I’m just starting with HA and loving it so far. As I start to integrate switches in the house I’ve decided to keep the existing paddle switches and smarten them up with Shelly relays. I’ve got a couple in and they seem to be working great. (Quirky to get them joined to the wifi at first but they seem much better after getting up to the latest Shelly firmware.)
So then I read about this Tasmota firmware that you can put on them. What features does that get me over using the Shelly firmware? Before I do more switches I want to know if I should be flashing them all to Tasmota first.
I wouldn’t use Tasmota, take ESPHome. ESPHome is way better integrated into HA than Tasmota.
Tasmota and ESPHome are equally good to very good, not that is sounds like I wouldn’t like Tasmota. But when you start “fresh”, why not use the more “direct approach”?
And for what it gives you over the Shelly firmware. First of all, more control. It is your firmware. And if you get into it, you’ll find tons of possibilities you would want from the Shellys and can get it with ESPHome.
Especially if you have different uses like a light, an LED strip and whatever you want to switch, ESPHome is likely to have something to achieve it with minimal work.
I for one use a few Shellys, all of them flashed with ESPHome. It is so simple and easy, and after the first flash, you can always update OTA, it’s just nice and works great.
EDIT: Forgot, if I remember correctly, there is a way to flash a Tasmota firmware OTA and afterwards you can flash ESPHome directly, as well OTA. If that is interesting for you, I’ll take a look where I read it…
I’m a big fan of ESPHome but haven’t found the need to flash any of my Shelly’s (1s and EM) with it. They all work perfectly (locally) using the standard firmware.
Until now that is.
I’m installing a Shelly PM to allow power to my hot water only during off-peak tariff times but want a manual override switch. You can do the schedules on the standard fw but not the override.
Well, for me, I have over 100 wifi devices (Shellies, Sonoff, Tuya, Sinilink, homebrew), all flashed with Tasmota. Just having to maintain one integration instead of all different ones is a big (maintenance) advantage
@francisp , I have about 40 Shellies, still using stock firmware. I have been disappointed with their reliability. Random reboots which cause lights to blink, can’t reliably connect to UI.
How reliable have the Shellies been with Tasmota? Which model Shellies do you use?
hmm never had random reboots. And for sure rebooting does’t cause light flashing.
I have configured all shellies (around 100) through mqtt (manually)
To the OP: if you don’t have a particular need (like sticking to single integration similarly to francis), then there is no reason to go for 3rd party fw.
ESPHome is way better integrated into HA than Tasmota.