Shelly Plus 1 and Plus 1PM Power Controllers

Way back in August 2019 I wrote about the Shelly 1 controller produced by Alterco Robotics in Sofia, Bulgaria. This at the time was one of a small but growing number of competitors to the likes of the very inexpensive Sonoff Basic. Later on, in March 2021 I followed this up with an article including the Shelly 1PM which in addition had (has) power monitoring. I won’t therefore start at the very beginning as it is all covered in those earlier blog entries – but the Shelly Plus 1 and Shelly Plus 1PM have improvements so I figured they were worth taking a look.

I have a brand new Shelly Plus 1 in front of me and I expect I’ll have the PM version soon. Meanwhile, photos of Shelly Plus 1 and a little info.. Note the connectors are nicer than the originals and I’ll point you back to their website for price comparisons – Shelly EU sell the Plus 1 units for €14.99 inc VAT (Euros), not the cheapest I’ve seen for a mains controller but then this one is more flexible than many others out there – the same store sells the original Shelly for €12.99 for comparison. The shelly Plus 1 is touted as the “next generation” of Shelly – and remains a WiFi-controlled power controller that will fit into typical wall boxes.

The Plus devices now have Bluetooth and the GPIO access has been moved to the underside along with a reset button so they are looking somewhat more pro than the original device with faster, more powerful controller than the previous model – that of course raises the price a little and I’m guessing is largely down to the use of the ESP32 which of course IS more powerful than the original ESP8266 used in Shelly 1.

The unit remains a single-channel, 16A (peak) controller which can now be setup using Bluetooth with the Shelly cloud. I may just skip that bit. Contacts are dry (i.e. isolated) which I like. There is also low voltage support…. and I LIKE the warranty claim. Such an extension costs 1.55 Euros but covers you no matter what the reason for failure.

There is no overload protection on the Shelly Plus 1, but there is over-temperature protection. All the instructions for my new Shelly came in English and I had it running on 12v within a minute.

Connecting up Shelly Plus 1 to 12v DC for a quick test proved easy – minus to the Live connector, plus to the 12V connector. Almost immediately my phone spotted a new WiFi SSID “shellyPlus1xxxxxx” and unlike my usual Tasmotised controllers this gave my phone access to a web interface on IP address 192.168.33.1

WELL NOW, THAT was easy. Toggling that “switch_0” on the left turned the relay on and off. Note the MQTT, cloud, AP and WIFI symbols near the top – this is going very well and it is taking me longer to write this than get an idea of what Shelly Plus 1 can do.

I looked at adding a shcedule and saw no reference to dust and dawn – but there IS something in the spec about sunrise and sunset so I took a look and sure enough, you specify your location and this feature is enabled. Yup, weekly timer with time and/or sunrise, sunset. Lovely.

If you don’t want to use Shelly via the cloud there is absolutely no pressure to do so.

But I am jumping ahead. I told the device about my nearest WiFi access point. You can specify primary and secondary access points – there are still products out there that have missed this one – but then with an ESP32 inside , there is more than enough room for plenty of bells and whistles.

Having set up the basics on the local web interface I added in my access point and switched to the Shelly APP.

Here I was asked if I wanted to connect my new device to the cloud. NO. Also did I want to use a pretty Shelly Plus 1 image – YES.

I checked the firmware – 0.7.0 19/08/2021 – would I like to update to 0.9.3 17/01/2022 – SURE. That didn’t go too well so I rebooted my phone in case of cacheing issues. Sure enough.. 0.9.3 – I have the update despite warnings – I like to have the latest firmware on my gadgets.

I could go on forever as there is lots to say and lots to do with the Shelly Plus 1. But I’ll come back to this. Just briefly, the contacts on the front can be switch or momentary and all sorts of variations (ON by default, OFF by default, last state remembered – all without installing Tasmota – just straight out of the box). See the screenshot to the right.

There is a SLIGHT issue, offering updates when I’ve already updated then saying there’s a problem – trivial but that needs a fix maybe. More on this later.

So much to do, so little time. Just one quick point – in earlier Shellys you could enable MQTT OR CLOUD, now you can run both in parallell if you like. Thanks for that reminder, Antonio. See this link.

The Plus1PM is similar to the Plus 1 but with power monitoring, different colour and box to match. Once again 16A max and there is no mistaking the brand, but instead of all blue, this has a red body.

Note that the Shelly Plus 1PM can run from 110-240vAC or 24-240vDC.

Just to start the ball rolling I attached the device to my 24vDC power supply.

I connected the device, started up the Shelkly App and of course as this device has both Bluetooth and WiFi, setup could not be simpler.

The APP asked which access point I wanted to use along with password, I told it… and that was that – it found the Shelly Plus 1PM almost immediately using Bluetooth – I had to do nothing.

Or so I thought – but looking at the APP, no sign of this new device.

Then I twigged – you go back a page and add the device – and sure enough – there it is. The obvious difference between this and the Plus 1 is the load power indicator – see the red icon over on the right. You can of course give these things any name you like.

As always I like to be up to date, the firmware on the device wsa 0.7.0 and the latest available was 0.9.3 – it’s only polite to be up to date. This seemed to take no time at all but I still seemed to be on the earlier version. So – as with the Plus 1 – I rebooted the phone (note, not the device, just the phone). The Shelly knew my loction or at least the UK capitol – so I adjusted the coordinates to my home here in the Northeast of England – just because I could.

I’ll do some power 240v testing soon. Meanwhile note that you can set a timer (timeout) and also set up schedules. Web hooks didn’t do anything, presumably as I’ve not connected to the Shelly Cloud. Under INTERNET you can set WiFi 1, WiFi 2, Access point, Cloud, Bluetooth and MQTT connections – what more could we need…

Running on 24v the device was drawing 0.69W.