I have a lot of Shellys and they work wonderfully with the Wi-Fi Shelly integration. I do however have one Shelly +1 UL on a wall on the other side of a microwave oven and also inside of a metal light fixture. It constantly loses the connection but always easily reconnects. It is set to edge and when it is disconnected, it will reconnect sometimes when I force the router to reconnect to it, but simply turning the light switch on it always reconnects. If it is kept active I’ve noticed it tends to stay connected to the network better. Turning off the eco mode doesn’t help either. Therefore I’m considering replacing it with a Shelly 1PM 4th Gen as I heard those keep a pretty active connection for reporting on the power monitoring. It will act also as a ble gateway. Taking all that into account, is it better to start using the Matter Integration or the Shelly Integration for this as these devices now support matter? What are the pros and cons?
If it is working solidly I would say stay with what works. If you want to play around with the cool new tech, check out if you can do the same through matter as you can right now with the existing integration. If it is stated that matter works with a device, it might not expose the same functions (yet? Hopefully).
Do know that unless the Shelly uses matter over thread, it will also use the WiFi
Weird thought perhaps, however does the Shelly you use now, can be fitted with an additional antenna to improve reception? Some modules have it by default and underneath, the devices are ESP…
Something like this:
From this chat evidently it appears not possible to have an external antenna attached: “Since Shelly has esp32 gnd bonded to mains live, also antennas ground plane is at mains…” ?
Ok you already went through the whole wifi part, check!
It sounds like you have an issue with electrical noise, which could easily originate from the microwave oven.
Switching to another module with extra features like power monitoring will probably not help, because the bandwidth requirement will just go up and it will make it more reliant on a noise free environment.
You need to move the device away from the noise source and/or shield device from the noise source, but without shielding the device from the network POI.
Switching to a Matter device will not do anything for the noise source, but it can maybe help with better lines to network POIs. You will still need to move and/or shield though.
In this situation I am stuck between a rock and a hard place, to get the neutral the switch must be in the light fixture and there is nowhere else I can put it without getting an electrician in to run the wires for the shelly itself to somewhere further away from that wall.
I tried shielding it on the back (meaning the microwave side) with aluminum foil in a ziploc bag, made no difference. Also whether or not the microwave is running make zero difference. It was suggested by ChatGPT that I put a 31mm long piece of insulated wire, not attached to anything, taped to the outside of the case within 1-3mm of the internal antenna to better handle the 2.4Ghz signal as a passive antenna, made no difference.
I had also tried temporarily hanging the shelly by it’s wires from the fixture below the light, not in the fixture, just hanging outside against the wall, that also made no difference.
Also it turns out I have to re-understand how the wiring would change anyway:
(Don’t microwave ovens have a huge capacitor that holds a very high chanrge even when the unit is not running, maybe it is near that?)
Would it be possible to put a different shelly that does not require a neutral (the only one I know of for 110v is the Shelly Dimmer 2, is there any other model*?) instead behind the wall switch (the wall switch IS NOT on the same wall as the microwave and that might be my only option)?
(*I had a couple years back stocked up on several Shelly 1L’s (which are discontinued) so that when the 1L I already have in the home dies. I would very much rather not use another one as it is an LED bulb I’d either have to switch to incandescent or then reopen the fixture and install a bypass, etc., etc.)
Note that in the US, green wire can only be used for grounding. It looks like the green wires are on the hot switched leg. The hot wire must be black. The switched wire can be any color except for green or white.
Say if you want to completely rule out the microwave, remove it for a day or two and see what that does to the whole situation.
Thank for that info. Those are just short jumpers I used connected to the other wiring in the house. I’ll keep that in mind.
Does anyone know of a Shelly relay for 110V that does not require a ground?