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Question of the Day: Which South African brand or product do you wish would make a return?
Home Automation - Smartkit
- Thread starter Dolby
- Start date
All working - but not quite as I thought.
Wire 2 above moves to O on Shelley
SW on Shelly goes to2 above.
I now have working Shelly and two physical switches.
I also discovered that second switch in the pictures I posted is on a different circuit :/
alqassam
Expert Member
- Joined
- Aug 11, 2014
- Messages
- 4,254
- Reaction score
- 828
Did it bite you
Yip... bit of a zap... would love to know wtf that switch is for.
SauRoNZA
Honorary Master
Tried to PM you twice, don't know what happened - Tapatalk was acting up yesterday?
I still have your two Shellys.
Send me a delivery address and an email.
Awesome, sending PM now.
Stock... Working fine with HA and MQTT, so no need to flash for me.
So far I definitely prefer these over Sonoff for my use case.
SauRoNZA
Honorary Master
Oh right I forgot it does MQTT out of the box.
I probably wouldn’t have any reason to flash either then.
SauRoNZA
Honorary Master
If there’s one area that desperately needs IoT it’s hospitals.
I cannot fathom why every monitor and drip machine isn’t wireless and phones home to a central area with updates instead of the ancient and broken concept of incessant audible beeps that nursing staff ignore and drives patients batshit insane.
I cannot fathom why every monitor and drip machine isn’t wireless and phones home to a central area with updates instead of the ancient and broken concept of incessant audible beeps that nursing staff ignore and drives patients batshit insane.
ToxicBunny
Oi! Leave me out of this...
In the more high tech hospitals this is the case.... probably a few in this country, but they're the exception.
SauRoNZA
Honorary Master
Yeh I’m sure it exists.
In fact I’m sure most of the kit I’ve seen here would support it.
Just annoys the **** out of me.
Sparkz0629
Expert Member
So considering i was one of the lucky ones to be included in the Shelly "promo" of sorts, I figured a review would be cool for the others.
First Impressions:
These things are small. I know a lot of people have mentioned that online, but you don't really appreciate it until you take it out of its box.
It also feels really solid, and you have to break a glue seal to actually open it (I opened it purely out of curiosity).
Wiring this up was super simple. Certainly not as simple as a Sonoff which required 2 wires in and 2 wires out, but the layout is straight forward if you take a look at online diagrams.
To test it, I chose to go 2 routes. One via the "standard" process (standard firmware, using the Shelly Cloud App) and the second with custom firmware (Tasmota).
Standard Firmware:
Once connected to power, it spawns a hotspot called "shelly1_xxxxx" which you connect to, and then switch back to the app on your phone. The app is quite detailed in the process to follow to set it up.
The app asks for your wifi details (This is a bit painful to do it multiple times, and make sure you type it correctly. Sonoff definitely has a better process for this), and then uploads them to the device.
It then restarts the shelly switch and your phone reconnects to your wifi.
Your Shelly switch then appears on the app. Nice and simple.
The Shelly Cloud app is really nice. Super polished. It has all the usual functions like rooms, groups, scenes, automations etc.
It also supports OTA updates from the get go.
You can select either Shelly Cloud or Local for the switch. This is great if you only want local access to your switch and its not exposed to the internet.
A nice feature is that you can set a static IP for your Shelly from the app, which is super convenient.
You can also configure the Power On modes. This will define how the switch behaves on power up. Options are "On", "Off" and "Previous State".
You can also do a full factory reset, which is great for test devices where you need to reset before setting them up.
The scheduling via the app is very granular. You can set up multiple schedules, and for each schedule you can define specific days and times for when the switch should toggle on/off.
The Shelly Cloud App also has a super cool feature: Alarm Zones.
If you have motion sensors (Shelly Branded i can only assume) you can arm and disarm your "alarm" which then alerts you if there was motion or not.
You can also specify the switch type. This caters for the traditional "rocker" switch with fixed on/off sides (And reversing of these), momentary/push type ,edge , activation and detached switches.
My app popped up an error when i tried to select either Activation or Detached switches, but i didn't look into this very much.
There is also a web portal that gets hosted on the switch. This has all the same functionality as the app with the exception of groups, rooms and scenes. It is very neat and works great.
I then wired in a physical switch and tested this out a few times. It worked perfectly out the box and no weird behaviour was found.
Please don't judge my wiring.
This was just for testing purposes and it definitely won't be installed like this.
Tasmota
I then removed all the wires and got ready to flash it with Tasmota.
This fought me a little as a couldn't immediately figure out how to get it into flashing mode.
After googling around a little, I found out you need to ground GPIO0 on startup and then it boots into flash mode.
Once this hurdle was passed, the flashing process was painfree.
It then boots up as per any tasmota sonoff device. I connected to the IP and set the module as a shelly1 and it automatically accepted all switch input etc.
I also configured it in my HA instance and it was seamless.
I certainly wouldn't say it is a replacement for a sonoff basic as they each serve their own purpose. For what i want to use them for (I'm going to put them in the ceiling to switch my lights) they will be perfect as i dont need to run extra cables to my switches etc.
Overall I'm super happy with this purchase. I would definitely recommend these to others.
Super amped to get all mine rigged up. Hopefully soon.
@phaktza and @Dolby , thanks for the fantastic service and getting these delivered super quick.
Certainly happy that you guys decided to setup Smartkit...
First Impressions:
These things are small. I know a lot of people have mentioned that online, but you don't really appreciate it until you take it out of its box.
It also feels really solid, and you have to break a glue seal to actually open it (I opened it purely out of curiosity).
Wiring this up was super simple. Certainly not as simple as a Sonoff which required 2 wires in and 2 wires out, but the layout is straight forward if you take a look at online diagrams.
To test it, I chose to go 2 routes. One via the "standard" process (standard firmware, using the Shelly Cloud App) and the second with custom firmware (Tasmota).
Standard Firmware:
Once connected to power, it spawns a hotspot called "shelly1_xxxxx" which you connect to, and then switch back to the app on your phone. The app is quite detailed in the process to follow to set it up.
The app asks for your wifi details (This is a bit painful to do it multiple times, and make sure you type it correctly. Sonoff definitely has a better process for this), and then uploads them to the device.
It then restarts the shelly switch and your phone reconnects to your wifi.
Your Shelly switch then appears on the app. Nice and simple.
The Shelly Cloud app is really nice. Super polished. It has all the usual functions like rooms, groups, scenes, automations etc.
It also supports OTA updates from the get go.
You can select either Shelly Cloud or Local for the switch. This is great if you only want local access to your switch and its not exposed to the internet.
A nice feature is that you can set a static IP for your Shelly from the app, which is super convenient.
You can also configure the Power On modes. This will define how the switch behaves on power up. Options are "On", "Off" and "Previous State".
You can also do a full factory reset, which is great for test devices where you need to reset before setting them up.
The scheduling via the app is very granular. You can set up multiple schedules, and for each schedule you can define specific days and times for when the switch should toggle on/off.
The Shelly Cloud App also has a super cool feature: Alarm Zones.
If you have motion sensors (Shelly Branded i can only assume) you can arm and disarm your "alarm" which then alerts you if there was motion or not.
You can also specify the switch type. This caters for the traditional "rocker" switch with fixed on/off sides (And reversing of these), momentary/push type ,edge , activation and detached switches.
My app popped up an error when i tried to select either Activation or Detached switches, but i didn't look into this very much.
There is also a web portal that gets hosted on the switch. This has all the same functionality as the app with the exception of groups, rooms and scenes. It is very neat and works great.
I then wired in a physical switch and tested this out a few times. It worked perfectly out the box and no weird behaviour was found.
Please don't judge my wiring.
This was just for testing purposes and it definitely won't be installed like this.Tasmota
I then removed all the wires and got ready to flash it with Tasmota.
This fought me a little as a couldn't immediately figure out how to get it into flashing mode.
After googling around a little, I found out you need to ground GPIO0 on startup and then it boots into flash mode.
Once this hurdle was passed, the flashing process was painfree.
It then boots up as per any tasmota sonoff device. I connected to the IP and set the module as a shelly1 and it automatically accepted all switch input etc.
I also configured it in my HA instance and it was seamless.
I certainly wouldn't say it is a replacement for a sonoff basic as they each serve their own purpose. For what i want to use them for (I'm going to put them in the ceiling to switch my lights) they will be perfect as i dont need to run extra cables to my switches etc.
Overall I'm super happy with this purchase. I would definitely recommend these to others.
Super amped to get all mine rigged up. Hopefully soon.
@phaktza and @Dolby , thanks for the fantastic service and getting these delivered super quick.
Certainly happy that you guys decided to setup Smartkit...
Thanks for the feedback! We are definitely moving ahead with Shelly, hopefully we can starting importing in a few short weeks
ToxicBunny
Oi! Leave me out of this...
Thanks for the review dude... makes me super keen to get my hands on my promo items ...
My use case is probably identical to yours really... automate lights, but still have functioning switches in the walls for the people who is technologically challenged
...My use case is probably identical to yours really... automate lights, but still have functioning switches in the walls for the people who is technologically challenged
