Is ESPHome worth it for a 2.5 Shelly?

ESPHome
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Well… why learning another programming language (shelly scripting) if i already know esphome’s yaml?
Some examples why i change fw: shelly 2.5 with esphome allows current based cover operating, which means that shelly monitors cover motors and turns them off if something goes wrong (burned motor, jammed cover…i set max current in fw after measuring it). Also end positions are monitored with current measuring, so the moment when motor turns off (hits endswitch) shelly’s relay also turns off, so it”s not just time-based. Honestly i didn’t explore if original fw can do that, but i kinda doubt…

Some of my shelly’s are also btproxy’s.

I have shelly’s led programmed so that i can see if it’s connected to wifi and/or HA (or nothing of two) from the way it’s flashing.

Holding switch for more than 2s restarts shelly, so i don’t have to disconnect power if i need to reboot it.

With 2-relay module built-in button works this way: single push=relay1, double push=relay2.
And so on…

yes, if you don’t need all these extra functions original fw is quite ok. But i love to “tinker” and add my 5 cents to all my things. And i’m too old to remember gazillion different programming languages…:wink:

But, i also do my own things “from scratch” with esp modules. I just like shelly’s because they are very small and quite powerfull. My start was with sonoff’s, but they are pretty clumsy comparing with shelly’s…

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(you should explore, it can:) )

1 Like
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@MassiPi can the shelly act as a transmitting BT proxy? I haven’t found a way to do this, and that’s the feature I need that’s pushing me to ESPHome. I’d prefer to stay on native, but I can’t find anything in the shelly BLE API that will let me connect to my clock and set it (and similarly HA does not see anything connectable thru my shelly proxies, though reading BLE works fine).

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The Shellys natively can’t connect to BT devices, only listen for passive broadcasts. Additionally, I spent some time flashing one with ESPHome and had that working without issue, but as soon as I added BT Proxy to the YAML it would crash and never reconnect forcing a serial flash to recover. Spent a couple hours trying different variations of things without any luck. I’d love it if someone found a way to use them as ‘active’ BT Proxies in ESPHome though…

25

Ah, thanks for posting this - I was dragging my feet on just buying a dedicated POE sep-based BT gateway (ethernet sidesteps the shared-antenna issues - could be related to the stability of active connections on shelly hardware, perhaps?), but reading lots of stories of failure and basically none of success, it seems like maybe that’s the shortest path after all.