Beiträge von Irish_Steve

I've had a couple of mains powered elapsed time recording devices on our oil boiler for a good few years, one records pump active, the other burner active, but I'd like to move to the next level to be able to get times on a more granular basis, so the question is pretty easy, is there a device in the Shelly range that will record into the cloud the status of 2 x 240V lines, so that I can see how long they are active for throughout the day.

I don't need to be able to switch the lines from the web or the app, I just need to know if line 1 and line 2 are on or off at any particular time, partly to enable us to be able to get a better idea of the oil burn each day, If the device that's chosen can also give me air temperature, that would be a plus, but it's not essential, there are other ways for me to be able to get that detail if we need it.

Thanks

Thanls for the guidance on the difference between the app and the web UI, clearly, Shelly need to update some of the documentation, it's pretty vague right now.

Is there a way to change the sample period on the device, it's logging every second now, which I think happened with the latest firmware update, and I can't see an instant way to change the setting, once per minute at the moment will be more than enough, and yes, I too will be looking at homeassistant soon, I had it sort of working a few weeks back, but lost a disc drive on my laptop to a major crash, and had to steal the drive from the home assitant machine to allow me to recover critical data from the crashed machine, and it took a while to set up.

So far, the EM3 has stayed on line all day, which is a first, as for why, I don't know, but I will just have to see what happens now, clearly, there are some software issues that are causing problems, but getting them resolved could be problematic, my background is 50 plus years working with computers, back to the time when things like memory and the like were at a massive premium, so even a few bytes of memory saved meant the difference between a programme working or not fitting in to memory, so some of the things I see happening now with programme sizes and the like really do cause me to wonder about how the programmers are being trained!

Time will tell!

OK, so in the end, I reset everything, the main router, all the intermediate devices like switches, (connected or not) , the powerline devices and the EM3 (factory reset) , and after a lot of messing, I can now access the EM3 web hub, and rightly or wrongly, I have put it on a fixed IP address outside the range of the DHCP setting system, and that's allowing me to now get into it using the browser on WIndows, which is more manageable than using Android. That also seems to have resolved the lack of connectivity with the android app, which I also completely removed and reinstalled.

The first thing I notice is that changes made on the web interface still do NOT reflect into the device information that is returned by the Android App, which doesn't help.

I have now found the WiFI strength, -34Dbm, and for the moment, (the last hour or so) it seems to be stable. Having to spend the better part of 2 hours chasing around the house and garage to reset all the devices in sequence, and make changes to things to see if it made a difference is not something I'm going to do on a regular basis, I expect this sort of technology to be plug and play, and once it is playing, it's supposed to be stable, which has not been my experience thus far with this device.

Changing the EM3 to a fixed IP address at least means I know where to look for it now, rather than having to go searching the IP addresses to see where DHCP put i.

The signal strength issue was the reason for putting in the powerline device, and then subsequently moving the remote end device, the distance between the EM3 and the WiFI device (TPlink 4220) is less than 1 metre, The Shelly shows up as a connected device on the network Hub, (Sky ), but the app does not connect, it's showing the device as offline.

I suspect that I'm going to have to go through the nausea of doing a factory reset of the Shelly, which of course will mean the loss of all the historic data, which kind of defeats the purpose of having the device, it's been even more unstable since the most recent firmware update, the first time it updated automatically, I ended up having to return the device because it became inaccessible, and the most recent update does not seem to have done anything to improve the device stability.

As I can't communicate with the device, how am I going to get the signal strength?

Well, it's been an interesting and frustrating few months, and I've come to the conclusion that I am wasting my time trying to use the 3EM for any serious purpose. Initially, I had problems with the firmware corrupting the device that meant it ended up with a WiFi password that could not be reset or recovered, even after a factory reset, and the device was replaced.

Once I had that, I was able to set it up, and in theory get it working, and due to the location, I ended up having to get a wifi extender so that the device got a reliable signal from my network, and to avoid having to use the only ethernet connecting cable that runs to my garage, which is normally used to connect to the standby generator control panel, I got a powerline extender device. It works without issues if I am in the garage with my laptop or mobile phone, but for reasons that escape me, the 3EM is not stable, and is lost on a regular basis from the network.

I got this device with the intention of trying to monitor my power usage with a view to installing solar panels, and so far, it's been a complete waste of time and money, in that I cannot get reliable usage information from the 3EM, mainly because the software is so unstable, which results in it being lost from the network pretty much most days.

So, in a nutshell, to anyone that's considering this device as a power monitor, be VERY careful, as it seems that for reasons I cannot get to the bottom of, while the hardware might be reasonably good, the software is still very much not stable, or fit for purpose, as the device does not provide a stable platform for gathering information.

I was considering installing some other Shelly devices, I could use a number of thermostatic radiator valves, and some of the timers for things like gates, and controlling other devices in the home, but the experience with the 3EM has caused a change of plan, I can't afford the time or effort that seems to be required to support these devices, the regular problems with the 3EM mean that I am not going to risk making my problems even worse, I want technology that works, and at the moment, it seems that there is some way to go for Shelly to become a stable supplier, at the moment, there is no way that I can recommend the shelly devices as a viable option for stable operation.

It will be interesting to see if this post survives, I've been involved with computers and on line support for a very long time, and I thought that I'd found a reliable supplier, but it seems that my research didn't go deep enough into the issues. or there is selective editing of posts being performed that means that negative posts about the devices don't survive for long, which results in a distorted picture of how the devices are actually performing.

Pity, but that's life in the sharp end of home computing and automation.

Very much regretting that I purchased this device, it was a hassle to get it working initially, and then having got it working, due to some serious shortcomings in the device software and the web browser interface, it is now inaccessible without being returned to Alterco for reflashing, there is a fundamental error in the software reset procedure that results in not resetting the device password when factory defaults are reloaded, so effectively, it can no longer be accessed..

The cost of returning it from Ireland exceeds the limit given by support, so they are supposedly arranging for their courier company to collect the device. A week after that mail message was received, I am still waiting for any update on who is collecting it, and when. Perhaps they sent the request to their couriers by carrier pigeon, or snail mail.

Whichever, I am now seriously unimpressed by this experience, I will give it a few more days, and then if I still have heard nothing, I will start chargeback process with Paypal, as I no longer have confidence in dealing with Shelly for this device, or for future possible devices, it is unfortunately becoming clear that there are severe issues with both the software and the devices, and I don't need this level of aggravation with what should be a plug and play device.

Pity, as the theory of the devices is sound, but the implementation has too many core issues for comfort.

Most 3 phase contacters only need a single phase supply to operate the coil, so pretty much any of the shelly switch devices will be capable of controlling the contactor, the power being used by the sauna heater is going to require a suitable contactor/relay to switch it, which will need to be fitted either in the switchboard, after the circuit breaker, or external to the switchboard, possibly close to the sauna area.

Depending on the country you are in, there may be other specific requirements for some sort of manual switch /isolator close to the sauna.

Hpefully, when I get a working device back again, I will be able to analyse this in more depth, now I know that I have to be more paranoid in how I treat it, I can proceed accordingly, and make sure that critical data is saved before it's used,

I don't know what the story is with the mouse issue on Firefox, it may be something strange like that I'm using a bluetooth mouse rather than a USB mouse, the theory being to avoid bandwidth issues on the hardware, but that may not be valid any more.

Having done more digging around, it looks as if there are alternative options for flashing the firmware, but I don't have the necessary serial port interface device, so that's not something I can do right now, but it may be worth looking at if I end up with more Shelly devices, which is a possibility, I need to get smart control of things like heating, and some of the retail devices are stupid money, and some of the Shelly devices could be worth a more detailed look.

Bugs, or shortcoming, and I can't be sure where exactly they are, as my device is currently not accessible as a resulf of one of the issues.

Trying to get a 3EM up and working to monitor what's being used as a precursor to a possible solar panel install.

Initial set up didn't go well, as the Shelly cloud app on android kept crashing as it tried to transfer the AP to the WiFi. One of the annoyances is that it's not possible to paste the user ID and Password into the app, from something like a password manager, which is a complete PAIN at this stage.

Part of the problem was a very weak WIFI signal, so that got resolved by adding a repeater in the immediate area, but that still didn't resolve the app crash, but eventually, I managed to get into the device using the browser on the phone, and the web interface, but it wasn't easy;

That got the device going, and I was then able to connect it to the WiFi, so I could then see it from the windows Laptop, which made working with it a bit easier, in that at least I had a sensible size keyboard and screen to work with. A few minutes later, it threw up a pop up that there was a firmware update available, and did I want to install it, so I let it go at it.

Bad move, in that the device never came out of "updating", not at all, and in the end, I gave up waiting. The next morning it still wasn't working, and to add to the aggravation, the reset option from the front button was ignored, so at that stage, I knew that the firmware update had not completed correctly. Due to the way was wired in there was not an easy way to disconnect the power from the device, so I had to wait until I could pull the main power fuses and power the device down. The wiring has now been changed so that if something like this happens again, a plug and socket connection close to the device can be safely opened while live to power it down without affecting the rest of the system.

The power down recovered it, and I was able to get back in again to restart the changes I wanted to make, such as getting the date and time right, changing the sensor names, and putting in a password to protect my network.

That didn't go well. there are issues with the combination of the device web browser, WIndows 10 and Firefox on a laptop when using the web browser, and the shelly app on android didn't appear to have access to some of the things that I wanted to change. When I went to change the date and time., I couldn't complete that, as the mouse wasn't working, so it wasn't possible to scroll down far enough to be able to make the changes, and then tell the software to update, and I found that out by closing out of Firefox, and trying Chrome instead, which worked, and I also discovered a number of additional menu items that were not appearing at all on Firefox.

Among other things, I then changed the device password, and in theory, the browser should have saved the (complex) password that was generated, but for reasons that remain unknown, the browser locked up, and didn't save the password, but it had at that point updated the device, I wasn't worried as such, in that the password had been pasted from the keyboard buffer into the relevant field, so it should still have been available for another Ctrl V paste into a different app, but it wasn't, and the browser didn't offer the option to save the user ID and password either.

Big problem, as I can't remember 12 character complex passwords, that's why I use a password manager package, any other time I've done similar, which I do all the time, the browser provides an option to update my password manager, and once that's done, I have access to the password on the laptop and my android device. In this case, the password was lost, and to then compound the problem, a factory reset of the device does NOT remove a password from the memory, so that effectively means a bricked device. I've not had a device for a very long time where a factory reset doesn't clear this sort of data, along with things like the WiFi details, so the inability to get back into this device came as an unpleasant discovery, and it looks like the only fix is to return the device to Shelly, and let them do a serial flash of the memory using the manufacturing interface.

What's clear, and I've been around computers of one sort or another for over 50 years, the software on the Shelly devices is tender. It might well be out of Beta, but only just, and the rough edges are still showing in some areas, and that situation is not at all helped by Microsoft and Mozilla making a moveable feast of their respective packages, there's no such thing as a stable operating system or browser any more, they change from day to day, so while I'm not exactly impressed by what Shelly have put out, I can also understand that QA on the software is not easy any more, and what works today could very easily be broken by a patch or new version of a browser in literally hours.

I'm in no rush right now, in that my 3EM has to make a round trip from Ireland to Sofia and back, and it took 2 weeks to get here, so it's likely to be the the middle of June before I can pick this project up again, and who knows how many changes there will be in that time.

What's a significant change is that I'm going to have to treat this device with a lot more paranoia than I have for a very long time, and it's going to mean literally one step at a time, with backups of everything before even exiting from the routines, and additional copies in other places of every piece of data that goes into this device before it even goes into the device, and that's before I go near trying to make it work with Home Assistant, which is what I was hoping to be doing at the moment.

If I'd known it was going to be this stressful, I perhaps should have waited for the Electric network provider to install a new smart meter, which is going to happen at some stage, it certainly would have been easier., I wasn't aware of just how fragile these devices are at the moment. I am hoping to use other devices going forward, but the experience with this one and some of the comments here is giving me pause for thought.

yes, I've already had a response to the support ticket, they are asking me to ship the device back to them, but the costs for shipping it may be a problem.

The reason for the fault, which I wll have to address in a separate thread, the web browser crashed firefox while I was updating the device, which then caused the automatic password save to fail, and it was no longer in the keyboard buffer to be pasted into another application to allow it to be saved. There is a problem with mouse scrolling in Firefox, so the app hung, and also a problem with the front page, which prevents a password from being posted into the device log in from Shelly Cloud, and that app also did not auto save after it was used, which I will have to report to the password app provider, as that is a new issue that has not been seen before, but I cannot determine which app is the problem, it may be last pass, or shelly cloud that's causing the issue, and then of course made worse by the inability to reset to fully accessible factory condition, in that the reset does not clear the password from the device.

That issue alone really requires a firmware update to clear it, or some form of fix, as it has the potential to disable many devices in the event of an error, and it seems that the software associated with the device is somewhat fragile still.

Tried multiple resets as above, and also full power down of the device, as well as a couple of possible default passwords that were suggested by Shelly support, and unfortunately, none of them work.

What's the best route to report issues with the interface and browser combination, as that was a prime cause of this problem.

Have a problem with the device, caused by a problem with the Firefox browser on WIndows 10, which locked up during updating of settings like phase names.

I set a log in password, and normally, the password manager asks me to save the password as part of automatic processing. Due to a problem with the cursor not scrolling the screen in Firefox, the browser crashed, and the password was not saved into the password manager system, and was also lost from the keyboard buffer, so not available to paste into another location to make a copy.

I have tried both a reset to factory settings, and a power down of the device, and neither option is clearing the requirement to log in to the device, so effectively it is bricked. The AP is available, and can be connected, but on access to the Web Server, it requires a log in. The Shelly app crashes when trying to add the device to the WiFi network, and it's not possible to get into the web server on the 192,168.33.1 address.

This is the second problem I've had, the first was an issue that a firmware update did not complete correctly, and the only (eventual) recovery was to power down the device, after that, it was recovered, and the AP could be found.

I can't see any information on how to recover this situation, the reset from the front panel as such is working, but the device is not clearing the password.