Thank you for continuing to pave the way with more effective and efficient solutions for our vans. I really appreciate you posting as much as you do on your vans. I leverage your solutions shamelessly..... I really like the case. How much for one? 😉 Why do you use an RJ port? Is it for portability?

I am just wrapping up my power and starting on the lights. In fact, I ordered a Shelly a couple of days ago so I have been searching for different solutions. Currently I was thinking of going Bluetooth with a clicker from Shelly for on/off.

Thanks again!

 

Thank you for continuing to pave the way with more effective and efficient solutions for our vans. I really appreciate you posting as much as you do on your vans. I leverage your solutions shamelessly..... I really like the case. How much for one? 😉 Why do you use an RJ port? Is it for portability?

I am just wrapping up my power and starting on the lights. In fact, I ordered a Shelly a couple of days ago so I have been searching for different solutions. Currently I was thinking of going Bluetooth with a clicker from Shelly for on/off.

Thanks again!

I'm happy to print a case or two if you like. That part is easy. Wiring them takes a bit more time; but printing is easy.

I used the RJ45 ports because it's easy to make it look clean and super-easy to then chain as many controls as one wants. So, for example, we've got: a panel of switches by the slider; another in the center of the van right by the tablet controls; another at the rear, up near the head of the bed; and another at the rear door by the garage. Just click in an Ethernet cable. I'll be running one or two of them on the separate I4DC controller just to avoid threading the Ethernet all the way around the van.

The Shelly buttons seem to work fine. They require a different script unless you use the cloud setup. I'm still working on how I'll use the buttons. I'd recommend hard-wiring at least one switch somewhere.

There are a couple of scripts and config things one has to do to get these working; but it takes minutes once someone points out the right direction to go and all that.

 

Great idea with the RJ45 to terminal block!
I have a similar shelly setup on the workbench ready to go in the van. The wiring is a rats nest currently. Using an ethernet cable for the trigger wires to the switches makes a ton of sense.
Thanks and keep up the good work!

 

Good information, keep posting you are big help.

 

Nice work, can't wait to see it in person

 

Not dependent on WiFi or Bluetooth or any other tech - works as if it's "dumb" while capable of more

Now you've got my attention.

Sorry if this seems overwhelming.

Well after reading late last night, old guy with thick cranium for techno/electro stuff says to himself, "need to get back to this tomorrow". After re-reading a couple times this morning with the assistance of coffee, I was able to connect the words to the pictures. Great design and documentation.

(I did not dig into the I4DC yet cuz 4 letter techno-acronyms scare me. RJ45 was enough for one day. Seriously, I had to do some research on how that little 2 port board ).

I do recall some comment you made on another post about the the small wire openings on that Shelly thing. Got any details on the wire and ferrule sizes you used?

 

Now you've got my attention.

Well after reading late last night, old guy with thick cranium for techno/electro stuff says to himself, "need to get back to this tomorrow". After re-reading a couple times this morning with the assistance of coffee, I was able to connect the words to the pictures. Great design and documentation.

(I did not dig into the I4DC yet cuz 4 letter techno-acronyms scare me. RJ45 was enough for one day. Seriously, I had to do some research on how that little 2 port board )

I didn't want to put too much techy stuff into this post. I'll keep the more techy-side of it in the Home Assistant thread. The good news is that I've modified the scripts so they are pretty plug-and-play - not much tech needed. Hm... actually... we need an entire section of the forum for this stuff; that thread is getting WAY out of control.

Anyway... the I4 is the Shelly "4 inputs" box/board. To make it work identically to the buttons/switches on an RGBWPM (or anything else) requires a script that interprets the inputs and sends them to the correct destination device/IP address. I'll be using I4s to have a handful of switches that actually send commands to other Shelly (or other) devices.

I'm going to take a couple of these units out of the box and try to document what it takes to get them to this functional point without any internet or WiFi in the van. That seems like the most, "wow, that works!"

 

I didn't want to put too much techy stuff into this post. I'll keep the more techy-side of it in the Home Assistant thread.

Funny. When you first mentioned your simple solution over there, the follow up comments/discussion went off into techno babble word pretty much immediately. 🤯 Yea I was sorta implying/guessing that was probably beyond my interest/capabilities.

BTW - I think added this question to my post after you read it.

I do recall some comment you made on another post about the the small wire openings on that Shelly thing. Got any details on the wire and ferrule sizes you used?

 

I do recall some comment you made on another post about the the small wire openings on that Shelly thing. Got any details on the wire and ferrule sizes you used?

No useful feedback on that. I've found that the smallest ferrules on really small wires don't stay on as well as I'd like - meaning the wires work better without them. And then there's slightly larger wires (#18 or so) that the ferrules won't fit into the Shelly... and I think it's better to go with a bare wire #18 than drop to #20 just to add a ferrule. Or do pigtails to Wagos as some folks do. So... more bare wires on the RGBW, basically.

 

More cool Shelly stuff!

Knocked out a weird little electronics thing on Monday before heading to the mountains: I prefer to have hard-wired, non-computerized control of as many things as possible... AND have them computer-controlled and - ideally - power-monitored as well.

I've got the lights all set up that way now - with four identical sets of four buttons for the four light zones in the van. But I wanted to get the appliances working as well.

So... I'd wired up six buttons to control stuff... and had it working but didn't like the lack of visual feedback. So I added LEDs for each switch then set up the programming so that the lights are on/off based on the controlled device activating them. And most of it works without external control.... just using the logic capacity in the Shelly devices and communicating directly to each other. Fun little project that I will continue to develop further, I think.

I need to do labels... the buttons control: espresso machine; cooktop; oven; water-heater; water-pump (shown ON below); and inverter (also ON below). The inverter control works through MQTT - currently through the computer but there MAY be a way to go directly to the Cerbo. And the light for that comes from Home Assistant seeing the Multiplus turn on then activating that light - so, generally, it's all "in sync" regardless of what control method is used.

Looks nice and simple:

Here was the back-side of it before I added the status lights:

The Shelly units are just stuffed in the back of the cabinet right now; but the next step will be to clean up the mess. Then I'll add some more photos.

 

Deleted question. I've been consumed with some urgent elderly parent care the last month and had not scrolled back in the thread sufficiently.

 

Deleted question. I've been consumed with some urgent elderly parent care the last month and had not scrolled back in the thread sufficiently.

Sorry to hear that, OCK. I hope things are going well... or smoothly, at least?

Yes, it is a little costly. I all most purchased one just to see if the terminals were any bigger then the one's on the shelly unit. Can't really tell from their documentation, they only state that etching and terminals are rated for 16 amps. That would be a plus if you were using larger gauge wire.

I'm not having TOO much trouble with larger wire - the RGBW-PM is limited to 4A per circuit, so... #18 is plenty for that.

I'm disappointed that I'm not getting any power monitoring in the units I'm using for 24VDC stuff... not sure why that is, though. I'd hoped it would give me the fridge power, but it's getting nothing. Well... I take that back, partially: the RGBW-PM I'm using for the Starlink (now controlling it as well as monitoring/metering) is working; but the same unit is used for the fridge and it's not registering voltage, let alone power/current/energy. Weird. I have the fridge on the 4th port... maybe I need to move it to the first port, like the Starlink is? 🤔

 

FWIW, here's the back of the 6-button panel for the galley. Using the dual-port RJ45s since that's what I had in the van at the time; it'd be better with the single-port ones, really (space-wise). Eventually, I'll get the Shelly side of it cleaned up and mounted then show photos of that as well. Basically, I'm using the RJ45s to make the panel removeable and keep the wiring on the Shelly side easier to deal with - wire it up well then can still move it around since only the power input is a fixed thing.

Another interesting thing that came from the galley install then I took it back to the light panels: I'm both indicating and controlling the Multiplus inverter for on/off since that's a bit of a power-draw and need not run when no-one is in the van.

The far-right switch on the galley panel is a toggle for the Multiplus - toggling between on and off (ignoring the options for charge-only and inverter-only). I decided to do that with a double-tap after accidentally shutting it off when I didn't mean to do so. Single tap on that same button toggles the lights at the front of the van. The double-tap works by sending an HTTP "web hook" command to the Home Assistant system for the toggle.

That turned out to be so much more convenient than using the Home Assistant or Cerbo Touchscreen, that I added a triple-tap ON and OFF to the center two buttons of the four-button light panel. So the light panels are now:

• single tap lights toggle for each zone;
• double-tap each light zone full-ON;
• triple-tap far-left for all-lights full-ON;
• triple-tap far-right for all-lights OFF;
• triple-tap #2 button for inverter-ON;
• triple-tap #3 button for inverter-OFF.

This setup makes it easy when exiting the slider to triple-tap all lights off (#4 button) and triple-tap the inverter off as well if desired (#3 button). And, of course, buttons are right there next to the slider as well as both sides of the rear doors. The rear ones are useful if I go to move the bed but the inverter is off: triple-tap #3 and the inverter turns on from outside the van in the rear.

At this point, I don't intend to replicate the galley panel anywhere else... but it could be convenient. We'll see.

 

Got labels on them. Not bad... but I think I need to be wearing my glasses next time... not very aligned!

 

If you have a WiFi network in your van, attach them to it. If you don't, then you run the first unit you put in (RGBWPM, for example) in "WiFi AP Mode"

I bought a PGBW PM and don't have a WiFi network in my van. I was hoping to use Bluetooth through the Shelly app (Much like the Victron stuff) to control everything but it looks like that's not supported. Maybe I'm dumber than a bag of doorknobs but..... I can't seem to figure out how to "Run the first unit in 'WiFi AP Mode'".

I have the Access Point Enabled but as soon as I disconnect the device from my home WiFi, the Shelly turns into a brick. I have to delete the device and re-add it through the app.

Any suggestions on how to run this thing without a WiFi network in the van?

Thanks heaps!

Edit:
I can connect my phone to the Shelly WiFi Access Point but the Shelly App just says "No Internet Connection". Opening up a browser and going to 192.168.33.1 works but now my phone needs to be connected to the Shelly WiFi access point which means I can't seamlessly use 5G. I know these are all first world problems but..... I was kinda expecting the Shelly App to seamlessly connect to the RGBW PM via bluetooth like the Victron stuff.

Edit 2:
Connecting to a hotspot on my phone doesn't work either.

 

The unit comes online in AP-mode. You connect to the RGBW-PM's own WiFi network to configure it. Once you connect to that with you phone, you should be able to run the Shelly app and talk to it. Okay... I see you've got that far. There's likely a setting on your phone to allow it to use both the WiFi and cellular at the same time; but it might be better / easier to do the below. (IOW, it's less about how the Shelly works and more about how your phone works at that point.)

If you prefer, you CAN put in your phone's hot-spot WiFi after you connect with the native mode and tell it to use that. Then you can use the app in that setup as well.

The app will detect the unit with Bluetooth, but it wants to talk to the Shelly servers to show up in the app as, "cloud connected," which is when you can do all the magical stuff with it. Once configured, the cloud/internet isn't required for all the basic functions.

For better or worse, it doesn't use/require BT for configs. While that is convenient with the Victron gear, I'm glad the Shellies aren't that way - don't need more BT crap in the van.

 

A day without a new bluetooth device installed is like a day without sunshine! This follows my saying from this fall when all the windows and vents went in.... "A day without Dicor is like a day without sunshine"

Seriously tho, thanks for the response. I was able to get the hotspot method working and think that will do for 99% of the use cases I have. Other than my preference for connecting, the whole system is pretty nice and will let me dim the puck lights and control the temperature / brightness of my toe kick strip lights all from one location. I did change the switches to be on the positive feed instead of using the I1-I4 inputs with the negative line. It was the only way I could get the switch lights to illuminate when they were on.

Thanks again!

 

Thanks to Greg and others who have provided the detailed explanations here. I bought a Shelly Plus RGBW PM and a strip of RGBW LED lights, and I have been tinkering around with them. For those like me who are not comfortable with electrical stuff, I put together a wiring diagram that might be useful.

The Shelly Plus RGBW PM that I purchased was setup in 4 light mode from the factory. I had to adjust its configuration in the settings via the Shelly smartphone app in order to enable RGBW mode.

These are the lights I purchased:
BTF-LIGHTING 5050 RGBW RGB+Warm White (2700K-3000K) 4 Colors in 1 LED Tape Light DC12V 5m 16.4ft 60LED/m Multi-Colored IP67 Black 14mm PCB for Bedroom Kitchen Home Decoration (No Adapter or Controller)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089Y4J37L

edit: I am an idiot! After all my tinkering, I ended up reproducing the Shelly wiring diagram. Sorry for the distraction.
A note about these lights is that the positive is common and the ground is color-specific. This does not match the wiring diagram in the Shelly manual, but I was able to get it to work as shown in my diagram below.

 

Interesting, as I'm using the same Shelly switch. But mine came set up in the RGBW mode, and I had to switch it over to 4-separate-lights mode. All monochrome. I'm using it to control the house lights, the lights in the electrical cabinet, and two others that I've yet to set up. For my purposes, the wiring diagrams from Shelly were spot-on, and I was able to set it all up with a minimum of bother. Plus, Shelly has spent many hours debugging the whole thing. My plan of having lighting controllable from both physical switches and from a computer is suddenly realized.

I'd been trying to create something equivalent with ESP32 boards, but Shelly has done much more than I could manage, and done it quite well. Several of my ESP32 projects are now scrapped, and I'm using Shelly switches instead. The ESP32 stuff was major fun, but the Shellies just work. And for the van, that's better.

 

For my purposes, the wiring diagrams from Shelly were spot-on, and I was able to set it all up with a minimum of bother.

Well, it turns out that it was spot-on for me, too, despite my best efforts to convince myself otherwise. I edited my post above. Sorry for the distraction!

 

I have the same Shelly Plus RGBW PM in 4 Light Mode and maybe I'm doing it wrong or don't understand DC power (prolly both) but.... I have switches with LEDs embedded in the switch - LED is on when the switch is on. If I wire the switches to the Shelly inputs (Lights x 4 option b) , the behavior of the controlled lights in the van is as expected. But..... the LED on the switch isn't illuminated. The only way I could get it to work as expected AND get the switch LEDs to illuminate was to ignore the I1-I4 inputs and put the switch on the + side of each of the 4 controlled van lights.

Am I missing something or just not understanding the use cases for all this?

 

the LED on the switch isn't illuminated

I have seen illuminated switches with three poles instead of two. One of the poles is specifically for the switch light. Maybe try one of those and supply +12V to the switch light.

 

Thx for the response. The switches I bought have a + terminal for the "Always on" LED (which I don't use) and a + terminal for the device. Unfortunately, the + terminal for the device also controls the LED when the switch is on. I could get different switches but it's really not a big deal for me to have the switch on + line for the van lights. I was just wondering if I had an incorrect view of how this should work. In the end, I'm just looking for remote dimming of several strings of white LEDs and I think this will still work fine for me.

 

In the end, I'm just looking for remote dimming of several strings of white LEDs and I think this will still work fine for me.

Yeah, the remote dimming (controlled by computer or phone or...) will work just fine. But making physical switches do the dimming requires rheostats or potentiometers. And I don't know how they'll interact with the remote settings. I suspect the Shelly switch will handle it nicely.

As for lighted switches, to have the light reflect the state of the LED string (not just the state of the switch), you need to get some feedback from the Shelly switch. If the lighted switch has a separate input for the light, you could connect that to LED string you're controlling.

 

Does anyone that has Shelly 'relay' actions setup observe times where the switch seems 'sleepy'?

I've got a Shelly Plus i4 DC setup with 4 momentary switches. One of the switches has 3 actions setup to toggle the lighting zone channels on a different Shelly Plus RGBW PM. Works great, most of the time.

If I walk up and poke the switch after "awhile" (several hours?), the actions seem to take 10x as long to occur and some are missed entirely. And then the zones are out of sync with each other as some have been toggled and others not.

I noticed for some Shelly's there is some "Eco" mode which is baffling to me. It's description sounds like nothing but upside so I can't understand why its even a settable option (i.e. why not just do that all the time if it has no downside?)

The van wifi the relay action goes through is all Peplink driven and always on. And I'm sure the Victron VRM stuff is chatty enough over it to keep anything over there from taking an unintended nap.

 

Does anyone that has Shelly 'relay' actions setup observe times where the switch seems 'sleepy'?
...

Turning off the "eco" was going to be my suggestion. But if you've already done that... more likely than not, it's a WiFi thing. I experienced some funkiness when I was first setting up the Shellies that way but it seemed to go away and not return after I got it all up and going.

FWIW, I got the i4-DC setup all up and going then realized I'd be better off if I just wire the switches direct, so I removed it from light control and just ran the Ethernet cables around the van so all the light switches (four sets) are all hard-wired, not WiFi.

That said, the galley switches are relying on WiFi for all of their function and they've been completely solid. Those six switches are actually connected to two RGBWPMs (I figured I might have use for their switching side later so used them instead of i4DCs) and are controlling four Shelly Plugs (via WiFi); the Plugs then activate the indicator lights by WiFi as well. It's all solid and fast - no indication of the complexity behind it.

So... can't vouch for the i4DC but I'm using two RGBWPM as if they were i4DCs and they are working well. If your 2.4Ghz WiFi isn't segregated from the 5.8Ghz, I'd consider doing that - everything on our 2.4Ghz is just a bunch of chatty IoT stuff like Shellies. Everything that can push the usage (PCs, tablets, phones) go on the 5.8Ghz network or hard-wired.

 

I have a spare RGBW PM, if this persists I'll drop that in place of the i4 DC and see if the issue goes away.

 

My 12v water pump maxes out at 10 amps - and that matches a Shelly Plus 1 PM. And its a very intermittent load so I used one of those directly.

And then have other Shelly's configured to relay an action to the water pump Shelly. Then I can turn on/off the pump from both the rear door for the hose down shower and the galley. The galley switch will be directly wired so it will work even if the van wifi is down.

For larger load AC items like the water heater - or your induction cook top, I simply used a Shelly Plus Plug US. That wiring couldn't be any simpler (though not super compact). The metering might be handy.

 

So first big trip with the van. Some of the Shelly's don't have physical switches hooked up yet since "that's over there where there isn't any cabinet yet"

No problem I say - "they work on the local van peplink wifi which is always on, I'll just use the phone to control them".

But in some incredible dumb coding, the iPhone Shelly app DOES NOT work reliably without internet. I'm in an area where I had turned off the Starlink Mini and had just local, isolated strong wifi.

Despite knowing the local IP address of the Shelly, the stupid phone app seems to show one of two states if it cannot reach something on the wider internet:

• either the "3 blue dots" from **** as I've called them as its trying something??
• you see the each device, but no button at all to control it where it normally is drawn (screenshot of this state below)

I know 110% sure the local van wifi is working fine and the phone is also because I can sit in Safari on it watching the remote console of the Cerbo using its local IP address. Works fine even when the Shelly app is out to lunch.

This is a huge disappointment in the Shelly infrastructure.

Others seem to confirm the same experience:


Sure it might work if I manually use some web api directly to a single Shelly device, but the WTF is the point if the iPhone app doesn't simply talk to the device when it clearly has the IP address already and the network is up? At one point today I could go into the settings for various Shelly devices and see "Device IP" showing the valid number. Yet it would still complain the device was offline erroneously. And it wasn't isolated to a single Shelly. I have half a dozen or more and it was all/nothing.

Things only recovered when I re-enabled Starlink and gave the phone app access to the Internet again.

I've also had 2-3 cases in the last couple of days where when launching the phone app, it just stalls at a completely black screen. Force kill it and then it works fine. Guessing its related to some cloud interaction it has on the way up again.

iPhone Pro 15 and running latest os - nothing unusual.

I guess I'll have to explore 'Shelly Home' in the app store or HASS setups on the phone. Frustrating that sloppy coding on their part makes the app useless for reliable local network only periods of time.

 

This is a huge disappointment in the Shelly infrastructure.

Ugh! Super frustrating, indeed. Do you have any Gen 3 $h!tt!es in your system?

 

Thanks - not blaming anyone - just disappointed that they could easily write the phone app in ways that would degrade gracefully without internet. They chose not to or are too incompetent. Just annoys me as a career software engineer they did it this way.

Pushes me to get the raspi HASS with local control going faster than planned. I see there is a HASS phone app but haven’t had time to explore it. Hopefully there is some way to configure/extend it to replace the Shelly phone app for the key switches I need.

A handful of things I’ll rarely need I wasn’t planning on any physical switch (like the heat tape cable in the cross can floor plumbing channel). I’ll have to get HASS reliable enough to see if that’s still viable. Or bury a switch inside some cabinet that doesn’t need any valuable ‘face real estate’.

I thought I had tested adequately removing internet, but the Shelly app must have had just enough cached/fresh that the problem wasn’t revealed. Force quitting the app as a test will be mandatory now.

 

Thanks - not blaming anyone - just disappointed that they could easily write the phone app in ways that would degrade gracefully without internet. They chose not to or are too incompetent. Just annoys me as a career software engineer they did it this way.

100% agree. I ass-u-me-d that it was going to use BT with the phone. I concluded after realizing how it worked that they're likely planning to build toward a usage-fee-based system - relying on their servers. Makes sense for their business model and competition, I suppose. But it irritates me, as well.

For testing purposes (and good security practice), disable "cloud" on each device. You'll see that they no longer work with the app at all; but their web interfaces (on the local IP) still work. And a BLE controller still works - once that's up and going.

BTW, not hearing, "blame," but feeling your frustration because I had the same reaction. Stupid. Or not... for their business model?

Pushes me to get the raspi HASS with local control going faster than planned. I see there is a HASS phone app but haven’t had time to explore it. Hopefully there is some way to configure/extend it to replace the Shelly phone app for the key switches I need.

You can get them up and going super fast in Van Assistant. Add the Shelly integration and they'll show up, you accept them, then click on the "device" for one of them and you'll get a screen full of their functions: controls, sensors, config, and diags - and disabled stuff. Hit, "add to dashboard," for any of those and you're functional. (I know you probably already know all this... but for anyone else's sake who isn't familiar.)

This is a "Plug" - so really simple device.

A handful of things I’ll rarely need I wasn’t planning on any physical switch (like the heat tape cable in the cross can floor plumbing channel). I’ll have to get HASS reliable enough to see if that’s still viable. Or bury a switch inside some cabinet that doesn’t need any valuable ‘face real estate’.

My fear initially as well. Knowing that the web interface works is reassuring. I've run without the hard buttons for a while; Van Assistant is pretty reliable at this point.

I thought I had tested adequately removing internet, but the Shelly app must have had just enough cached/fresh that the problem wasn’t revealed. Force quitting the app as a test will be mandatory now.

I experienced the same thing. Took me a while to realize my phone was hitting the internet and it is the, "cloud," that makes the difference, basically.

FWIW, I turn the cloud on and off to test / play-with the direct Shelly-to-Shelly stuff because the cloud really makes it easier to build the interaction "actions" and scripts. I forget to turn it back off sometimes...

 

I just migrated Home Assistant at home from a Docker to a VM so I could get built-in add-ons. I noticed I have Shelly integration now (maybe I had it before but didn't look) so I'll have to start playing with Shelly stuff as you've piqued my interest.
Bruce

 

Keep an eye on your storage consumption. Prolly a non-issue in a sizeable VM environment, but the add-on environment is a container nightmare: basically, it's un-managed and un-manageable. When one or more of the add-ons I was using consumed all the available space I'd allocated, I learned there was no real way (within Home Assistant) to find out which one or easily resolve it. It's the easy - and stupid - version of containers, unfortunately.

If there's a way to manage them now - know how much storage, memory, CPU each one is using and manage it somehow - let me know and I'll jump off my anti-home-assistant-os soapbox.

 

As a software guy the super infuriating part is when the settings for the lame Shelly device in the app SHOWS YOU the IP address, yet claims it is offline. Then you touch the IP address and it opens Safari with a direct web connection which works just fine and you can control the device. WTF??

What programmer in their right mind thinks this is a 'good enough' solution? Mind boggling. Great that they have such small device relatively inexpensive bricks for all this, but seems like whoever is doing the phone app dev is a complete moron. Or outsourced to some group that doesn't care beyond the next paycheck.

 

As a software guy the super infuriating part is when the settings for the lame Shelly device in the app SHOWS YOU the IP address, yet claims it is offline. Then you touch the IP address and it opens Safari with a direct web connection which works just fine and you can control the device. WTF??

What programmer in their right mind thinks this is a 'good enough' solution? Mind boggling. Great that they have such small device relatively inexpensive bricks for all this, but seems like whoever is doing the phone app dev is a complete moron. Or outsourced to some group that doesn't care beyond the next paycheck.
...

Or... it's a feature, not a bug. 🤷‍♀️

I like the Shelly stuff; but I suspect this is an intentional thing to move more "cloud" for them.

To me, they have really useful products that sell for a premium because they're well packaged and easy-ish to use (relative to DIY'ing an ESP setup); but they're clearly trying to expand - their new devices are WiFi/BT/Zigbee/Z-Wave allin one device. I don't know what comes next; but I know if it's bad I can flash ESPHome on most of the Shellies I have.

The Docker container is a slimmed down version of HA that doesn't include add-ons and Voice needs one. You can install additional containers to add the missing features but from what I've read that gets messy so I moved to a VM.
Bruce

Ah. The Docker version isn't, "slimmed down," it just doesn't include add-ons because add-ons ARE containers. I run Home Assistant in Docker and prefer it at this point. I also have a dozen containers that would have been add-ons but I run them as Docker containers. One advantage to this way is I can easily turn them on/off. The biggest advantage is I can tune them to run as I prefer. Perhaps a bigger advantage is more easy choice of options - not just what's most recently updated in the add-on library.

Probably most interesting and strange is that I have far more information about the containers/add-ons I'm running than Home Assistant seems to have any plans to provide for add-ons. Maybe there will be some cross-platform setup that allows using Docker or Podman tools to manage add-ons some day; then they'll make sense.

From what I'm seeing there is a Voice container option; but maybe it behaves differently - I don't like voice interaction, so I won't be finding out.