Shelly wiring question

Hi,
I need help with wiring a shelly1 to make a switch smart. In the picture you can see that my wall switch only has 2 wires. The information that I find only shows guides, pictures and videos of wall switches with a million different wires. Is it possible to connect a shelly to my wall switch? Thx!

I can’t help you with this, unfortunately, but I’d suggest you give a little more information about your setup. What voltage, where do you live, what do these two cables do?

I highly doubt that someone could answer your question without further information… :wink:

Fair enough! Sorry it’s frustrating when your knowledge is too limited and all youtubers make it seem like it’s the easiest thing ever.
I live in the Netherlands. The switch that was connected to these 2 wires switch a 230v light bulb

It’s not possible to use a Shelly 1 in your situation: the brown wire is a live wire (comes into the box from the consumer unit), the black wire is a switch wire (going to the light fixture you want to switch). What’s missing is a neutral (typically blue) wire, which in your case will be located at the light fixture.

A Shelly 1 needs all three wires to be present. For situations without a neutral present in the wall box, like yours, you need a Shelly 1L.

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^^ This! Couldn’t have been said clearer. :slight_smile:

I know that part, luckily a good friend of mine is an electritian, so he checks what I do, before we give power on the line. If necessary a WhatsApp video on Saturday night and I recieve my “good-to-go”. :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

Please be careful, 230V are a serious voltage. That being said, for all your Shelly implemantation needs, you can check the german forum (I just assume german is readable for you) from creationX. Here you can find some pictures with wiring diagrams:

Once again, take care of safety measures. :wink:

thank you very much! new ones should arrive today. After the weekend I’ll try again.
Good advice to film the situation and let someone who actually understand circuits give a go/no-go

When I look at your picture, you only have the L phase wire in the box and Shelly needs the N wire for its function. This will not work because you need 3 wires in the box, the supply voltage L, the N neutral wire and L to the light.
It will work if you have the option to place Shelly up to the light where all the wires Shelly needs are.

Thanks. In the ceiling I do have 3 wires like you said. If I put the shelly there, can I still use the light switch without disabling the shelly?

Provided you have live, neutral, switched live and the two wires to the light fitting all in the same place, yes.

  • Live to L and I (input)
  • Neutral to N
  • Switched live to SW
  • Light fitting to O (output) with the other wire to neutral.

image

  • Make sure the circuit is turned off at your consumer unit.
  • The Shelly connectors are small and fiddly. My preference is to wire it up with five short lengths of flexible cable on the bench, making sure there are no stray strands, then use Wago connectors to connect it into the house wiring.

And that’s were I get confused: I have 3 wires in the ceiling. 2 of them are connected to the light and 1 (neutral I assume) is not connected.

I’m not going to guess at Dutch wiring standards, sorry. From a purely electrical viewpoint, the light could be wired to live and then switched to neutral; or switched live and wired to neutral.

Could still work: once you cut the wires to the light, you probably have the five wire ends that I listed, but you don’t know which is which. Do the colours help? A photo might get you more responses…

If you have 3 wires in the ceiling, a green ground wire, a blue neutral wire N and a black or brown phase wire L, I’m afraid that won’t be possible. The ground and N conductors go straight, but the phase conductor is interrupted by a switch. When you connect 2 wires in a box with a terminal block or a switch, Shelly will only work in automation, but not manually with a switch.

Which colors do which wires have?

Brown (L) and black (T, switching). The new Shelly 1L’s have arrived, including bypasses because of LED bulbs. Where do I go from here?

Just follow the wiring diagram for the “no neutral” scheme:

this scheme doesn’t make sense to me. It implies that I connect N (neutral?) to the Shelly which I don’t have. Because I don’t understand that I also don’t know how or where to connect the bypass. And what does the connection to SW1 and SW2 look like irl?

The N is located at the light fixture. The other side of the light fixture is connected to the black (switching) wire, which is the one that should be plugged into the O connector. The L should be connected to the brown (Live) wire.

For switching, you need two separate wires that go to the original switch.

But, at the risk of sounding like an a**hole: if you have problems reading these sorts of schematics, you may want to consider asking someone with electrical knowledge to help you out.

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This is how, for example, Sonoff switches are connected without N if it helps you.

this visualisation helped me alot. I’ve got it working now! What I didn’t understand was that the switch wire (black) essentially is the N wire (blue in the ceiling)
@robertklep: you’re totally right, I have asked an electrician before to fix some wiring stuff but I thought I could figure this out. I eventually did with your help, but it took some effort. However with stuff like this it is important to double check with someone who knows their stuff because if not wired correctly it could lead to dangerous situations. I sent a photo of the finished wiring to a friend and he gave me a “go” :slight_smile:

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No, it’s essentially the L wire (brown). You need two wires going to the light fixture, one N and one L :wink: