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[Declan52]

18 minutes ago, SimonD said:

Just tought I'd post an update in case there's an interest here. Unfortunately, I've not experienced a great introduction to the Shelly stable of IoT ?

 

I bought 3 of the humidity sensors plus a couple of other items from Shelly and received them during the week. Setup was flaky, requiring several attempts to get them online. Eventually I got them online and placed them in some test locations to see what happened. I wanted to test reporting frequency and wifi capability. 2 of the 3 reported mesasurement for up to about 8 hours, then went to sleep and I had no means of waking them up to change sensor settings or force a report. Then, during the night, they went offline. Interestingly, I had two units placed next to each other and the other unit carried on reporting back.

 

When these units go offline, I could find no way of getting them back online without having to physical reset the units and go through the process of re-adding them to the app and home wifi network and then the cloud. This time it again took several attempts to do it successfully.

 

I've also tried configuring the sensors through their own wifi access point, but they have a tendency to go to sleep while I'm either connecting to them or using the http interface.

 

So now I've placed the sensors in other locations and for 24 hours they been running fine and report at fairly regular intervals. Unfortunately it seems that Shelly have updated the app/http interface and configuration access to the H & T units such that I'm not able to easily set a reporting frequency. In their manual, it shows this option and I wanted to have them report back on a 24 hour basis, but the app and http interface only allows me to set reporting based on temp and humidity change thresholds. The other thing I can't work out is how to wake the things up. When I've tried to change thresholds for temp and humidity the app tells me the sensor will update when it next wakes up or that I can do this manually within the app, but there is no option anywhere in the app or http interface where I can force this (that I've been able to find).

 

I don't think it's the sensors themselves that are the problem, more that it's the app/interface  and poor documentation available from Shelly. I can very much see what they're trying to achieve and maybe I just need a bit more time playing around to understand what's going on. I am somewhat wondering if there's a way to hardwire these using the pinout instead, or just going down the route of Raspberry Pi where I've got better access to support and assistance.

 

Meanwhile, I was tempted by Shelly's other offerings so I am playing around with some other ideas - nothing like scope creep!

 

Anyway, work in progress ?

 

 

 

 

There is a very good help page for Shelly's on Facebook that the inventor takes part in. 

[James Newport]

1 hour ago, SimonD said:

I bought 3 of the humidity sensors plus a couple of other items from Shelly and received them during the week. Setup was flaky, requiring several attempts to get them online

I ditched using their app to set them up and always just go direct to the Shelly's IP address and set things up there. The battery powered humidity sensors do go to sleep quickly, but there's a button inside the you can use to wake them up.

 

They're designed to only report when there are changes in temperature or humidity. So if nothing has changed they will stay asleep. I'm not sure if this is the same if they are powered via USB. 

 

You can put the open source tasmota firmware on the Shelly 1 switch if you're not getting on well with the stock firmware. So far I haven't needed to do this. 

[James Newport]

1 hour ago, SimonD said:

When I've tried to change thresholds for temp and humidity the app tells me the sensor will update when it next wakes up or that I can do this manually within the app, but there is no option anywhere in the app or http interface where I can force this (that I've been able to find).

In case you haven't found it, there's an API which is documented here

https://shelly-api-docs.shelly.cloud/

 

I don't think you'll be able to wake the device up remotely. If it's asleep then there's nothing listing for API requests, which is what the app uses to communicate with it. 

[SteamyTea]

9 hours ago, SimonD said:

if there's a way to hardwire these using the pinout instead

Do you know what sensor the Shelly uses?

I suspect it is a DHT22.

[SimonD]

On 20/08/2021 at 13:42, Declan52 said:

There is a very good help page for Shelly's on Facebook that the inventor takes part in. 

 Cheers for this. I don't used Facebook and I have a pathological allergy to any tech company which decides to outsource the hosting of a forum to somewhere else where they lose control over their data and access. Sorry, I am a bit of a Facebook activist ?

 

Thanks to the API link from @James Newport I did actually find another link to a different user and developer forum Shelly has created to move activity away from Facebook, which is a positive move, it's here: https://www.shelly-support.eu/index.php?dashboard-en/ . I'll be putting some questions up there soon.

 

On 20/08/2021 at 14:59, James Newport said:

I ditched using their app to set them up and always just go direct to the Shelly's IP address and set things up there

 

I think that's very sensible. Shelly app partially redeemed itself for me the latter part of the weekend, but then on Monday/Tuesday started to go flaky again. It actually started to report humidity and temp readings from 2 sensors I'd disconnected and one I taken apart to look inside!

 

On 20/08/2021 at 14:59, James Newport said:

I'm not sure if this is the same if they are powered via USB. 

 

I've just found out from the user forum that if the HT sensor is set to external power supply then it'll report every 10 minutes (well, I'll need to test this ?). My experience so far is that the usb powered unit works somewhat better than when it's battery powered and I suspect this is down to energy saving measures. I've found that if the unit goes offline, the usb unit reliably comes back online without a reset but the battery one sometimes needs resetting completely. Re the sleeping issue, there was a note on the forum link above that the HT sensor needs to sleep a lot to stop it from heating up. I've attached a photo where the manual claims that sensor reporting can be set to time intervals. I'll have to ask them where this has gone.

 

 

It does seem, that as you say, I can only wake the device up physically using the button on the unit. I clearly misinterpreted the warning message I received.

 

On 20/08/2021 at 22:50, SteamyTea said:

Do you know what sensor the Shelly uses?

I suspect it is a DHT22.

I don't. I've taken one of the units apart and think I've identified the humidity sensor on the board. It does look a bit like the sensor component used in some of the DHT22 internals where I've been able to find images, but really can't be sure (I've lost my large magnifying glass so i can't read any of the identifiers on the other compenents either).

 

For my needs to have sensors sitting under the floor, I've now got in some pre wired and caged SHT30 and SHT31s. I'm fitting those into the under floor space and will connect them up to a Pi when I've got more time. This, I think, is the more robust, long term solution.

 

@James Newport you were spot on with your initial assessment that the Shelly sensors probably weren't ideal for my intended use, but they were definitely worth a try for this. Meanwhile, I do have some other needs that they're going to be ideal for, especially heating and lighting control in my wife's garden office, so thanks for the heads up on these!

Edited August 25, 2021 by SimonD

[James Newport]

31 minutes ago, SimonD said:

For my needs to have sensors sitting under the floor, I've now got in some pre wired and caged SHT30 and SHT31s. I'm fitting those into the under floor space and will connect them up to a Pi when I've got more time. This, I think, is the more robust, long term solution.

 

I've used the Shelly 1 switch linked to temperature sensors wired under the floors, and it's pretty robust. Doesn't support the SHT30 or SHT31s you mention though. 

 

I occasionally have to cycle power on one of my Shelly switches when it loses wifi connectivity. 

 

38 minutes ago, SimonD said:

I've just found out from the user forum that if the HT sensor is set to external power supply then it'll report every 10 minutes (well, I'll need to test this ?)

This might be true. I've just checked out the temperature graphs from my Shelly HTs, and the ones connected via USB report far more temperature changes in small increments, compared to the ones on battery only.