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Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

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Re: Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

#21

Post by dementik »

pmlnr wrote: post #10
smt88 wrote: post #4

> * Rationally, I might have been better off going with Home Assistant, which has ready-made integrations with Shelly, Zigbee dimmers, and probably thousands of other device types, but I wanted complete control and hackability, and I preferred to spend time building my own system rather than learning and customizing Home Assistant and maybe never getting it to work like I want it to.* This thought was correct. Home A…

I have different opinion on Home Assistant. It's surprisingly heavy compared to alternatives, the YAML configs are insanely overcomplicated, they move too fast with Python versions (phasing out 3.9 when it was still the default on the then stable Debian, etc). My 2 cents go for Zigbee2MQTT, Mosquitton, and Domoticz. Domoticz has it's problems, but it's been a faithful workhorse for me for the past 6 or more years.

Almost all my issues with Python versions went away when starting to use HA in docker container. Everything is very smooth.

One way is also to use HAOS but it is kinda limited.

Current stack for me is HA+traefik+Z2M+Frigate+Mosquitto. All running in containers, on top of Debian. Works perfectly.

Re: Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

#22

Post by jakupovic »

smt88 wrote: post #4

> * Rationally, I might have been better off going with Home Assistant, which has ready-made integrations with Shelly, Zigbee dimmers, and probably thousands of other device types, but I wanted complete control and hackability, and I preferred to spend time building my own system rather than learning and customizing Home Assistant and maybe never getting it to work like I want it to.* This thought was correct. Home A…

Another vote for home assistant, also from another thread further down use a dockerized version, no issues. I have all kinds of things connected, lights, switches, shellys, custom sensors/collectors and it all works flawlessly. Just amazed how good HA performs after using various other things over the years.

You're also not tied to HA, but can develop using anything then once it all works put the result on HA.

Re: Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

#23

Post by alangibson »

jakupovic wrote: post #22
smt88 wrote: post #4

> * Rationally, I might have been better off going with Home Assistant, which has ready-made integrations with Shelly, Zigbee dimmers, and probably thousands of other device types, but I wanted complete control and hackability, and I preferred to spend time building my own system rather than learning and customizing Home Assistant and maybe never getting it to work like I want it to.* This thought was correct. Home A…

Another vote for home assistant, also from another thread further down use a dockerized version, no issues. I have all kinds of things connected, lights, switches, shellys, custom sensors/collectors and it all works flawlessly. Just amazed how good HA performs after using various other things over the years. You're also not tied to HA, but can develop using anything then once it all works put the result on HA.

I love HA for it's stability. However, I've written several HA integrations and I've got to say that their component API is insane. Inheritance based, vaguely documented, shifting terminology, etc. I'm working on my own use-case based API just to rationalize it a bit.

Re: Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

#24

Post by KMag »

PreInternet01 wrote: post #3
BluSyn wrote: post #2

What light switches did you use, if any? I also want to use Shelly dimmers, but I haven’t found simple stateless light switches. I want automation and app control in many cases, but also want simple tactile button for on/off or hold for brightness control. Amazingly hard to find.

Not OP, but the Shelly 1 works very well as a simple switch, and it supports both physical and remote operations. Not sure what you mean by "stateless", though (I mean, the thing is either on or off ?), so that might prevent you from using it, but otherwise it's highly recommended!

I'm pretty sure what they mean by "stateless" is that the manual switch resets any state set wirelessly.

Re: Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

#25

Post by boringuser2 »

Towaway69 wrote: post #8
pmontra wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got some Shelly Plugs. I decided to operate them with a self made web app running on my home server. That app makes HTTP calls to the API of the plug. It's very simple, just a curl from bash would work. One call to turn on the plug, one to turn it off and one to read the power meter. I put buttons on the web page and it does what I need. There are no dependecies from other services and especially no dependency f…

I don't myself but I know that many use Node-RED[0] for home assistant applications. It comes with thousands of plugins, easy to construct web frontends and it's completely open source. I believe one can also combine it with Home Assistant, I think there are interfaces. Learning curve is initial exponential (think of visual Unix pipes) but once understood, there are limitless things that you can do with Node-RED. It'…

That's just some silly scripting GUI, isn't it?

No real reason to write code in blocks when you know how to not do that.

I have an express server that runs my automations using the REST API.

Re: Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

#26

Post by boringuser2 »

dementik wrote: post #21
pmlnr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have different opinion on Home Assistant. It's surprisingly heavy compared to alternatives, the YAML configs are insanely overcomplicated, they move too fast with Python versions (phasing out 3.9 when it was still the default on the then stable Debian, etc). My 2 cents go for Zigbee2MQTT, Mosquitton, and Domoticz. Domoticz has it's problems, but it's been a faithful workhorse for me for the past 6 or more years.

Almost all my issues with Python versions went away when starting to use HA in docker container. Everything is very smooth. One way is also to use HAOS but it is kinda limited. Current stack for me is HA+traefik+Z2M+Frigate+Mosquitto. All running in containers, on top of Debian. Works perfectly.

How is it limited?

I have been thinking of migrating my setup from a docks container to HAOS on metal.

I have like 1 dozen Intel j5105 boxes, might as well use them.

Re: Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

#27

Post by jacquesm »

The Shelly stuff is very nice, extremely reliable. I've used a whole pile of different products to test in single units and finally settled on using Shelly wherever I can and some special stuff for the few things that require different interfaces than Shelly provides. I use their 3 phase power sensors, thermostatic controls for on the radiators, temperature and humidity sensors and relays. Everything is on a separate WiFi network to make it independent of the rest of the house internet setup and it all runs off a Raspi 400 running HA. It's been up and running for well over a year now without a hitch and does all of the energy management, heating, cooling and monitoring.

The only gripe I have about the Shelly stuff is that it uses more power than what you would expect for stuff that is pretty much very intermittent use and as a result I've wired up everything with 5V wall warts, very low power to save on parasitic drain. We've done what we could to knock down our daily average and typically do about 8-10KWh/day so every little bit counts.

Re: Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

#28

Post by jacquesm »

ttyyzz wrote: post #9

I have a couple of Shelly relay switches for various purposes in a separate IoT vlan which is not connected to the cloud. The new Shelly android app not only is worse and barely functional but also pushes you to use the cloud. On top of that, they try to sell some functionality as a subscription Model. On the other hand you don't need the cloud and their http API is super well documented and does everything you would…

Fortunately their cloud stuff is still optional and easy to disable on all of their current products (usually it is disabled when it is sold).

The easiest way is to ignore their apps and other cloud based components and just to run HA on a small computer that you stash away near your distribution panel.

Re: Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

#29

Post by jacquesm »

BluSyn wrote: post #2

What light switches did you use, if any? I also want to use Shelly dimmers, but I haven’t found simple stateless light switches. I want automation and app control in many cases, but also want simple tactile button for on/off or hold for brightness control. Amazingly hard to find.

For that I use Klikaan/Klikuit, I have a whole bunch of these set up throughout the house and they're pretty easy to use and configure. Outside of NL these are sold under the 'Intertechno' brand. Batteries seem to last forever, I've had these in the house for five years now and never had to change a single battery.
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