Proposal: Allow changing names through UI for MQTT Discovery about architecture

[balloob]

I think that this can easily be solved by allowing MQTT devices to specify a unique ID. That way they will end up in the Entity Registry and you can use the normal frontend flow for renaming entities.

The zigbee2mqtt project will be able to use Zigbee device serial numbers for unique IDs.

(this won't solve the services etc that @dgomes mentioned, but I think that is out of scope of the current discussion (and its own platform is probably best solution))

[dgomes]

I'm also involved in zigbee2mqtt and this is something that has also bother me.

Using HA MQTT discovery mechanism, zigbee2mqtt can already expose any supported paired device in HA upon successful pairing. This is great for users. Unfortunately the only manual step remaining is device naming that requires editing in zigbee2mqtt device database file in order to do the name mapping in zigbee2mqtt and save HA the trouble.

I've imagined possible integrations:

• sidestepping MQTT components and creating a parallel platform
  edit: this might come in the future since many zigbee device provide several "sensors" and even "services" that cannot currently be exposed. The most basic one being the battery level.
• adding the mentioned change (albeit home-assistant/core#13318 (comment))

[ciotlosm]

Thanks @dgomes, @OttoWinter and @balloob.