Add configuration option to prepend area name to entity name

[loopj]

Describe the problem

There seem to be two main object naming strategies in Design Center, namely:

1. Full, descriptive names, e.g. "Living Room Cans"
2. Short names, relying on the enclosing area to provide context, e.g. "Cans"

Home Assistant entities are currently created by taking the literal name directly from the Vantage object, meaning if your Vantage objects naming takes the latter approach, it is highly likely you will end up with many "duplicate" entity names. Eg. lights.cans and Home Assistant will append numbers to the end to keep them unique, eg light.cans_1, light.cans_2, etc.

When writing scripts or creating automations, these entity names can be annoying!

Describe the solution you'd like

Given these two divergent naming strategies, I propose adding a configuration option in the Config Flow, something like Include area name in entity name.

Enabling this option would generate the entity name light.living_room_cans for a Vantage object named "Cans" in an area named "Living Room".

Keeping this option disabled would continue to use the original object name.

For illustration purposes:

Vantage Area	Vantage Object Name	HA Entity Name (Option Disabled)	HA Entity Name (Optional Enabled)
Living Room	Cans	light.cans	light.living_room_cans
Living Room	Lamps	light.lamps	light.living_room_lamps
Living Room	Living Room Cans	light.living_room_cans	light.living_room_living_room_cans
Living Room	Living Room Lamps	light.living_room_lamps	light.living_room_living_room_lamps
Bedroom	Chandelier	light.chandelier	light.bedroom_chandelier
Bedroom	Bedroom Chandelier	light.bedroom_chandlier	light.bedroom_bedroom_chandlier

There are "clever" approaches we could use, like detecting if the area name is already present in the object name, and prepending the area name if it is not, but these "clever" approaches always seem to be a recipe for disaster.

Additional context

No response

Checklist

• This only contains 1 feature request (if you have multiple feature requests, open one feature request for each feature request).
• This issue is not a duplicate of previous feature requests.

[colohan]

On addition I'd put here: (Note I'm just kibitzing, as I've already renamed all my objects in my house by hand, but I think this would be useful for new users.)

In my Vantage config I have a hierarchy of Areas: My house is called "Colohan", and I have the subareas "Basement", "Main", "Upper", "Exterior", and "Garage". Then in those subareas I have rooms. So I have a bathroom in the basement which is Basement/Bath, and also a bathroom on the main floor which is Main/Bath. So in my ideal world lights in those rooms would get named light.basement_bath_cans and light.main_bath_cans with the option enabled.

But I know that Greg is the one with a huge Vantage config he has not yet converted to this new setup, so he might have more detailed opinions -- I've pinged him offline so he can offer comment.

[loopj]

Thanks Chris!

Given I'm making this configurable anyway, maybe having three options for entity naming would make sense?

1. Flat naming - just use object name, eg. light.cans, "Cans"
2. Area naming - prepend containing area, eg. light.living_room_cans, "Living Room Cans"
3. Hierarchical naming - prepend the area tree, eg. light.main_living_room_cans, "Main/Living Room Cans"

My Vantage setup has "full" names for each object already, (eg. "Living Room Cans") so I would chose option 1.

[colohan]

That would work for me.

[gjbadros]

hey @loopj, I'd love to switch to your vantage hass module at some point and for my complex setup, the relatively simple solution I adopted in https://github.com/gjbadros/hass-vantage is #3 with an additional name_mappings dict that shortens area names to make them less overwhelming. For me, I'd want to specify (just part of my config):

naming_strategy: hierarchical
name_mappings:
  - area: "main house"
    to: MH
  - area: "pool house"
    to: PH
  - area: "basement"
    to: B
  - area: "main floor"
    to: M

Where it's worthy of note that the first level in the area hierarchy is "Main House" vs. "Pool House" and the second level is "basement" vs. "main floor".

The code that does this in the original https://github.com/gjbadros/pyvantage (the python module that supports hass-vantage -- analogous to your aiovantage) is around lines 1188-1204 (if self._hierarchical_names:).

Without the opportunity to appropriately abbreviate area names, your options #2 and #3 might loose a bunch of their value because the name length could get overwhelming. Allowing unabridged area names in Vantage Design Center with short device names there, and then creating an unambiguous abridged hierarchical name for hass via this dictionary would be pretty general and powerful without a lot of work.

[stevespaw]