Time to burst the bubble, and move on to an alternative

Well, it's been an interesting and frustrating few months, and I've come to the conclusion that I am wasting my time trying to use the 3EM for any serious purpose. Initially, I had problems with the firmware corrupting the device that meant it ended up with a WiFi password that could not be reset or recovered, even after a factory reset, and the device was replaced.

Once I had that, I was able to set it up, and in theory get it working, and due to the location, I ended up having to get a wifi extender so that the device got a reliable signal from my network, and to avoid having to use the only ethernet connecting cable that runs to my garage, which is normally used to connect to the standby generator control panel, I got a powerline extender device. It works without issues if I am in the garage with my laptop or mobile phone, but for reasons that escape me, the 3EM is not stable, and is lost on a regular basis from the network.

I got this device with the intention of trying to monitor my power usage with a view to installing solar panels, and so far, it's been a complete waste of time and money, in that I cannot get reliable usage information from the 3EM, mainly because the software is so unstable, which results in it being lost from the network pretty much most days.

So, in a nutshell, to anyone that's considering this device as a power monitor, be VERY careful, as it seems that for reasons I cannot get to the bottom of, while the hardware might be reasonably good, the software is still very much not stable, or fit for purpose, as the device does not provide a stable platform for gathering information.

I was considering installing some other Shelly devices, I could use a number of thermostatic radiator valves, and some of the timers for things like gates, and controlling other devices in the home, but the experience with the 3EM has caused a change of plan, I can't afford the time or effort that seems to be required to support these devices, the regular problems with the 3EM mean that I am not going to risk making my problems even worse, I want technology that works, and at the moment, it seems that there is some way to go for Shelly to become a stable supplier, at the moment, there is no way that I can recommend the shelly devices as a viable option for stable operation.

It will be interesting to see if this post survives, I've been involved with computers and on line support for a very long time, and I thought that I'd found a reliable supplier, but it seems that my research didn't go deep enough into the issues. or there is selective editing of posts being performed that means that negative posts about the devices don't survive for long, which results in a distorted picture of how the devices are actually performing.

Pity, but that's life in the sharp end of home computing and automation.

The signal strength issue was the reason for putting in the powerline device, and then subsequently moving the remote end device, the distance between the EM3 and the WiFI device (TPlink 4220) is less than 1 metre, The Shelly shows up as a connected device on the network Hub, (Sky ), but the app does not connect, it's showing the device as offline.

I suspect that I'm going to have to go through the nausea of doing a factory reset of the Shelly, which of course will mean the loss of all the historic data, which kind of defeats the purpose of having the device, it's been even more unstable since the most recent firmware update, the first time it updated automatically, I ended up having to return the device because it became inaccessible, and the most recent update does not seem to have done anything to improve the device stability.

As I can't communicate with the device, how am I going to get the signal strength?

OK, so in the end, I reset everything, the main router, all the intermediate devices like switches, (connected or not) , the powerline devices and the EM3 (factory reset) , and after a lot of messing, I can now access the EM3 web hub, and rightly or wrongly, I have put it on a fixed IP address outside the range of the DHCP setting system, and that's allowing me to now get into it using the browser on WIndows, which is more manageable than using Android. That also seems to have resolved the lack of connectivity with the android app, which I also completely removed and reinstalled.

The first thing I notice is that changes made on the web interface still do NOT reflect into the device information that is returned by the Android App, which doesn't help.

I have now found the WiFI strength, -34Dbm, and for the moment, (the last hour or so) it seems to be stable. Having to spend the better part of 2 hours chasing around the house and garage to reset all the devices in sequence, and make changes to things to see if it made a difference is not something I'm going to do on a regular basis, I expect this sort of technology to be plug and play, and once it is playing, it's supposed to be stable, which has not been my experience thus far with this device.

Changing the EM3 to a fixed IP address at least means I know where to look for it now, rather than having to go searching the IP addresses to see where DHCP put i.