Anyone using Shelly devices?

[Carrerahill]

Someone on this forum was using Shelly1PM for MVHR control with fire detection for automatic shutdown in the event of a fire.

 

Anyway - I have bought several of these and I suspect I am now at an advanced level as more or less anything I want them to do now I can do, but I am struggling as there really is only very limited information from trawling through the internet for days! 

 

Basically I want to look into MQTT linking of two units, or using the actions setting and have them host their own network.

 

This is what I am trying to do:

 

I want to have a Shelly1 behind a retractive switch, this switch will connect to the input of the shelly. This device will simply be powered and control nothing itself locally. I want it to speak to a second Shelly some 4-5m away so that when the Shelly gets a switch pulse from the retractive switch it actually controls the relay on the remote Shelly. I need to be able to deliver from a single blip to a long press-and-hold. 

 

I have got that working using Scene rules and it does work, but it is too slow, I have read that linking them directly will have a reaction time of ms - that is ideal.

 

My alternative option is to buy a little remote control unit with a momentary relay and a little fob, press the button, relay actuates... it's just not that clever or neat a solution and means losing keyfobs unless I hack the fob and solder the button pins to a faceplate switch - but then I still have fob batteries to replace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MikeSharp01]

1 hour ago, Carrerahill said:

but it is too slow,

By slow what do you mean - seconds or just too many Milliseconds?

[Carrerahill]

54 minutes ago, MikeSharp01 said:

By slow what do you mean - seconds or just too many Milliseconds?

Probably well onto the seconds scale.

 

As I have it linked and setup just now, if I close the switch contacts on "Device 1" within about 1 second "Device 2" will also come on, if I open the switch contacts on "Device 1", then "Device 2" will follow within about 1 second - so sounds quick enough sure and that would be perfect if I just wanted to for example control several lighting circuits from a single switch or something while retaining individual control etc. but I need to be able to use the relay to go closed circuit for perhaps a single 250ms button pulse say within a 150ms tolerance. 

 

At the moment if I close the switch contacts on "Device 1" for say 250-500ms then it doesn't even register on "Device 2" so too slow and they are side by side!

 

According to this page (https://shelly.cloud/support/direct-device-to-device-communication-ddd/) if you use DDD (Direct Device to Device) then the "speech" is extremely fast - just a few milliseconds. Sounds good to me.

 

But I cannot get these actions to work.

 

As I see if if I take the "Button Swiched on URL" and make that the IP address of the device I want to control I would make that: http://192.168.0.13/Red/0?turn=on - now assuming that syntax is correct then my thinking is that my device which is online and was at 192.168.0.13 would have come on - not a chirp.

 

OK - so thinking about it all, first these 2 devices must be on the same network obviously, so they were both on the home wi-fi - both therefore I know could see each other as they were talking to each other. So I can only assume that the code is wrong. 

 

Then this got me thinking, that means this setup needs to sit on a WiFi network - routers changes, wifi drops out etc. so I was aiming to run them on their own little network - so I set one up as a wifi access point, I can then connect my iPad to its own wifi network and navigate to its little web-server and take command of it via 192.168.33.1 - I could then connect my iPad to the the wifi network of the second device and I could have then linked it to the wifi network of the first device - see where I am going? However, I had a sudden through before I hit yes - how would I then ever connect to that device again? My thinking was that if I then connected to the network formed of the first device, I would be able to see the second device also connected to it and presumably issued with it's own IP address from device 1 - but I wouldn't know what that IP address was and I am not sure how I would locate it as the discover app might not see it - that would then potentially give me a bricked Shelly!

 

Now, I have looked into MQTT stuff and I understand that I could ping MQTT commands about from home automation software and that is something I am interested in for my own house (can anyone recommend good free software for this - Home Assistant? But otherwise how do I create and broadcast MQTT commands? 

 

Also, I want to make this 2 device setup as standalone as possible - so I like the idea of pre-configuring them on their own little wifi network then as soon as they power up they should just work.

 

I need to make 4 of these sets.

Edited February 20, 2020 by Carrerahill

[MikeSharp01]

Sounds like the switch is polled too slowley or not latched on the input. Can the device it is connected to see the short pulse? Do you want to sent a 250ms pulse or an on / off command as they are different things realy. 

[Carrerahill]

57 minutes ago, MikeSharp01 said:

Sounds like the switch is polled too slowley or not latched on the input. Can the device it is connected to see the short pulse? Do you want to sent a 250ms pulse or an on / off command as they are different things realy. 

It will vary, I just need speed for the quick pulses, but there will also be the time when I need maybe a 2-5 second relay closed operation the relay is feeding into a control circuit and there is no way to wire it, so I need a wireless option and if I use Shelly units it allows for some other features.