Shelly and Sonoff Shout-out

I WAS going to incorporate this into earlier Shelly and Sonoff posts but lots going on this weekend gone – so:

Let’s get Sonoff out of the way… you may be familiar with the Sonoff Smart Water Valve – and how quickly they updated this to work with Zigbee2MQTT including water volume monitoring – well get this: The latest update to Zigbee2MQTT includes improvements including: “support for auto-close when water shortage for Sonoff SWV” (Zigbee2MQTT release notes)… I have to tell you that I thought the SWV might be a gimmick for me – but it’s now in use every day – we now NEVER need to turn off the outside fawcet (no leaks AT ALL)- and simply use Home Assistant (on my Raspberry Pi 5) and the side-button on the SWV to control water. As a backup the end of the hose attached to the SWV has a lever which can lock OPEN or CLOSED – all standard stuff.

WELL, there IS a chance of water shortages here in Southern Spain this summer though we’ve been lucky up to now. So, I have a pool with a solar (home-made) heating system. It gets the water up to maybe 30c. But I wanted a little more, so when the sun is blasting on a really hot day, I simply unravel the hose so it is immersed in sunshine, set the LOCK OPEN on the hose, immerse the hose-end in the pool (locked open) and use a Home Assistant automation to turn on the SWV for a minute every 15 minutes (or until cancelled) several times before stopping.

That serves two purposes – tops up the pool to compensate for water losses in the heat, and delivers short bursts of piping hot water from the coiled, sun-drenched pipe. Last week the pool went up to 34c, lovely for a late-afternoon relaxing soak. Thanks Sonoff and Koenkk (Zigbee2MQTT).

And now – SHELLY (Plus series)… I’m using the Shelly 1 Plus and have just set up the Shelly PM Mini Gen 3. OK I’m as keen as anyone to get cheap AliExpress Zigbee and WiFi smartplugs and switch blocks – but let’s give Shelly a shout-out – on the surface, normal-ish devices – somewhat more expensive than the cheapo units – but WITH BENEFITS… so I’m using a Home Assistant integration which sees devices like Shelly which can, as a side-benefit, monitor BLE broadcasts (my Mi 7 smartband for example – presense detection so HA knows I’m in the office).

Nice feature for a smart power unit like the Shelly Plus 1 PM and others…. but here’s the thing – buried in the shelly APP menus – not only can you turn on loads of extra features like this – but it’s done by text-based SCRIPTS – they have a library of them and in the APP you can grab them and use – takes seconds.. wait for it… “Converts NTC thermal resistor output to temperature and execute actions”, “Shelly Plus 1PM – stop the output after consuming a certain amount of current”, – ready for this one? – I just spent ages making automations in HA and here it is available within a Shelly device in a readable script: “Turn on/off watering based on precipitation in the last 24 hours (based on Accuweather data)” – and many more such free value-additions.

You’re not going to get that on the cheap AliExpress controllers – the menus in the Shelly products are a mine of potentially useful stuff – I’m just scraping the surface right now. “Router Watchdog” – that’s something else I spent a while writing in HA… it’s all here in the Shelly library – stand-alone operation (and with full Home Assistant integration) – and if you’re not keen on devices that “phone home” – the Shelly devices can turn on or off cloud access for local control only if you want.

Youll see elsewhere that these Shelly devices can act as WiFi range extenders – don’t make the same mistake I did.. When nothing happened – I contacted Shelly and they invited me to read this… all makes sense now.

Shelly 1 Mini GEN3… I just spent ages going through AliExpress looking for a smart switch with isolated contacts – only to find a mass of incorrectly labelled products – and here it was all the time in front of me, my Shelly 1 Mini Gen3 – ideal for my UK heating boiler which has an old thermostat needing replacement. Such boilers often need a wall thermostat connected by a “dry” contact pair whereas most smart switches have one of the contacts connected to mains live. Looks like the Shelly is going to get the job.

Enjoy.