Hi Mike and thanks for the comment! And this really is great question. I use 2 integration types - MQTT, mostly for battery powered devices but also for some other. Reason was that support for battery powered devices, was introduced first in MQTT as it really doesn't require much for it to work with this setup. Also, this enables me to save all states easily when HA restarts - they are available through MQTT and when HA get's back online, all data is already there (some devices don't update or provide data unless there is change). Also note - some device information is available here, that's not available in any other integration. Closest one in terms of entities generated from devices is HACS component ShellyforHass. HA is still a bit behind on them. Other integration I use is internal HA - and I made switch when HA started to implement new feature and Shelly devices much faster then previously. Reason was simple - if I have a choice of internal and external (custom), I would prefer internal to be sure it would work with next update. Negative side is that it provides least entities though! Shellyfor HASS works great, but since I already had internal by default and MQTT - really didn't need 3rd one and that's why I removed it.
Thank you for your video. I enjoy your presentation style in that it is organized and easy to understand. You also give examples that are very useful to noobs like me. In a second home I will install several Shelly devices as well as some z-wave devices. Q: Why Shelly H&T instead of something like Aeotec 6-in-1 that has six sensors...motion, light, temperature & humidity? Do you know why Shelly did not make more functions in the H&T sensor? Thank you again, Cheers
Thank you for your comment Daniel!!! Much appreciated. In terms of other sensors - I have bunch of them - a lot DIY stuff, but also Xiaomi ones too (plus one kickstarter project). I presume that decision was because of the battery life - we are talking here about WiFi and it can really drain the battery fast - there is option to use external power, but for such a small sensor you do lose mobility with it.
Although I was able to translate everything to the current release of HA, it's a lot of kerfuffle setting it up, and ultimately I can't get the damn things to work. Their sensor values all show up as unavailable, even though I can see MQTT is getting populated with all kinds of new and exciting values. Also getting the things to get recognised via MQTT was a nightmare. The dance between announce/discovery automations had me baffled, and I expected the announcer to trigger the discovery one, but that's not what that is. I think these configs would go well with a lot more explanation of what they're for exactly, why they must exist, and what they do exactly.
Thank you so much for this video! I have, however, not yet managed to get it going. Some interface elements are different in more recent HA and Shelly firmware incarnations, and maybe that is a problem. So, I believe I did everything that you said, but in the MQTT integration, the sensors aren't shown. In the Shellies discovery, I get "Error rendering data template: UndefinedError: 'dict object' has no attribute 'payload_json'" which I have seen elsewhere, but I haven't seen a solution to this yet. Restarting HA multiple times did not make a difference. Any thoughts? Thanks!
Do you have both automation for Shellies Discvvery script present and configured? This error is present when you run automation by hand I think. Check this link for few troubleshooting steps. github.com/bieniu/ha-shellies-discovery/issues/281#issuecomment-1092738689
Awesome tutorial! Just got my 2 H&T configured MQTT working with my HA 12.3 Core on my RPi4. Your video saved me a lot of time but I had to redo the steps in order to get it working well. Mind me to ask a question? Is it true once cloud service is disabled, the ability to use the Shelly mobile app is long gone? Reason why I asked this because to set up static IP of my H&T, the UI forced me to disable native cloud service otherwise it wouldn't let me to setup the static IP address of the unit.
Haven't tested it, but I presume so. But, you don't need to set static IP address for Shelly if you are using MQTT - it should work even with Dynamic. Second option, if your router supports it is to in DHCP section set this device to permanently has this address even if it's dynamic. I do it to some of the devices (for ex. Google Minis etc).
@@BeardedTinker I did that too to assign a static IP from router. Each Shelly device has its own IP address assigned by the router. Now I will have to "wake" it up and remove the static IP from the H&T and re-enable Cloud service and see if I could re-add it back to my Shelly app.
@BeardedTinker First of all, thanks for the tutorial! Very clear and useful! I recently updated to the newest HA Core and OS Version, since then my Shelly HT devices (Battery powered) regularly report an unavailable state. If i press the physical pin on the device or if i listen to # in mqtt, the states are updated and i receive values again. I also updated to the newest py script and the newest shelly firmware, but that doesn't help either. Did you experience anything similar?
Thank you Adrian! My Shelly HT is offline for some time - battery died, and I need to pickup usb dock for it so haven't seen any issues with it and new update. I did see the new Shellies for HASS script released today (or was it yesterday?) Do you have that one installed? Not sure what could be wrong, did you update firmware on it recently too?
@@BeardedTinker Thanks for your reply! I just saw that too, theres a new script version again. Yes i did upgrade the shelly firmware too because the new script needed a certain fw version too work. I guess i will try with the new script and the new shelly fw and see if that works. I just found it confusing because everything worked like a charm before the new HA OS and Core update. I didn't see any changes to a correpsonding integration which should affect the shelly/mqtt functionality so i figured i ask if you experienced a similiar behaviour
@@BeardedTinker Short update if you're interested: It works fine again with the new Shelly FW and the new discovery script. Also Shelly allowed within the new FW to set the humidity threshold to minimum 1 instead of 5 which i think is pretty neat.
@@adrianzurbrugg4208 that's great. I need to pickup my USB dock for it. Bought it 10 days ago but opted to pick it up instead of mailing it. Want to see how it improves on update frequency of sensor.
@@BeardedTinker Ok so in order for the Shelly H&T to works, it needs to be on the external Wifi. Access Point cannot work as a internal wifi for the Shelly device to works and provide information to the app right?
@@dorotheetherrien5428 it needs to be on your standard WiFi connection (WiFi settings) On Shelly if you configure AP, you need to connect to it via phone, same as during configuration. But since this is battery powered device, it will not be awake for a long. I hope this is the answer to your question as I maybe havent' correctly understood what external WiFi is.
@@BeardedTinker Thank you very much for the reply. I'll give a try again, i already tried yesterday with 10sec, but having it with the micro USB plug to AC, not sure if this isnt allowing the reset to happen, maybe i should get a battery and try it like that.
That's strange. Mine is disconnected since I got newer one. But it should work form what I remember. Can you get into it by just pressing button once and connecting via AP? If yes, you could factory reset it from there.
@@BeardedTinker You suggestion is very good, sadly i didn't though of it in time, and removed the 4 sensors from the Shelly app, yesterday I made a new network with the old ssid, and i cant make the app find them, so i need to go via the reset way.
I did, two times few months 😂 or to translate it, as long as batteries lasted two time. Now waiting for USB power dock for it to give it another go (and also test with something new from Shelly)
