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Outdoor Shelly alternative?


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I have a gate controller that occasionally needs the power reset. For a bit of time, I used WEMO plugs that I spliced at the gate controller itself, and that worked 95% of the time. But as most of you know WEMO is pretty garbage at always working and if there was some kind of hiccup in wifi, I would have to go manually reset it (which defeats the purpose, like when I'm out of town.)

 

Based on some advice from guys on here, I put in a Shelly relay instead. The flexibility and functionality of it is EXCELLENT. As far as I know they are known to be reliable as well. HOWEVER, I just immediate ran into a limitation that makes it useless for me. It turned off within a few hours from overheating. I guess it only runs till 95 degrees. It gets to 115+ here in AZ! (The switch is protected from the elements, but not temperature).

 

What are my other alternatives? I would prefer not to go back to relying on WEMO.....

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1 hour ago, alanchow said:

Why don't you use a TP-Link Kasa outdoor smart plug.  Its designed to be used outdoors.

https://www.kasasmart.com/us/products/smart-plugs/kasa-smart-wi-fi-outdoor-plug

Driver here

https://chowmain.software/drivers/control4-tplink

The chowmain kasa driver (agent) is awesome. No need to bother your dealer to add or replace devices - you can do it from HE.

Fwiw - even the super cheap non outdoor kasa plugs have a higher real world heat tolerance than they advertise (at least in my experience). I have a few of them installed inside of metal landscaping transformer boxes. I live in Texas, it's been over 100F daily most of the summer. They get much hotter inside those boxes.

At $8 a pop, when they start acting stupid (usually a little over a year of being outside baked in the sun), I simply throw them away and replace them with another. 

I do have a couple of the outdoor rated (bulkier) kasa plugs. We use them at holidays when the DW wants to put a bunch of lighted crap outside. I quit bringing them in 3 years ago. They still work fine.

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Before you spend any money you don't need to, try this, as the Shelly stuff is otherwise solid, as folks say:

Assuming you have one of their 'puck' relays, it's being installed in a larger, appropriate enclosure and can be mounted without contact risk: Remove its case and reinstall the board 'naked' then see if that solves your problem. The case comes apart into two halves with a small screwdriver or similar tool.

I'm suggesting this as those cases are super small and ventless (thermally bad). I've noticed high board temps even in AC. In Shelly's defense, it appears designed for fitting in a gang box. The underlying electronic components, e.g., ESP, are all industry standard, high-volume stuff, so it'd be shocked if it's an actual spec. limitation.

Lastly, I've also found their 'plus/+' models (newer) to be much more reliable while still being nice and cheap/flexible.

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