Improve the naming of the device / D-Bus service

[mpvader]

Right now we only use the product name in the pulldown (see screenshot). Adding the connection or something could help. Perhaps use a dual line per entry html pulldown, so the connection can be on its own line?

root@beaglebone:~# dbus -y  com.victronenergy.temperature.builtin_adc3_di1 /Mgmt/Connection GetValue
value = 'Temperature sensor input 2'

[pkronstrom]

It is indeed a challenge to identify services from each other (for a user, that is). Here's a few thoughts on this.

Currently a custom name is shown for each device -- if it is not set, the dropdown label falls back to the product name, which leads to ambiguity in the dropdowns.

I don't really think that showing the dbus service identifier would work here, since the user can't use ttyO0 / ttyO1 / ttyO2 etc. to actually identify similar devices from each other. If the user actually has several devices of the same type, I would just encourage them to add a custom name from the settings.

Using the /Mgmt/Connection might work as a solution, but is it common for similar devices to use different connection methods? I fear, that for e.g. battery monitors the labels would still stay indistinguishable: BMV-700 (VE.Direct), BMV-700 (VE.Direct), etc. Yet again, setting a CustomName works here.

What comes to dual-line dropdowns, it's not the fastest tweak to implement since node-red has some custom built-in logic in the way the native dropdowns work. Adding a dropdown that supports multiple line options requires an external dependency (e.g. bootstrap dropdowns), which requires either adding additional static file routes or a lot of custom js/css and 'manually re-wiring' the loading / saving dropdown data to the nodes.

[pkronstrom]

Something like this should be quite quick to add, if we want to show some service-specific data for the selected service. The line could be 'BMV-702 (HQ1350QEFNR) on VE.Direct' for example.

[mpvader]

Hm; cross post. I’ll remove my previous comment.

Ok that will help. But; please do check whats under /Mgmt/Connection for a bmv on a VE.Direct port. Is it really just “VE.Direct”? No port number, nothing?

I’d preft not to show the service name

[pkronstrom]

Ok that will help. But; please do check whats under /Mgmt/Connection for a bmv on a VE.Direct port. Is it

For both simulations and our physical BMV-712: "/Mgmt/Connection": "VE.Direct"

Edit:

• For tanks, it's actually showing the input number 'Tank Level sensor input 1'
• For vebus devices it's 'VE.Bus'

[mpvader]

Ok thats too bad.

Then, what about just showing a tip, and only show it if multiple options in the dropdown have the same exact string as a name?

“Tip: go into the menus and set a Custom name to easily distinguish one device from the other.”

[pkronstrom]

The following tip is shown if multiple devices with the same name are shown in the edit UI.

[mpvader]

👍

[pkronstrom]

Merged to master