6 ms·

Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

92 points by joisig 3y ago

BluSyn 3y ago
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.
- PreInternet01 3y ago
  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!
  - KMag 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure what they mean by "stateless" is that the manual switch resets any state set wirelessly.
- wlesieutre 3y ago
  Not cheap but Leviton 5657-2W might be the one you want
- joisig 3y ago
  OP here, the switches we used are push-button Berker switches. I can't say I'm 100% happy with them, they look nice and are tactile but they are the "toggle" type - push and hold to either dim or brighten (never really know which) then again for the other direction, or quick push for on/off. My other annoyance is that sometimes a quick push does not register, but I don't know if this is because of the switch or because of the Shelly dimmer... I think more likely it's the dimmer.
- BigJ1211 3y ago
  I just use the Ikea trådfri dimmers[1] and have them bound to the lights I want them to control. That way they can do on/off and dim. They no longer seem to offer them. But the replacement might work as well. Support for the device was merged into Z2M last month so not sure if it's already included in the latest release. 1. Predecesor of this: https://www.ikea.com/nl/en/p/somrig-shortcut-button-white-smart-50560334/ https://www.ikea.com/nl/en/p/somrig-shortcut-button-white-sm...
- philjohn 3y ago
  Shelly 1 and Plus 1 (the gen 2 device) allows you to separate the relay from the switch and expose both via API or MQTT. That's how I have my lights setup - normal light switches (switched live) will toggle the switch sensor which is picked up by HomeAssistant which then either toggles the relay (for non smart lights) or sends a command to a light group (Zigbee IKEA Tradfri bulbs, using a Sonoff Zigbee dongle for comms) to turn on or off. The only issue you might have is that they require a neutral, so unless you have a neutral behind each switch you'll need to put the Shelly elsewhere, either in the light fitting or ceiling (in my case).
- jacquesm 3y ago
  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.
smt88 3y ago
> * 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 Assistant is absolutely incredible, easy to use, polished, and flexible. You can get it to do all of this easily. I got it installed and configured within ~3 hours.
- pmontra 3y ago
  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 from Amazon or Google (the plugs work with them too.) Given the size of the web app maybe it also spared me some time because I suspect that installing, configuring Home Assistant and learning how to use it and what works and what doesn't are not zero time activities.
  - Towaway69 3y ago
    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's basically a visual programming frontend to NodeJS. [0] https://nodered.org https://nodered.org
    - ErneX 3y ago
      This is what use for my home automations, including some Shelly 1s. It's pretty neat.
mwlp 3y ago
Nice! I also control my lights using Elixir and a Hue bridge (through Home Assistant). https://github.com/Manwholikespie/mojodojo https://github.com/Manwholikespie/mojodojo
- jspash 3y ago
  Interesting that you also used Elixir. It's also quite interesting contrasting your approach to OP's. Was there a specific reason that you chose Elixir?
  - mwlp 3y ago
    Eh, Elixir has just become my go-to for personal projects. GenServers, pattern matching, releases, being able to pop a shell into my program, the beautiful colors of the IEx shell... I miss all these things when choosing other languages. I also planned on eventually integrating it with a chatbot of mine which is also written in Elixir.
- joisig 3y ago
  Neat! Driving HA through API is a clever alternative so you can build exactly the UX you want.
ttyyzz 3y ago
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 expect. I really prefer Tools like this for products like Shelly, good job!
- jacquesm 3y ago
  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.
bo0tzz 3y ago
What a great coincidence to see this. I've been doing something pretty similar over the past few weeks, slapping together an Elixir app [0] that controls lights in my house via zigbee2mqtt. For now it only handles a motion sensor nightlight, but I have grand plans of course. [0] https://github.com/bo0tzz/machinekamer/ https://github.com/bo0tzz/machinekamer/
jacquesm 3y ago
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.
asylteltine 3y ago
Home assistant!
aidenn0 3y ago
I looked into some basic automation for Christmas lights this year; some thoughts: 1. Zigbee devices are crazy inexpensive. I can get two zigbee power switches for less than half the cost of a single USB controlled one. 2. Zigbee2Mqtt is really nice; setting it and mosquitto up was easy, and I can control everything over mqtt now. 3. The creator of HA really doesn't want me using his software, so I'm not.
- kriiuuu 3y ago
  What is your reasoning behind nr.3? I don’t disagree as they seem hostile towards the nix HA project. At least that is what I gathered when I set up my zigbee devices on a NixOS server.
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    I also use NixOS. They requested HA be not included in nixpkgs.
    - wredue 3y ago
      There are parts of NixOS that require specific support or you apps simply don’t work, and I can see why a developer would not want NixOS issues causing tickets for them.
      - kriiuuu 3y ago
        They aren’t really open-source then are they?
        aidenn0 3y ago
        1. It's allowed to have wants and desires separate from the obligations imposed by the licensing terms 2. Not wanting people to open tickets/issues is completely orthogonal to being libre software.
      - aidenn0 3y ago
birdman3131 3y ago
The big thing I really like about the shelly devices is that you can flash tasmota onto them. I don't have the need or desire to do so but it means I can't find myself with a dead home automation setup because some company went belly up as has happened several times before.

92 points by joisig 3y ago

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.

PreInternet01 3y ago
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!
- KMag 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure what they mean by "stateless" is that the manual switch resets any state set wirelessly.
wlesieutre 3y ago
Not cheap but Leviton 5657-2W might be the one you want
joisig 3y ago
OP here, the switches we used are push-button Berker switches. I can't say I'm 100% happy with them, they look nice and are tactile but they are the "toggle" type - push and hold to either dim or brighten (never really know which) then again for the other direction, or quick push for on/off. My other annoyance is that sometimes a quick push does not register, but I don't know if this is because of the switch or because of the Shelly dimmer... I think more likely it's the dimmer.
BigJ1211 3y ago
I just use the Ikea trådfri dimmers[1] and have them bound to the lights I want them to control. That way they can do on/off and dim. They no longer seem to offer them. But the replacement might work as well. Support for the device was merged into Z2M last month so not sure if it's already included in the latest release. 1. Predecesor of this: https://www.ikea.com/nl/en/p/somrig-shortcut-button-white-smart-50560334/ https://www.ikea.com/nl/en/p/somrig-shortcut-button-white-sm...
philjohn 3y ago
Shelly 1 and Plus 1 (the gen 2 device) allows you to separate the relay from the switch and expose both via API or MQTT. That's how I have my lights setup - normal light switches (switched live) will toggle the switch sensor which is picked up by HomeAssistant which then either toggles the relay (for non smart lights) or sends a command to a light group (Zigbee IKEA Tradfri bulbs, using a Sonoff Zigbee dongle for comms) to turn on or off. The only issue you might have is that they require a neutral, so unless you have a neutral behind each switch you'll need to put the Shelly elsewhere, either in the light fitting or ceiling (in my case).
jacquesm 3y ago
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.

smt88 3y ago

> * 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 Assistant is absolutely incredible, easy to use, polished, and flexible. You can get it to do all of this easily. I got it installed and configured within ~3 hours.

pmontra 3y ago
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 from Amazon or Google (the plugs work with them too.) Given the size of the web app maybe it also spared me some time because I suspect that installing, configuring Home Assistant and learning how to use it and what works and what doesn't are not zero time activities.
- Towaway69 3y ago
  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's basically a visual programming frontend to NodeJS. [0] https://nodered.org https://nodered.org
  - ErneX 3y ago
    This is what use for my home automations, including some Shelly 1s. It's pretty neat.

mwlp 3y ago

Nice! I also control my lights using Elixir and a Hue bridge (through Home Assistant). https://github.com/Manwholikespie/mojodojo https://github.com/Manwholikespie/mojodojo

jspash 3y ago
Interesting that you also used Elixir. It's also quite interesting contrasting your approach to OP's. Was there a specific reason that you chose Elixir?
- mwlp 3y ago
  Eh, Elixir has just become my go-to for personal projects. GenServers, pattern matching, releases, being able to pop a shell into my program, the beautiful colors of the IEx shell... I miss all these things when choosing other languages. I also planned on eventually integrating it with a chatbot of mine which is also written in Elixir.
joisig 3y ago
Neat! Driving HA through API is a clever alternative so you can build exactly the UX you want.

ttyyzz 3y ago

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 expect. I really prefer Tools like this for products like Shelly, good job!

jacquesm 3y ago
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.

bo0tzz 3y ago

What a great coincidence to see this. I've been doing something pretty similar over the past few weeks, slapping together an Elixir app [0] that controls lights in my house via zigbee2mqtt. For now it only handles a motion sensor nightlight, but I have grand plans of course. [0] https://github.com/bo0tzz/machinekamer/ https://github.com/bo0tzz/machinekamer/

jacquesm 3y ago

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.

asylteltine 3y ago

Home assistant!

aidenn0 3y ago

I looked into some basic automation for Christmas lights this year; some thoughts: 1. Zigbee devices are crazy inexpensive. I can get two zigbee power switches for less than half the cost of a single USB controlled one. 2. Zigbee2Mqtt is really nice; setting it and mosquitto up was easy, and I can control everything over mqtt now. 3. The creator of HA really doesn't want me using his software, so I'm not.

kriiuuu 3y ago
What is your reasoning behind nr.3? I don’t disagree as they seem hostile towards the nix HA project. At least that is what I gathered when I set up my zigbee devices on a NixOS server.
- aidenn0 3y ago
  I also use NixOS. They requested HA be not included in nixpkgs.
  - wredue 3y ago
    There are parts of NixOS that require specific support or you apps simply don’t work, and I can see why a developer would not want NixOS issues causing tickets for them.
    - kriiuuu 3y ago
      They aren’t really open-source then are they?
      - aidenn0 3y ago
        1. It's allowed to have wants and desires separate from the obligations imposed by the licensing terms 2. Not wanting people to open tickets/issues is completely orthogonal to being libre software.
    - aidenn0 3y ago

birdman3131 3y ago

The big thing I really like about the shelly devices is that you can flash tasmota onto them. I don't have the need or desire to do so but it means I can't find myself with a dead home automation setup because some company went belly up as has happened several times before.