[SBMark]

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!

 

[CincyBearcats]

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.

 

[Smoobly]

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.

 

[CincyBearcats]

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!

 

[Smoobly]

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!

Yeah, it took me a while, too, to figure out what they meant exactly. I wouldn't have minded them using a few more words in their technical descriptions. But after study, I realized they were giving all the right information with great economy of style. Now I can read the write-ups for their other switches—and they make a lot—with no trouble.

 

[SBMark]

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?

 

[CincyBearcats]

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.

 

[SBMark]

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.

 

[Smoobly]

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.

 

[gregoryx]

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.

Sounds like it's working as it should. As @CincyBearcats suggested, if you get switches where the light is controlled separately, you could wire them in parallel with the LED lights you're controlling and it would work as expected. But otherwise... much better off with momentary buttons with no lights.

 

[OldChubbyKnuckle]

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.

 

[gregoryx]

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.

 

[OldChubbyKnuckle]

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.

 

[CincyBearcats]

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.

Would you mind explaining this slightly further? Because the True Induction Mini Duo has fairly high parasitic load, I would like to be able to easily turn it on/off with a switch. Is this how you accomplish that? Also, how do you turn your water pump on/off? Does the Shelly RGBW PM control a DC relay somehow?

 

[OldChubbyKnuckle]

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.

 

[gregoryx]

Would you mind explaining this slightly further? Because the True Induction Mini Duo has fairly high parasitic load, I would like to be able to easily turn it on/off with a switch. Is this how you accomplish that? Also, how do you turn your water pump on/off? Does the Shelly RGBW PM control a DC relay somehow?

I dealt with that initially in our Sprinter. Couldn't believe how fast the batteries were draining and it ended up being parasites like the induction cooktop, so I put in a switch-per-outlet surge strip. In this photo, looks like it only has the cooktop, espresso, and water-pump in it.

So I knew these things would need to be switched on/off. BTW, the water pump in the Sprinter (and initially in the Transit) was using a 120V>12V unit because I'd take the whole galley out and use it for a week in Yosemite every year - and we used it for months in the house when rebuilding the kitchen.

So when I first built the galley for the Transit, I did the same thing. You can see the little 4-position switch zip-tied on here in the earliest "ready to camp" setup (cooktop, water heater, espresso, water pump).

Here, you can see how it got tucked into the galley as I built it out. It stayed like that for a couple years. I kept thinking I'd wire it up with switches on that panel but never found a really clean way to do it.

Even after rebuilding the galley to get rid of the propane oven, same switch.

Then I started using Van Assistant and I wanted to control and monitor stuff, so I went to a TP-Link/Kasa strip and tucked it inside the galley. I could reach the buttons when required; but now it was controlled by the tablet on the wall, mostly.

I still thought it would be cool to put hard-wired switches in that same spot. I could have done switches that worked through Home Assistant, but I wanted them to work without it - just in case.

Then I started playing with the Shellies for the lights. Then played with their switching and control stuff. Then realized they could talk to each other directly - without Home Assistant. So the surge strip was replaced by four Shelly Plug units (induction, oven, espresso, water-heater) and the water pump control turned over to a Shelly-1 - I'm not removing this galley anymore. And, like the TP-Link, the Shelly Plugs gather power monitoring data, so that's still intact. The Shelly-1 doesn't; but it's just the water pump...


On the control side, the Shelly-1 has a hard-wire switch built in, so that is one button - a momentary contact works for toggle on/off and it works without any network connection. But the Plug units have a button switch ON them, not contacts for a remote switch. RGBWPM has four switch connections. Those four are used in my setup to send a direct connection over WiFi (no Home Assistant in the middle) to the Plugs for on/off toggle. And the manual buttons are reachable in the back of the galley cabinet - so still functioning in worst-case scenario.


But that didn't get me the indicators.

So... the RGBWPM that I'm using for switches also has four "light" load positions. I hooked those up to small LEDs as indicators. To control them, the Shelly Plug and Shelly-1 units are sending direct messages over WiFi to tell the RGBWPM to turn on the indicator lights (still not using Home Assistant). I needed another RGBWPM to get the six lights, so... there's a second one.

The sixth switch on the panel is used to control the Multiplus inverter for on/off. That goes through Home Assistant since there's no easy way for the Shelly units to control it directly. I /could/ wire up a remote switch setup, but the CerboGX is on the panel right there and the hard switch for the MP is under the fridge - options.

Since the Shelly switches are easy to do single-press, double-press, triple-press, and long-press I added stuff with that as well. The inverter is controlled with a double-press because I don't want it turning on/off accidentally. My grandson pushes ALL the buttons when he's in the van; turning off the oven while it's cooking is a bummer, but I really don't want EVERYTHING turning off that easily. Single-press on that button toggles the main lights on/off. One of them is a triple-press for, "everything off for sleep time," for example.


I hope that answers the question - and with more details than you wanted. 😏

 

[OldChubbyKnuckle]

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.

 

[CincyBearcats]

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?

 

[gregoryx]

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.

View attachment 223138

Pretty sure I've warned about this. Maybe more than once? I guess what I've pointed out is there's no app function unless, "cloud," is enabled; I guess that wasn't necessarily obvious that it actually USES the cloud/internet! 🤣

They WILL, of course, work with hard-wire, WiFi (local - such as web-control directly to the Shelly or through Home Assistant), and BLE in the later models. Having tested the BLE, I'm not impressed; but it basically works.

So... yeah... don't use their app. And be sure to disable the internet when you're at home some time to re-assure yourself of what does and doesn't work. And hard-wire them! That's the reason I recommend them now: because they can be hard-wired to operate like a DUMB switch while still being smart. 😁

 

[OldChubbyKnuckle]

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.