#Melery Zigbee UK Smart Wall Socket

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

copper cosmos
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# copper cosmos Looking at buying 20+ of these. Does anyone have any experience? https://a.alie...

So... I don't like the look of these for various reasons.

they are tuya based which is always a concern (although their zigbee stuff has slightly less issues)

I am not convinced they meet socket standards.
its hard to tell if the screw terminals will be robust enough for ring main cabling. and are maybe designed for only radials/spurs (the wiring diagram does seem to imply this being the case)

the spec says 2200w max which is less than 10 amps
usually double sockets would be 13A individually or 20A combined

given the sockets are on relays you should not use these for any high power inductive loads. e.g. appliances/motors/vacuums because the relay will likely arc and is a potential fire risk.

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i am sure they are fine for lower power stuff but if you blanket your house with them then you are gunna need to ensure that nobody comes along and plugs in a vacuum or a drill or something them them.
this limits you when you actually want to do stuff in your house.

last thing you need is some starts cleaning and the relay arcs and causes the socket to fail and takes down your entire ring until you replace/bypass it.

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smart plugs in every socket may look a bit odd but its a lot safer and they are easy to pull "bypass" if your plugging in a bigger inductive load.

copper cosmos
copper cosmos
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# copper cosmos My main issue is the kids keep taking the smart sockets out!!! Driving me crazy....

ok so, they look better (safer) but the rating is lower then a normal double socket (13A combined) and that's specifically a resistive load. so you still have the problem. of not being able to plug high inductive loads into them. whilst they are less likely to go on fire then the previous ones they are still likely to fail if you plug a vacuum in. and depending on the failure case might still take down the ring

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copper cosmos
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that's probably an easier solution. it wont take long for them to learn and get over the phase of messing with them.

copper cosmos
copper cosmos
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copper cosmos
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having a switch to turn off internet for their stuff specifically could be handy for other stuff too punishment/bedtime etc...

copper cosmos
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Cheers!

pastel vault
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no worries. tbh i imagine after a couple of weeks you probably wont even need it. you just need to break the hobbit of them messing with the stuff

copper cosmos
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copper cosmos
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yeah. you could add ct clamp based devices to the consumer unit to track circuits rather than specific sockets

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i have a couple in my consumer unit. but we are getting to more advanced electrical work to fit them

copper cosmos
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Ok found the code for the uk!

Here’s the key bit from BS 1363-2 (Socket-outlets) that explains it:

For a single socket-outlet: it must carry 13 A continuously without overheating.

For a multiple socket-outlet (e.g. a double):

It must carry 20 A total when both outlets are used at the same time.

The test in the standard is done with 13 A in one outlet and 7 A in the other continuously.

This simulates the real-world expectation that not both sides will always run full 13 A loads together.

So the official test condition is:

A twin socket-outlet shall be capable of carrying a total current of 20 A, consisting of 13 A in one socket and 7 A in the other, without exceeding the permitted temperature rise.

That’s why manufacturers (MK, Crabtree, BG, etc.) state “13 A each, 20 A max combined” in their specs.

Looked at the technical data for the Click Smart+ and they are BS1363-2 compliant

pastel vault
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maybe click stuff is compliant and the rest of their spec (or whatever i looked up yesterday) is written badly.

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you still have the resistive vs inductive load issue though

neon quartz
copper cosmos
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# copper cosmos what's that? 😄

if you plug a large inductive load into it (e.g. vacuum/drill/appliance with motor) then the relay will likely suffer from arcing and (at best) fail

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if it can be remotly switched then it will have a relay and suffer from this issue

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in their spec sheet the load rating is specifically "Resistive Load Rating"

copper cosmos
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Ah yes i see it now

pastel vault
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people kill smartplugs all the time plugging inductive loads into them. its a bigger issue when its screwed into the wall though

copper cosmos
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jus thinking maybe ill keep kitchen and hallways on normal and change the rest

pastel vault
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nowhere do they say they are power monitoring

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they are just "smart switchable"

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so you can turn them on/off but looks like there is no power monitoring in them

copper cosmos
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im looking at maybe smart DIN instead! just reading up on how to do the bigger A ones

pastel vault
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Shelly have some great options for stuff that you can put in consumer unit

copper cosmos
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yea im looking at them now

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i do have a din rail one in a secondary consumer unit that is for the EV charger stuff. but that was planned with the sparky when it was all being fitted

copper cosmos
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yeah ill look into it this will work great for consumption then only have external smart plugs on what i want actually controlled

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If i undestand correctly:

i have 8 circuits, so need 4x Gen3

Each gen3 clamps to the output and each gen3 needs a L & N connection

pastel vault
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so something to be sure of. i am not sure if it comes with a single clamp or 2, you might have to get another seperatly per device.

the devices need to bee powered themselves
what I did was run an extra live off my kitchen sockets MCB and a neutral from the right neutral bus bar
these go to a wago which then splits L/N out to the 2 devices then the clamps go to the live cables of the various circuits

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you cant overally see very well

copper cosmos
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copper cosmos
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looks neat thank you. will take off my cover and see what sort of room in have to play with

pastel vault
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i have seen nicer consumer units but have seen worse 😛

copper cosmos
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haha!

pastel vault
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be extremely careful when in there, its extremely dangerous

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even with the mains switch off there is still power in there

copper cosmos
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yeah 100% ill turn off from the outside mains and wear some gloves and shit

pastel vault
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if you have a spilt board like i do then you need to be sure to attach to the correct neutral bar too

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you need to take the neutral from the same side as the live that your using to power stuff

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otherwise you will get issues with the RCD's

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rcd's compare the power going out on the live and returning on the neutral to check that its all there and not going somewhere else. but if you use the wrong neutral then you will off balance both sides

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you sit it on top of the the mcbs

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but it requires a bit more work to fit as you have to totally rewire all the mcbs

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its basically a triple ct clamp in 1 piece (so it can be used for either 3 single phase circuits or a single 3 phase circuit

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with the normal clamps an approach that some people take is to put the em's in a seperate box next to the consumer unit which just plugs into a socket to get power then run the clamps into the consumer with a grommeted knockout hole. this means they don't have to "pick up power" inside the consumer unit

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that may work better if you dont have a lot of room to work with

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this is a thing that has a bunch of solutiuons, you just have to work out which is best for you

neon quartz
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The Shelly EM gen3 comes with one clamp. You have to buy a spare one (around 10 euros) and a connector

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Connector is 2-pin MX3.0-2x1Y and you can buy it in Aliexpress for a few euros

copper cosmos
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seen a load of examples of this:
customer: i want neutrals at the light switches
sparky: no, i dont do it that way
customer: but i want it done that way and i am paying you
sparky: i have 30 years experience and thats not that way i am doing it
customer: your fired, get out of my house
sparky: 😮

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although because of smart stuff becoming so much more of a thing they don't have the choice anymore really if they want to work

modest egret
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It's just ridiculous what some Sparky's want to charge. I had one quote me £80 per downlight when doing a total rewire. He was charging separately for running the ring around the ceiling, so this was £80 for cutting a cable, connecting wago's (3 x 3-way) putting them in a strain relief box and then pushing the light fitting up.

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copper cosmos
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yeah sparky refused to do my smart switches as we didnt have a neutral although the switches i got are NO NEUTRAL. Did them myself and it was a ballache working out how dual switches worked and how to code it all

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In the end i disconnected the links between switches (dont ask me the proper term) and just coded it so both switches reflected each other

modest egret
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I ended up being lucky with the Sparky I found. He sent his apprentice and between myself and him we ran all the cables - I got a good discount for teaching the apprentice how to run data cables. Main Sparky then came back to run all the tests and provided the certification and Part P for building regs.

modest egret
copper cosmos
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They need to learn its the way forward 😄

pastel vault
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i dislike "no neutral" stuff but i understand it has its place (for now anyway)

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there are multiple ways of wiring multi switch circuits so it depends on who and when they were wired

modest egret
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The 'no neutral' stuff will be around for quite a while in the UK. There are a lot of houses / flats built with solid walls making it expensive to totally rewire.

pastel vault
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i have seen people do stuff like "borrow the neutral from a nearby socket" too which is chaos

modest egret
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If I ever sell my flat the new owner will be surprised as I have no wall switches - just mains sockets / cat 6a near the floor and a few extra cat 6a in the ceiling.

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Each room has downlights that are both Zigbee and RF433, so you can use a remote in the case of an emergency (HA going down).

pastel vault
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ESPHome just got ESP-NOW support added this month. so it should be easy to use that to control stuff too

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motion sensor detects -> HA is down -> send switch on command directly to bulb over espnow

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a few bulbs i currently have about the place are tasmota though... (its how they came) so i would need to flash them. so thats something i can work on at some point i am sure

modest egret
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I would either need to change out all the downlights or add RF transmitters to the motion sensors in order to use that.

Personally, I am confident in the HA server, just always planned a worst case scenario where the server is unavailable and hence need alternative ways to control things. For me having a remote control for the lights is fine as an emergency backup (I keep remotes together with fresh batteries).

bitter kettle
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Does anyone have any recommendations for smart 2 gang sockets that can safely used with normal appliances, since this sounds somewhat unsafe for general use.

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bitter kettle
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bitter kettle
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A lamp, maybe Christmas lights later on. That kind of thing. Requirements: can plug in a uk plug. Can switch it on and off at certain times, can switch it on and off from my phone. Mostly I want it to “just work”

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modest egret
bitter kettle
modest egret
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I've used these, although I don't put much load through them. I also already have a few other things using a localtuya integration - so they are controlled locally not via the tuya cloud.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09VP5KNWM

ANTELA Smart Plug with Energy Monitoring, Alexa Voice Control, 2,4G...

ANTELA Smart Plug with Energy Monitoring, Alexa Voice Control, 2,4GHz WiFi Plug, Smart Life APP Wireless Remote Control and Timer Function, Work with Alexa and Google Home, 13A, No Hub Required (4 Packs)

bitter kettle
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There is a limit to how much I can allocate to making a power socket work though

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bitter kettle
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Thanks for recommendations. I will try the Shelly ones as I want to use there stuff for some led lighting later on

pastel vault
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i have a bunch of shelly stuff and it works without issue

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there are some cheaper options that run esphome but if you want simple and have fallback to app etc.. then shelly works great

bitter kettle
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Mostly I want it to work without it becoming my job 😂

modest egret
# bitter kettle Moving things around, but there are no diagnostics so you have nothing to go on....

Well, first step should be figuring out what wireless Channels your devices are using. Check your main WiFi first, and use a wifi analyzer app on your phone to see what channels have least interference. Look at where your Zigbee channel sits in relation to this as that also runs on 2.4Ghz (see image).

Just remember that channels you select today, could require changing due to neighbours not caring and sticking their devices on channels that cause interference.

0be6325f66024d96dda90458db0804298e5011e9_2_689x263.png
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a few devices 😛

image.png
modest egret
# pastel vault oh no not tuya...

I agree that Shelly would be 'a gold standard' but for just switching on / off things like a mobile charger or christmas lights I'm not so worried about the cheaper chinese stuff. The plugs I got have been reliable - but then again I know my WiFI and Zigbee networks are both reliable. I also do not let neighbours put anything on interfering channels (I basically interfere with their network until they change the channel).

neon quartz
bitter kettle
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# bitter kettle I’m strongly opposed to putting cheap nasty Chinese crap on my network and power...

some of the cheap white label stuff is fine if its running open source firmware like ESPHome or Tasmota but in general yeah i recommend the better quality shelly stuff. i recomend to keep an eye out on amazon during various big sales. primeday/blackfriday that sort of thing. shelly stuff tends to have some good deals during those times i sometimes get some extras during those times so i have "stock" for various jobs as they come up.

neon quartz
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ZigBee Ikea stuff is also reliable and very cheap in cost/quality relationship

warped parrot
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Honestly I think a lot of them would show as a fail on an EICR so during a sale it would probably solve itself

modest egret
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I get the concern on burning down the house - but as I said I'm using these at the lower end - mostly powering adapters that output 5 to 12v and drawing no more than 2 or 3 amps. I also only have 4 of them. If I was controlling something with more load I would certainly look at better quality products (I do have a couple of Sonoff PWR2 which have been flashed with Tasmota which I do use with higher loads)

As for the opening of network, I know my networking stuff and I can see every packet of data that tries to leave my network - so I know those devices don't / can't phone home once they have been set-up to work with the local integration.

warped parrot
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It’s an interesting requirement. There must be Zigbee sockets made by decent quality suppliers that pass the UK regs and you can use up-to 13A? But applying the phrase “must be cheap” I think is a folly.

neon quartz
neon quartz
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neon quartz
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neon quartz
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I dont use the smartplugs to start or stop anything, just measure power consumption and get a notification when I detect the final pattern

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it can still mess with the relay

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less so than if you switch with it admitidly but the problem still exists

neon quartz
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Thanks for your advice, any suggestion to fix that?

pastel vault
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it has no relay

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there are smart plugs that are monitoring only without switching too

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but they are not super common

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athom make one HERE but its 10a max

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the shelly pm's are great. for washing machine i put it behind the fuse spur and for the dishwasher i put it in a box and wired it inline on the appliances flex

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or you can go ct clamp style monitoring too

neon quartz
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Thanks again, I'm buying 4 of them in Amazon, I'm making changes at home and my electrician friend has a lot of work to do, just one more task 😀

pastel vault
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the gen4 ones have the option to use zigbee instead of wifi too if thats your thing. although i dont know if the no relay pm-mini gen4 version is available yet

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shelly say "coming soon" on that model

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but if wifi is fine then gen3 is still great

neon quartz
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That would be great, I do prefer ZigBee over WiFi

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Maybe I can wait a little

pastel vault
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its not on the uk store but its on main shelly page as coming soon HERE but to be fair its been "coming soon" for a while. knowledge base stuff is up too HERE

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I think its likely they are at production line capacity and this is something they sell less off so its gettiung delayed until they get on top of stuff

neon quartz
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Subscribed in the Shelly web to get a notification when the PM gen4 gets available. Thanks again for the tip

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modest egret
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modest egret
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I saw that they are rated at 16A but wanted an experienced opinion - would you run 15A continuous through one of yours?

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I would imagine that it should be fine given how it works. will it potentially have a lesser lifespan if used at high load continually... maybe? just ensure everything is connected correctly. bad connections could cause excess heat

warped parrot
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ensure its wired on the load side of the spur. so that in worst case stuff is still protected by the fuse

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modest egret
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Yes, I would use proper connecions - including putting ferrules on wires before putting them in the screw terminals.

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modest egret
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thanks Michael