Shelly is proud of their devices being:
- No hub neeeded
- Not required to be online
- Compatible all major hubs if you do want to connect them.
I do not work for Shelly. I just really like how I don’t have to use an app for them and they’re compatible with seemingly everything. I’ve bought the devices and I can do what I want with them.
I had owned two of their smart plugs for a couple of years and they decided to stop responding to resetting and could talk to them. Shelly support sent out two new plugs for me and asked for the defective ones back so they could troubleshoot them. Great service.
Just seems that privacy-centric people should be using privacy focused devices.
They are headquartered in Germany so very unlikely they’ll go back on their offline compatibility anytime soon.
Just buy a Zigbee stick and you don’t have to change all your existing hardware.
Shelly works with Wi-Fi which I don’t prefer personally.
Sorry this might be a stupid question but if I buy a Zigbes stick do I need to use Home Assistant? I have my Hue lights added to HomeKit now but based on the articles I’ve read Hue will still lock out HomeKit from control unless I create an account - so whatever I can do to avoid that would be great.
I’m running Zigbee2MQTT in docker. You could also run HomeBridge docker along side that, eliminating the need for Home Assistant. I still use Home Assistant as my front end but Zigbee is running on a Pi and HomeBridge is on my unraid server. Regardless, look into HomeBridge. It is very powerful for exposing non-HomeKit devices to that platform. I also have multiple Shelly devices and absolutely love them. I just didn’t want to replace my 9 Hue devices needlessly. I’ve been very impressed with the speed of Zigbee2MQTT over the Hue bridge so far.
Thanks - I tested out some of the Home Assistant and HomeBridge options previously I was just trying to simplify. At this point I have 4 light bulbs from Hue (used to have way more but they all were broken in a cross country move) and the Hue play bars. The rest of the lights are Vocolinc which seem to be just as good, so I just might swap out the hue bulbs remaining and then figure out something for the play bars. Preaching to the choir here but I am so tired of this trend in tech. I have Therabody compression boots that used an app to locally control the boots with settings beyond what you could do on the physical base. About 5 months into owning those I open the app to be greeted by a need for an online account to use the app. Just one of the many examples but just why?
Damn. Account requirements on clothing is a new low. I got my Zigbee hub for $25 so might be worth going that route over replacing 4 bulbs. Happy to help if you have questions!
Also yeah compression boots needing an account to control a local base is a new low. I don’t know what the hell these product managers are smoking but they can take a hike with this shit.
Thanks for the offer! I watched a couple of Home Assistant set up videos and honestly for $35 I can just swap out the remaining bulbs and the plus is I get to remove the Hue bridge from the network rack too! The only thing I am gonna miss is I am using the Hue Play Bars as bias lighting behind my monitors but I think I have a solution to that.
Home Assistant looks nice but I’d rather keep it all in HomeKit. I don’t ever use the Hue app and I’m a bit confused how they are going to lock me out locally. Based on the articles I’ve read the local APIs will stop working(?) but I feel like that would take an auto update.
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Yes I think you’ll need Home Assistant for that. You can add any Zigbee device to Homekit if it’s connected to Home Assistant; that’ll bypass the Hue account requirement.
Gotcha thanks - I just re-did the whole network rack and pulled the pi out, and got the hue hub running off of Poe and now Hue pulls this. I did call into support about this whole roadmap last week and told them to please pass along that if this moves forward I’ll be getting rid of Hue lighting. It’s probably not gonna make a difference but still good feedback to send in.
I feel your pain, I wish pi’s could be powered with PoE without modifications.
So the 4s can - there’s a POE splitter that splits it to usb c. Haven’t tried it but the Hue hub is working off of a similar splitter.
You should also check out Hubitat, they make a excellent ZigBee + Zwave hub. Works with Google Assistant, has a REST API and can work offline as well. They give you a lot for free.
HomeAssistant can expose any device you want to HomeKit. I use it for Siri instead of going through the Hue hub.
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Are there any reputable relay brands that work with zigbee? I prefer relays, but I agree that wifi based relays are basically like installing low power wifi jammers in your house lol (OK, that’s an exaggeration, but it is an issue)
It certainly could be an issue, but I have 6 installed in my home and WiFi can still go over 200 Mbps. Maybe it could go higher, but I don’t need that.
For me at least, it’s not about speeds, but stability. Prior to installing relays, smart switches and whatnot in my house I could stream games from my PC to my phone/laptop flawlessly, but after installing them all it’s completely unplayable due to stutters and latency. Download speeds are more or less the same though
Ultimately whether it matters will depend on your use case, like most things
The only streaming device that I use in that context is PS5, and it works the same as before. Lucky me!
Reputable? Eh, depends on your definition.
A lot of people make use of Sonoff and Tuya-relabled Zigbee relays. If you’re able to control it at a wall switch (so not an actual relay) then your options greatly increase.
Wall switches are fine by me, I just don’t like smart bulbs
I make use of the Aqara wall switches. Because I live in a 120 year old house without neutral wiring and with 120V lines, Aqara is one of the few that makes a no-neutral wall switch that fits in a standard Decora mount and also works when the Zigbee network is down.
WS-USC01 through WS-USC04
Comes in with- and without- neutral options as well as single and double rockers.
If you’re not in the US they also make a much wider variety of switches, mix of touch and rockers, that work with 240V with and without neutrals.
I’m aware that Aqara is a Chinese company and you should probably never let them on your wifi network. But because it’s Zigbee it’s far less of a risk and they’re plug and play compatible with all of the major Zigbee controllers.
Nice, I actually already have a few aqara accessories, so that works!