Chowmain - Shelly Driver Suite

[Andrew luecke]

G'day guys, just letting you know that if you are having trouble with Blind levels, send me a message (we have a patch available, which will be rolled out into the upcoming release after Christmas).

The bug causes the level to go to 100% or 0% in some cases. 

[Andrew luecke]

G'day all. For anyone who is interested, we have a new beta now available.

Anyone in our Shelly beta program should have already received a copy (for those who are interested, let me know, and I can send a copy). 

[Andrew luecke]

G'day All, 

I'm happy to announce our new Shelly Beta/Test release with support for the new Shelly TRV Radiator Valves through our new Thermostat driver. This driver also includes various miscellaneous fixes and extends the functionality introduced in previous betas.

 

If you are interested, feel free to send me a message. Those who are in our Shelly beta mailing list should have already received a copy of the beta.  

 

   

[alanchow]

On 2/10/2022 at 5:54 PM, Andrew luecke said:

G'day All, 

I'm happy to announce our new Shelly Beta/Test release with support for the new Shelly TRV Radiator Valves through our new Thermostat driver. This driver also includes various miscellaneous fixes and extends the functionality introduced in previous betas.

 

If you are interested, feel free to send me a message. Those who are in our Shelly beta mailing list should have already received a copy of the beta.  

 

   

Shelly TRV support is now released.  Great work @Andrew lueckeon making this happen.  There will be alot of happy integrators and home owners in europe given how popular radiator based heating is over there.

[Jasper S]

On 11/24/2021 at 3:52 AM, Kaas Mayer said:

yes, but if you have 20 ceiling spots in one room, it would be a lot of work to set them all to the same color.

there is normally no need to set each lamp to a different color. 

way easier to set a lightning group for hue lamps for example. 

Any further information on this or is there any plans to incorporate this feature? I have one room with 13 Shelly RGBW devices, and I set custom buttons for the common colors, but if my client wants to change them all to a different color it's really cumbersome. 

I'd love to see a way to link the lights together with the color wheel to adjust them all at the same time.

[Andrew luecke]

On 4/21/2022 at 9:33 AM, Jasper S said:

Any further information on this or is there any plans to incorporate this feature? I have one room with 13 Shelly RGBW devices, and I set custom buttons for the common colors, but if my client wants to change them all to a different color it's really cumbersome. 

I'd love to see a way to link the lights together with the color wheel to adjust them all at the same time.

G'day. There is more info about this in the dealer forums.

[timbooo]

On 4/24/2022 at 10:30 PM, Andrew luecke said:

G'day. There is more info about this in the dealer forums.

Can you point me in the right direction for this, now that the forums have become the bizarro world tech community and it's nigh on impossible to find anything you're actually looking for...?

[Andrew luecke]

2 hours ago, timbooo said:

Can you point me in the right direction for this, now that the forums have become the bizarro world tech community and it's nigh on impossible to find anything you're actually looking for...?

Oh.. Just realised, I mixed up TPLink and Shelly.. But, just letting you know.. I am working on stabilising the beta which should support Dimmer loads.. If it isn't finished today, it will be released next week  

[416to305]

I'm using the Shelly Cloud driver and really love it but had a question regarding the H&T temperature sensors as I have about 10 of them.  They all work great, but periodically one or two of them just go offline, either for a few hours or a day, and usually come back after a reboot.  The problem though is in Composer, it just shows it as "Offline or Sleeping" which is what it shows for all of them (as in even connected ones say this), even though the Shelly app fully says OFFLINE.  The Temperature Display Driver that's bound to the Shelly H&T never updates which is my biggest issue.  So, for example, the Temperature Display Driver will show on a navigator that the Theatre is 66 degrees which will be correct.  That Shelly H&T then goes offline, and the room is now 72 degrees, yet the navigators all show 66 still vs showing the -- or indicating offline.  So, from the navigators you'd think all the temperature sensors are online and reporting temperature, when often times it hasn't updated in days because the sensor has been offline.

Is there any way to have it so that if a sensor is actually offline (like Shelly app reporting it as offline), it instead shows the -- on the navigators to at least indicate something is wrong?

If not, are there any other temperature sensors that are recommended for C4 that would prevent this, that's not from Shelly?  I'm trying to have one in each room so that I have a nice dashboard that lets me view the temperature in each room of the house, so the H&T's were ideal as they aren't crazy expensive.

[Andrew luecke]

On 4/29/2022 at 2:14 AM, 416to305 said:

I'm using the Shelly Cloud driver and really love it but had a question regarding the H&T temperature sensors as I have about 10 of them.  They all work great, but periodically one or two of them just go offline, either for a few hours or a day, and usually come back after a reboot.  The problem though is in Composer, it just shows it as "Offline or Sleeping" which is what it shows for all of them (as in even connected ones say this), even though the Shelly app fully says OFFLINE.  The Temperature Display Driver that's bound to the Shelly H&T never updates which is my biggest issue.  So, for example, the Temperature Display Driver will show on a navigator that the Theatre is 66 degrees which will be correct.  That Shelly H&T then goes offline, and the room is now 72 degrees, yet the navigators all show 66 still vs showing the -- or indicating offline.  So, from the navigators you'd think all the temperature sensors are online and reporting temperature, when often times it hasn't updated in days because the sensor has been offline.

Is there any way to have it so that if a sensor is actually offline (like Shelly app reporting it as offline), it instead shows the -- on the navigators to at least indicate something is wrong?

If not, are there any other temperature sensors that are recommended for C4 that would prevent this, that's not from Shelly?  I'm trying to have one in each room so that I have a nice dashboard that lets me view the temperature in each room of the house, so the H&T's were ideal as they aren't crazy expensive.

G'day, sorry, I didn't notice this. The H&T sensors remain asleep until the temperature changes 1 degree, or every 12 hours (??).  If you're in a perfectly climate controlled room where the temperature never changes, after a controller reboot, it may take 12 hours to get an update (or you can press the button in the unit)  This is normal behavior. The temperature should definitely update though. Make sure you're running the latest firmware. 

Also, I strongly recommend you use a static IP on your controller and H&T. If the IP changes, it takes 12-24 hours for Control4 to self Heal the parameters we require set on some sleepy devices. 

The cloud will only know if they're offline after 12 hours technically. As an alternative, you can use a compatible temperature probe with a compatible Shelly Module. The pucks aren't sleepy devices. 

Finally, make sure you use the Cloud Driver. It helps improve reliability (particularly with Sleepy devices)

[Andrew luecke]

9 minutes ago, Andrew luecke said:

G'day, sorry, I didn't notice this. The H&T sensors remain asleep until the temperature changes 1 degree, or every 12 hours (??).  If you're in a perfectly climate controlled room where the temperature never changes, after a controller reboot, it may take 12 hours to get an update (or you can press the button in the unit)  This is normal behavior. The temperature should definitely update though. Make sure you're running the latest firmware. 

Also, I strongly recommend you use a static IP on your controller and H&T. If the IP changes, it takes 12-24 hours for Control4 to self Heal the parameters we require set on some sleepy devices. 

The cloud will only know if they're offline after 12 hours technically. As an alternative, you can use a compatible temperature probe with a compatible Shelly Module. The pucks aren't sleepy devices. 

Finally, make sure you use the Cloud Driver. It helps improve reliability (particularly with Sleepy devices)

Also, almost forgot. There is a huge update of our driver  due imminently (possibly within the next 3 days, barring no issues) which beta testers have access to already. 

You may be having an issue which is already resolved (there are many bug and performance improvements)

[416to305]

Thanks for the update.  Just to add, I use the USB power on the H&T and have it set to report every 0.5 degree change.  That works fine I have no issues there.  I'm referring more to when a device goes offline, like battery dies, or it gets unplugged from the wall, or poor wifi.  The navigators always show the last temperature it reported vs showing -- or whatever as offline.  The H&T in my theatre is working finally, but it would go offline until I physically reboot it.  It could be offline for 7 days yet C4 navigators all show 69 degrees or whatever, being that it was 69 when it last reported in.  I was hoping it would show offline, vs what it does right now as I find I'm always hopping into the Shelly app immediately after the C4 app just to double check and make sure that it's correct!

All IoT devices including my controller have Static IP.  Are you saying the cloud is supposed to be reporting to C4 that the device is offline, as that definitely does not happen.  I do use the cloud driver as well, I've just NEVER had a C4 navigator show a Shelly as offline, but instead just reports the last temperature.

I have 2 Honeywell Wifi thermostats, and any time I disconnect them or remove them from wifi, all the navigators show "--" as the current temperature, so you immediately know the device is offline.  I don't seem to have this issue with Shelly 1, as if a door sensor is disconnected or the Shelly 1 is offline it shows my garage doors as greyed out with a ? on them.  It's really the H&T ones that have the issue.

Maybe the new update will solve these issues hopefully!  I just find when C4 doesn't report a Shelly device as offline I find I stop trusting C4.  So, instead of having 1 app to bring everything together, I find I still use all separate apps just to be safe.

[Amr]

9 hours ago, Andrew luecke said:

Also, almost forgot. There is a huge update of our driver  due imminently (possibly within the next 3 days, barring no issues) which beta testers have access to already. 

You may be having an issue which is already resolved (there are many bug and performance improvements)

Andrew it not related to the topic but I wish if you can devlope an mDNS driver for Tasmota firmware (of course I wished for MQTT as well but lets just get the mDNS for now :)), I can only trust chowmain implementation of this driver, its a much needed driver really, only sales will judge!

[Andrew luecke]

3 hours ago, Amr said:

Andrew it not related to the topic but I wish if you can devlope an mDNS driver for Tasmota firmware (of course I wished for MQTT as well but lets just get the mDNS for now :)), I can only trust chowmain implementation of this driver, its a much needed driver really, only sales will judge!

MQTT on C4 IMHO requires support from C4 probably (or an external gateway) to be done properly. Realistically though, there's lots of other things happening in the background at the moment (but we also have lots of drivers queued up too)

 

4 hours ago, 416to305 said:

Thanks for the update.  Just to add, I use the USB power on the H&T and have it set to report every 0.5 degree change.  That works fine I have no issues there.  I'm referring more to when a device goes offline, like battery dies, or it gets unplugged from the wall, or poor wifi.  The navigators always show the last temperature it reported vs showing -- or whatever as offline.  The H&T in my theatre is working finally, but it would go offline until I physically reboot it.  It could be offline for 7 days yet C4 navigators all show 69 degrees or whatever, being that it was 69 when it last reported in.  I was hoping it would show offline, vs what it does right now as I find I'm always hopping into the Shelly app immediately after the C4 app just to double check and make sure that it's correct!

All IoT devices including my controller have Static IP.  Are you saying the cloud is supposed to be reporting to C4 that the device is offline, as that definitely does not happen.  I do use the cloud driver as well, I've just NEVER had a C4 navigator show a Shelly as offline, but instead just reports the last temperature.

I have 2 Honeywell Wifi thermostats, and any time I disconnect them or remove them from wifi, all the navigators show "--" as the current temperature, so you immediately know the device is offline.  I don't seem to have this issue with Shelly 1, as if a door sensor is disconnected or the Shelly 1 is offline it shows my garage doors as greyed out with a ? on them.  It's really the H&T ones that have the issue.

Maybe the new update will solve these issues hopefully!  I just find when C4 doesn't report a Shelly device as offline I find I stop trusting C4.  So, instead of having 1 app to bring everything together, I find I still use all separate apps just to be safe.

So, just a few things (I don't have a unit in front of me but): 

1. We do have events and variables to track battery. So, you could actually check the variable once a day and fire a notification if the battery drops below a certain level (like 10%)

2. The reason static IP matters, is actually because we send commands to the H&T when it wakes up, it should report back to the C4 controller the information (like temperature and humidity). if the IP of the controller changes, it needs to wait until it reawakens for the update 

3. The H&T's in battery mode can't be pinged when they are sleeping (and they are only awake for a few seconds a day). So there is no good way for us to identify instantly if it's online.  That being said, I could maybe investigate adding an event which fires if the device has been offline for 24hours?

AC powered and devices plugged in via USB can always be pinged (they actually don't sleep) 

[Andrew luecke]

Version 20220510 has been pushed to stable.. Huge changelog and some new features (just want to thank everyone who contributed).

More info can be found on: https://chowmain.software/drivers/control4-shelly-generic

 

## 20220510 [STABLE]

This is a major update. An summary of major improvements are below.

**Please note, this release does not include the major updates which target the new Control4 OS (Dealers with beta access should contact us directly).**

 

New Features:

* Support for Lighting Load Groups to allow grouping of lights. Lights can now be used in combination with Control4's Dimmer Load Group Driver to control groups of  multiple lights, including drivers from other brands (All Lights)

* Add Minimum Brightness Property (All Dimmable Lights) -- Thanks Mesh Patel / Concept Electrical Solutions NZ

* Ability to self-diagnose with new Display Diagnostics Action (All Drivers)

* Update Debugging (All Drivers)

* Extensive preparation work for future Shelly Lighting products (All lighting drivers)

 

Bug Fixes / Improvements:

* Handle Invalid Authentication better (ModuleNG)

* Remove Display Debugging Info. Depreciated by better diagnostics (Module, ModuleNG)

* Sort Select From Device List (All Drivers except Agent) - Thanks Mitch Greenfield

* Fix Crash when Authentication is incorrect (ShellyNG) - Thanks H. Schwieren

* Do not override all actions. Only update module actions which are required for driver operation. Allows unhandled events to be set by installers. As a side effect, this improves performance of the driver and reduces some traffic (Module). This is required for some TRV operations -- Thanks Keith Harrison

* TRV requires special actions URL to apply actions (Module) -- Thanks Keith Harrison

* External Temperatures on Shelly cause Lua error.. Fixed (Module) -- Thanks David Hancock And Raphael Eggenberger

* Fix External Temperatures Properties Display (Module) -- Thanks David Hancock

* Fix Auto-Setup of some parameters/devices which use strings for index instead of numbers, primarily External Temperatures for some modules   (Module) -- Thanks David Hancock

* Fix Button Links (Module)

* Fix Toggle for Button Links and Commands (All Lights)

* Disable Effects when switching Levels (All Lights,Module)

* Fix Incorrect renaming of Thermostat driver if auto-rename is disabled to unbound (Thermostat)

* Fix Incorrect naming of Temperature Display Drivers if Auto-rename disabled (Module)

* Fix issues affecting future Control4 OS Versions (All)

* Fix Missing stopped state On Blinds driver (Blinds)

* Modify Shelly Cloud Web link to updated portal address (Cloud)  

* Fix Button click not cancelling timers in some cases - Thanks Jessica @ Tekmodo (Lights)

* Fix Color Mode regression in RGBW2 (Module)

* Fix LUA error when states aren't available yet in - Thanks Jessica @ Tekmodo (Lights)

* Bug with RGBW Light Off Command - Thanks Jessica@Tekmodo,  Paul@EAV & Thomas@Tailor-Made AV (Lights)

* Fix Description for Control Type (Blind)

* In some conditions on first connect, ModuleNG used to not correctly connect (ModuleNG)

[Kaas Mayer]

Quote

* Support for Lighting Load Groups to allow grouping of lights. Lights can now be used in combination with Control4's Dimmer Load Group Driver to control groups of  multiple lights, including drivers from other brands (All Lights)

Thanks for the update! But there is still no way to control the color with a colorpicker (os3.3.0) for a group of lamps, right?

[Andrew luecke]

2 hours ago, Kaas Mayer said:

Thanks for the update! But there is still no way to control the color with a colorpicker (os3.3.0) for a group of lamps, right?

That's correct. There is no good/official way of doing it yet for drivers like Shelly. 

Some cloud/gateway based products have groups built into the API (like the Phillip Hue), which is why they may already include group support (they can treat it as a normal light in most cases). But the limitations of that, is that group support often won't work between multiple gateways and won't work between different brands / drivers.

To the best of my knowledge, Shelly doesn't have a good native local Group API which we can utilise for this purpose (despite being able to group them in the app).

 

Rather than hack together something (which will be difficult to maintain long-term, end up getting depreciated fairly quickly and require changes long term anyway), the best way forward is to wait for an official API. 

 

 

 

 

[416to305]

There's lots of posts here so apologies if this was answered as lots to go through.  How do you set it so that it DOESN'T automatically add a H&T temperature sensor to every single room's navigator whenever you add it with the Shelly agent?  I add these frequently as I want one for each room of the house, but it then goes and adds it to every single room.  It's so tedious having to go room by room removing them, only to have to rinse and repeat a few days later when you add another one.  I've tried checking all the settings, I don't see any option under the Shelly agent about not adding them to rooms automatically or anything. 

Maybe I'm missing something but why does it do this by default?  Seems backwards to me!

[Andrew luecke]

 

23 hours ago, 416to305 said:

There's lots of posts here so apologies if this was answered as lots to go through.  How do you set it so that it DOESN'T automatically add a H&T temperature sensor to every single room's navigator whenever you add it with the Shelly agent?  I add these frequently as I want one for each room of the house, but it then goes and adds it to every single room.  It's so tedious having to go room by room removing them, only to have to rinse and repeat a few days later when you add another one.  I've tried checking all the settings, I don't see any option under the Shelly agent about not adding them to rooms automatically or anything. 

Maybe I'm missing something but why does it do this by default?  Seems backwards to me!

G'day, 

It isn't actually Agent which is adding them, but the drivers themselves do it as a component of their AutoSetup process. 

I think we did it because a lot of people initially were asking us how to display temperature (so automating it was the best way at the time and I believe it was because we were getting a LOT of support enquiries. The deletion of the temperatures doesn't take too long either).

I'll take it into consideration though and possibly replace with a manual auto-Setup thermostat display ACTION instead. But I'll need to consult the original reasons why it was done this way..  There were probably technical reasons for doing so

[Andrew luecke]

G'day guys, 

Just letting you know we have released a new beta to beta testers which targets Performance for the Gen 1 range. If anyone has a large number of lights in particular (is an installer), been having performance issues and not using ramping longer than 5 seconds, let me know (it seems fairly stable, but the main blocker is to reimplement our support for long ramping). 

With the new changes, and utilising some of the new enhancements to optimise the test controller dropped from 25%+ CPU and some large latency spikes, to 0-5% with minimal latency

 

@416to305Haven't forgotten about you.. Your issue is filed as Issue #56, but still making decisions regarding the request

[Andrew luecke]

A new version has now been pushed to release candidate, and I strongly recommend beta testers ensure that the release candidate works for their applications (in particular for lighting). Long ramping support has been fully reimplemented (so please ensure everything works the same as previously)

[Andrew luecke]

Hey guys, Chowmain Shelly Update 20220905 is now online. Lighting is hugely faster than the old version (noticeably), and if you're lighting on gen 1 modules, we actually recommend you slow down polling in Gen 1 modules in this release (as its no longer necessary to poll at high rates).

Keep in mind, for the full performance benefit, you'll need to reboot your controller (some optimisations are low level on the controller side).

It also fixes the random issues with RGBW lights white channel turning on incorrectly some people had in some circumstances (which required a rewrite of the lighting code again).

Any issues particularly with lighting or Gen 1 bindings on controller reboot, let me know.

 

The main changes are below (check our documentation for the full changelog):

 

Major Changes 

1. Introducing our new One-Click AutoSetup implementation. Driver should be now be faster and easier to setup. This solves 90% of the installation support issues.
2. Huge new Performance improvements. On a test controller, CPU load dropped from regularly high latency and 25%+ CPU load, to negligible latency and CPU. Controller reboot is required for the full speed/latency improvements to take effect.
3. Improvements to RGBW2 white channel handling. Turning on a color channel after power outage no longer turns on the white too, and vice versa. We rewrote the command system to enhance support.
4. Improved Shelly i4 support
5. Lights now use acknowledgement for instant feedback. RGBW2 in particular can now operate reliably on high poll rates of 30+ seconds
6. Shelly Thermostat can now we used instead of the Temperature Display for high-temperature operations which the TemperatureDisplay driver doesn't support
7. Major Backend Troubleshooting and Diagnostics improvements
8. Polling is seperate from the rate of commands sent to the device. This allows for more more fine grained configuration
9. New Generation Documentation

 

 

Reliable Long Polling Support:

• This release adds reliable Long Polling of Lights. This allows:
  • Having extended poll times of 30s-120s instead of 250ms-750ms on large systems, which greatly reduces system and network load without sacrificing UI feedback. On a test system with 12 RGBW2 devices and 250ms poll rate, this lowered the CPU from 20-30% to less than 5% and significantly lower latency of all system devices
  • Faster Feedback to users (no need to wait for the next poll)
  • With long polling, external commands sent to the device using the Shelly web interface or another control system may not be reflected in some circumstances until the next poll.
• Please note, some devices which send feedback may in some circumstances offer limited long polling support.
• Gen 2 / ModuleNG devices do not need polling (feedback is always instant). This change does not affect them.

[enzeder]

Hi, will there be support for the Shelly Plus H&T.

Thanks

 

[Andrew luecke]

19 minutes ago, enzeder said:

Hi, will there be support for the Shelly Plus H&T.

Thanks

 

Absolutely.. I have a plus H&T sitting in front of me.

However, there were a few bugs which had become critical to fix, needed to be prioritised, and I couldn't delay the current release any longer.

The main issues were the RGBW white channel issue on the new OS3.3 Light V2 drivers (that required a major overhaul of lighting again) and overhauling the polling system to finally allow lighting to use long poll rates of 30s+ (as there was at least 1 or 2 systems which were becoming overloaded, and I worked with Control4 EMEA and Nextgen to identify and fix them). 

Theoretically, I actually implemented parts of the infrastructure needed to support the Shelly H&T plus months ago, however, we didn't need it at the time. It should just be a matter of hooking those parts up and managing sleepy 2nd Gen devices properly (but not sure of ETA). So, definitely on it's way, but not sure of ETA (as, I'm not 100% sure if there will be any curveballs since we have to do something new to make this work)

[Andrew luecke]

On 9/8/2022 at 8:48 PM, enzeder said:

Hi, will there be support for the Shelly Plus H&T.

Thanks

 

G'day,

If any installers have a Shelly H&T Plus or Shelly Wall Dimmer, uses the Chowmain Shelly driver and aren't part of the beta program, let me know. We now have a release candidate which supports these devices (sorry for the delay). 

It also has fixes for Shelly UNI and Motion 2. We're expecting this version to be pushed to production soon.

 

The new TPLink beta (and Yeelight Music Mode fixes) are still in progress unfortunately, but shouldn't be too much longer