Shelly or Sonoff

IOT (The internet of things)
1

I’m very new to all of this so apologies if I get some of the terminology wrong.

Pricing aside

Which do you prefer and why?

Do I understand correctly that Shelly devices will work on a local network in HA these days with the stock firmware, no need to flash with Tasmota, no need for the Shelly cloud?
I must say the price difference will be worth it for me if I don’t have to muck about with flashing firmware?

I’ve been browsing around and see Shelly stuff mostly come out tops if comparing with the equivalent Sonoff device, so is Sonoff popularity only down to the cheaper pricing or am I missing something?

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Sonoff do have a lot going for their price. It’s a strong motivator if you need to add many switches.

I think the Shelly mostly have higher ratings on the relays, so theycan handle more current. But you really need to compare the many different models and what each give you at the price. It’s hard to do a generic comparison.

Many of the new Sonoffs also do not need to be flashed. Just look for the DIY models.

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Whilst on this subject how does the CBI Astute compare?
I presume there isn’t any standard shared by by these vendors so one has to commit to one vendor and stick with them… :confused:

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I do have Sonoff, Shelly and Astute here in my setup. Just love the Shelly products, good quality, nice app, but most of all the HA integration is a pleasure. Astute is good quality and as with Shelly, the integration with Tuya and into HA is also very good.

I had some issues in getting Sonoff to work properly. Also the HA integration was a lot of work. Most of the Sonoff LED lights suck on the wifi side. I had a number of em in the hose, with lots of Philips HUE bulbs. Replace all of em with various brands that work via the Tuya integration and app. Where the Sonoff wifi failed, the Tuya type bulbs function 100%, never once dropping the wifi. In the same spots the Sonoffs wold drop off and go offline multiple times per day.

In y book, Tuya and Shelly all the way, even with Sonoff being less expensive. That being said, apart from the bulbs, the switches worked flawlessly. In future, me will be steering away from Sonoff. I won’t be replacing the working sonoffs but also wont buy any more Sonoff’s.

Groetnis

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If you plan to do your own thing basically and integrate everything in to HA then as I understand you don’t quite have to choose one vendor and stick with it. As long as your devices play nicely with HA then you’ll be fine.

However I think if you plan to use something threw its own app and via its cloud servers, then it will be best to stick to one vendor to simplify control and communication.

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Assume by this you have wifi light bulbs.

This is one of the big things I’ve been wondering about in starting to research this.
Making the bulb itself smart vs keeping with a standard bulb and making the switch smart.

Is there a case for one or the other or is it purely personal preference?

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In my opinion, leave the switches alone, make the bulb smart. You simply replace the bulb, easy peasy. For the switches you need to mess with the wiring, open wall boxes etc. It’s work we can all do without.

Smart bulbs reduce energy use, thats good. They also have features that you otherwise will not get with switches. Dimming, colours, remember last settings, scenes to be created and used, etc etc.

Groetnis

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I have all of them:

  • tons of Sonoffs, including basics, POWs, minis
  • a couple of Shelly’s, including the 1, the 2, the 2.5 and the 1PM
  • two CBI Astutes in my DB (one for the geyser’s element, one for the Aircon) and a CBI Astute plug.

The Sonoffs and Shelly’s are both flashed to Tasmota. Sonoff because I never had good experiences with their firmware (way back, after I got my first, they were offline for a couple of days and I could literally not turn on/off the Sonoff without accessing the button).

The Shelly’s are really good out of the box. I love the fact that they have direct access to their flashing pins, yet are really small and compact and fit inside light boxes really easy. I also like that some of them have built in temperature sensors to check for overheating, and generally seem well made. I originally kept them on all of their firmware, but discovered that they were prone to lose Wifi after a while. Flashing them to Tasmota fixed this and since the pins were exposed it is really easy to do so too. It might have been fixed in a subsequent firmware.

I would buy more Shelly’s but since they are more expensive, it depends on the application.

I have not flashed my CBI astutes and have good experience with tuyalocal. Main reason: i don’t want to open them to flash them.

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Ive only used Sonoff not Shelly but I have a lot of Sonoff light switches, relays, sensors both wifi and zigbee. All the wifi devices are flashed with tasmota.

Works flawlessly my side.

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I used to just buy a ton of Wifi bulbs (Yeelight in particular) but to me it fundamentally breaks the idea of the light-switch, which is the main way people use lights!

So even though I had alternative physical buttons to turn on/off the wifi bulbs (and sometimes automatic, motion controls) people would still just turn off the light at the light switch.

Last year I learned how to pull through neutrals myself and I have been on a quest ever since to do this to every lightbox. I then fit a Shelly or Sonoff Mini in the box, combined with a push-button (momentary) like the CBI dimmer switches. I find that

  • this works well enough for most people - it looks like a light switch and even though it doesn’t “stay put” they can still use it
  • It doesn’t matter what the physical button state is - so I can turn a light on with the button and off via Home Assistant and it’s fine
  • I can use the double-tap, tripple-tap or press-and-hold actions in Tasmota to do other things.

I’ve started to actually combine Wifi bulbs on a Tasmota-flashed Sonoff/Shelly cirtcuit, but that’s a longer story :slight_smile:

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11

My first thought was also to stick with wall switches, 100 plus years of muscle memory won’t disappear over night.

I guess the nice thing is that you can do it in stages, first buy a wifi bulb and later add the switch, or vise versa.

Now to find the best price on Shelly light bulbs, think I should just get one or two so that I can start playing with HA.

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For me it was easy to select my standards for smart devices. It started years ago when Philips was the only smart option. My 60+ year old house and wiring was not conducive to anything else. Love the HUE system, but hellishly expensive. I used to fly a lot, really a lot, for work and got all my Philips Hue in the UK. Got close to 50 devices. Then, although the Philips app is brilliant with lots of automation, I wanted more, so started with Openhab back then.

As I work in IT and with the Cloud malarky, I knew I wanted all my data locally, seeing the inside gubbinses of the cloud(s) every day. As smart devices started becoming available locally, me no my flying, I had to look at what options would work. And since home automation was now important for me, that and the Philips devices drove most of my early journey.

From local availability and my not insubstantial spend on Philips, I looked at features and compatibility. Home assistant was the first easy choice as it had all the integrations I wanted. Some of the early integration work was a bit ifffy to say the least but the promise was there. Then looking at all the smart options, I selected Sonoff because it was really cheap and available and thusly was ok to experiment with and get HA working and stuff integrated. It was a good thing to as I learned a lot and made very many mistakes.

Side story, I build and rebuild HA many times, at least 8 or 9 times in a few weeks. Then went to Docker on a Pi 4 with HA and never looked back. Only ever had to restore a backup one time when I lost my automations.

Then looking at smart platforms and surmised that Tuya was the better way to go as many more manufacturers support their App and Cloud than does the Sonoff stuff. So better choice all round for a single integration. Now that Tuya took over the HA integration, their support has increased and lots of improvements are happening. The integration works, is slick and easy to work with.

Shelly has a proper integration for HA already when I started down that road and I needed a good energy meter, this was the obvious choice as they have a 3 Ph unit. My Efergy is just plain dumb and there is no proper integration to HA. Also it’s a cloud only service…. Efergy even measures outgoing energy as inbound, meh. :unamused:

A lucky happenstance was when I saw Astute products integrate with Tuya app, yay. So that was how I got to now.

Groetnis

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I saw this, coupled with what Sarel said about rewiring, it reminded me of what I did on a switch or two, muscle memory “be-gone” … :laughing:

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Hahaha I have resorted to that as well, but with very tough good quality clear transparent sellotape. Family learned quickly the switch she don’t move no more :rofl:

Groetnis

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Also, in my mind, I can use my time better than fishing for neutrals or opening switch wall boxes, but meh, thats just me :unamused: plug the light in, tape the switch, done :white_check_mark: To lazy for all that work….

Family now mostly trained….

Groetnis

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Makes a LOT of sense. Less tampering and more things work in and around my house.

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My approach but definitely not foolproof.

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I typically pull neutrals when I change the light fittings - the house came with mostly those “lovely old glass crystal balls” so we’ve been slowly but surely replacing them with more modern fittings. Luckily the opaque white ones and not those aged yellow ones!!

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I tried the same, until that “My pfok Marelize …” moment.

Hauled out the red, not black, not see-through, red tape and with me, grumbling "Go ahead now, I dare ya … "

It worked, so I left it.

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Ha plenty o those on this Solar and HA journey. Distinctly rembering my Sparkie’s eyes when we realized, before powering on, those 4 pole Noarck breakers :sweat_smile::fire::rofl:

Groetnis

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At my in laws, that thing slowly unscrewed itself over what must have been years. Then my son, who must have been about 7 at the time, went to the toilet and slammed the door a little too hard… and it came down on top of him. Shattered, glass everywhere. Hysterical kid. Door very hard to open since the floor is full of glass shards and it is not the largest room to start with…

Thankfully no blood.

A replacement was found soon after. It was plastic… of course.