Just for clarity, when you use “Add Equipment to Model” to create Items, you get to choose the location and enter the name and label of the Equipment. All of the Item names, by default, become <EquipmentName>_<ChannelName>. The label of the Items by default are the Channel Labels.
And while the Item name cannot be easily changed short of deleting and recreating, there are fewer and fewer cases in the UI where the name of the Item even matters. It’s the label that is the primary thing shown, not the Item name. And the label can be changed at any time. The only times you need the Item name is when you are directly referencing an Item in a script/rule or a UI widget when editing the YAML. In all other cases you have a selection box where you will primarily see the Item’s label.
One place this falls down though is if you have a bunch of the same device and you do not add something to the Item labels to make it clear which device goes with which Item you run into a case where you have a bunch of “Mode” labeled Items which are hard to tell apart in certain places in the UI.
I’m not saying this is the ultimate best way to do things, but it’s not as bad as it’s made out to be.
I’m not saying this is you @iLion, but in general I get frustrated when people who do not use the UI complain about how hard something is to do in the UI because they gave it half a glance a couple years ago. If working in the UI were anything as bad as it’s made out to be, I certainly wouldn’t be using it exclusively. I’m patient but not that patient.
For completeness, here is the flow, with pictures, to go from Thing discovery to UI representations in the Overview tabs.
I’m assuming at least the Locations in the Semantic Model are already created.
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Navigate to Settings → Things → + → binding → Scan (note some bindings will scan periodically and discover stuff on their own).
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Pick one or add them all at once. You can change the label for the Thing now.
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There is room for improvement between the previous step and this step. Now we’ve returned to the Things page. Scroll down or search for your new Thing and select it. Click on the Channels Tab and click “Add Equipment to Model”. (Improvements: automatically offer to add equipment to model, automatically select the Thing after adding it, default to the Channels tab as the default).
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Select the Location. Enter a meaningful name for the Equipment. Select the Channels desired or select them all. Modify the Items properties as desired. Note that the semantic tags can impact the widgets that will appear by default for that Item. Often a reasonable default is chosen.
If clicking and selecting awkward for you, there is expert mode:
Once all is as you like it click add and you’re Items are created. You can now find them on the Overview tabs.
I kind of randomly selected some semantic tags without paying attention. I should have chosen a point tag of Switch for the Mute Item. Except for the Thing UID and the Item Names, everything shown above can be changed after this step.
At this point we have a mostly reasonable config with minimal work. Can this be improved? Absolutely! But this is the base that we should be working from. And that’s why I posted this. How do we automate more of this choosing reasonable defaults for things like Item names and labels? How do we make these steps more obvious?
And I’ll close with the following observation. KNX, Generic MQTT, HTTP, Exec, Serial, and Modbus (perhaps more) are not typical add-ons. These are low level bindings that require significant amounts of manual configuration and outside knowledge. While experiences with these are valid and should be addressed, saying “openHAB is too hard because it’s hard to configure a Generic MQTT Thing” kind of ignores all the great things that happen with technologies where devices can be auto-discovered, sometimes even without manually configuring a Bridge Thing.
If you want to compare between OH and HA, make it apples to apples. Show the same technology in both.