bedroom". Rather a lot of work...

Would devices/rename work with a room, once you have the ID?

It's much easier than I thought. If a room is no longer in use, it's automatically deleted. I found a device assigned to the second of my Main Bedrooms, and reassigned it to the first. And the second Main Bedroom disappeared - it was the only device using it.

Hey Attila, firstly thank you for the advanced window option. This is great. I'll ask Seb why I haven't told of this one.

And yes i use the second option. It allows the configuration and setup of a system from the comfort of the office, plus fault find/replace bad devices. Then we label items and post off with a detailed location plan to the electrician installing. Then we can follow a day or 2 later and finish setup or re add devices that drop offline. Of course every job is different. Sometimes we can avoid going to site if the electrician is familiar with our products (not likely in Australia)

Hi Adrian. Thx for the info. Makes sense.

Thanks for the hint (CTRL+SHIFT+3) looks like a good tool, shouldn't be a secret though...

Great to learn abour CTRL SHIFT 3 ....

infinite loop - on cluster with 3 controllers and 90 devices