There are 2 methods for adding Shelly devices to your home WiFi and doing the initial setup of the devices:

  • using the Shelly app
  • using the Web UI method

The 1st method should be rather straightforward but the Shelly app seems to be suffering of a 2020-2021 breakdown causing it to glitch on a lot of people. The Web UI method is a perfect alternative for the initial setup of the devices and has become my preferred method of adding Shelly’s to my network.

Adding a Shelly to your home WiFi using the Web UI method

  1. Install the Shelly at/near its final install location.
    You’ll want to install the Shelly at or near the location it’ll finally be installed. This is because the internal WiFi chip tends to ‘stick’ to the first WiFi Access Point it connected with (once you’ve connected it to your home WiFi). As such, moving the Shelly after initial configuration may cause WiFi connectivity issues if the Shelly is moved too far from its “preferred” Access Point.
    If the Shelly can’t connect to the AP, it’ll time-out and start looking for a different AP providing the same WiFi network (SSID). However, this takes time and may result in a slight delay when it needs to connect to the cloud or send a Direct Device to Device communication (DDD) command to a different Shelly.
  2. Boot the Shelly in Access Point (AP) mode. If you bought a fresh Shelly, this should be the default.
    Provide power to the Shelly by attaching it to Live and Neutral and turning on the breaker (that you of course had turned off prior to connecting the Shelly).
    If not, you’ll want to connect a switch to the Shelly and toggle it on-off 5 times within 1 minute of providing power to the Shelly.
  3. Connect to the WiFi network of the Shelly.
    Open the WiFi browser on your phone/tablet/laptop and search for the Shelly’s WiFi network. The name of the network will match the Shelly model and ID, e.g. shelly1pm-35FA58. If your devices complains about not having any internet connectivity, make sure to check the box or click the button that says something like “Stay connected to this network”.
  4. Open your phone’s browser and browse to http://192.168.33.1
    This will open the Web UI of the Shelly device
  5. Enter your WiFi credentials in the “Internet & Security” tab in the “WiFi Mode - Client” section.
    1. Check the box next to “Connect the Shelly device to an existing WiFi Network”.
    2. Enter the name (SSID) of the WiFi network you want to add the Shelly to.
    3. Enter the password of this network.
  6. Optionally, you can set a static IP for your Shelly.
    A static IP isn’t required for the Shelly to work. If you’re planning on using DDD to control this device, you’ll need to know its IP address. You can set this IP in your router or here. Just make sure it’s outside the DHCP-range of your router and no 2 devices have the same IP.
    For battery powered devices (like the Shelly H&T) it’s recommended to (also) set the static IP on the Shelly as this decreases the time the Shelly spends on connecting with the WiFi network.
    1. Set the wanted IP address
    2. Enter the network mask.
      On most networks this’ll be 255.255.255.0. This means that the first 3 blocks of the IP address remain static and the 4th is different for each device (i.e. 192.168.1.x).
    3. Optionally (but recommended) enter the IP of the gateway.
      This is the IP of your router, usually it’s within the same subnet and has an IP ending in .1 or .254 (e.g., 192.168.1.1).
    4. Optionally add a static IP of your preferred DNS server.
      By default the Shelly will send DNS requests to your router or the DNS server provided via DHCP Options. You could change this into the IP of your own DNS server or a DNS server like OpenDNS (208.67.222.222) so that the Shelly directly sends requests to this IP.
  7. Click Save to apply the settings you’ve just entered.
    The Shelly will now reboot and connect to the network using the credentials (and IP) you just entered.
    As the Shelly AP will now be gone, your phone will reconnect to your home network.
Shelly Web UI - Internet & Security
Shelly Web UI - Internet & Security

Tip: using HTTP API

Are you preparing multiple devices using the WebUI and you’re getting tired of typing or copy/pasting the WiFi SSID and key over and over again? Use the HTTP to set the WiFi information with 1 URL via the Shelly HTTP API.

Connect to the Shelly’s AP and go to the following URL (of course, with your own WiFi SSID and key):
http://192.168.33.1/settings/sta?enabled=1&ssid=YOUR_WIFI_SSID_HERE&key=YOUR_WIFI_KEY_HERE

Note that this only works with the 1st Gen devices. Shelly 2nd Gen devices use RPC and to set the WiFi config you’d need to do a POST request to http://192.168.33.1/rpc.

More configurations via the Web UI

We’ll do the next steps using the Web UI of the Shelly again.

Figuring out the Shelly’s IP address

As the Shelly will now be connected to your home network, it won’t be reachable via 192.168.33.1 anymore.
You’ll need to figure out the IP address of the Shelly.

If you set a static IP during the previous steps, you already know the IP of the Shelly.
Otherwise, you’ll need to check the DHCP lease table (often named something like “connected clients” on your router). The Shelly will be named the same as the WiFi network you connected with while it was in AP Mode.
Another solution is running a network scanning tool, like Fing, to scan your subnet (provided you’re connected with the same WiFi network and are in the same subnet).

Configurations options in the Web UI

Once you have the IP of the Shelly, we can continue.

  1. Browse to the Web UI of the Shelly located at http://<IP of the Shelly>, e.g. http://192.168.1.201
  2. Under the Internet & Security tab you can configure additional options
    1. WiFi Mode - Client / WiFi Client Backup
      Configure a back-up WiFi network for when the main WiFi network is unavailable.
    2. WiFi Mode - Access Point
      Disconnect the Shelly from your WiFi network and boot into AP Mode
    3. Restrict Login
      Set a Username and Password that’ll be used to protect the Web UI.
      In the future you’ll need to enter these credentials when visiting the Web UI.
    4. SNTP Server
      Enter the IP or hostname of a Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP) server that’ll be used by the Shelly to synchronise its internal clock.
      the default NTP server is time.google.com
    5. Advanced - Developer Settings
      Here you can configure MQTT (MQ Telemetry Transport) for the Shelly.
      Enter the details of your MQTT Broker and set some other configuration details.
      Note that enabling MQTT will disable Cloud-Actions.
    6. Cloud
      Connect or disconnect your Shelly from the Shelly cloud.
      By connecting your Shelly to the Shelly cloud you can control the device from outside your local network.
  3. Settings
    The exact options you have here will depend on the device type. Some examples are:
    1. Power On Default Mode
      Define the power state of the Shelly after power is restored (e.g. after a power outage).
    2. Button Type
      Defines the behaviour of the attached switch.
    3. Firmware update
      If a new firmware version is available, you’ll be able to upgrade here.
    4. Device Name and Channel Name
      Give a name to your device and the output channels. This will be visible in the app.
    5. Factory Reset and Device Reboot
      The name says it all
    6. Soft reboot when WiFi connection is lost
      This fixes some issues with Shelly’s becoming unavailable or rebooting after a loss of connectivity (e.g. network reset).
    7. Device info
      Here you’ll see the Device ID, the SSID of WiFi network the Shelly is connected to, and the signal strength (RSSI).
  4. Timer
    The “Auto Off” and “Auto On” timer will turn off/on the Shelly x seconds after it was turned on/off.
  5. Weekly Schedule
    The name says it all
  6. I/O URL Actions
    Here you can enter URLs that will be called after a certain action.
    E.g., when a connected button is pressed or the connected switch is toggled.
    This can be used to control other Shelly’s using Direct Device to Device communication (DDD).
  7. Safety
    This is available on Shelly’s with power metering functionality. Set a maximum power limit at which the Shelly will power off.
    Note that the Shelly has a max. power limit of its own. Here you can set a custom (lower) limit.

Don’t forget to press Save each time you made a modification.

Shelly app

Even though we set up the Shelly via the Web UI, we aren’t limited to using only the Web UI. You can still add the Shelly to the Shelly app for easy and central control over your Shelly devices.

  1. Connect your phone to the same WiFi network as the Shelly
  2. Open the Shelly app and give it some time to discover your Shelly
  3. Click the “Discovered Devices” banner
  4. Give the Shelly a name, add it to a room and press “Save”.

If the “Discovered Devices” banner doesn’t show up after a few minutes, you can manually add the Shelly using the “Add by IP” option in the sidebar menu.

New devices discovered in the Shelly App
Discovered Devices

Going further

Now that we’ve set up the Shelly, we can start controlling our devices and setting up devices.

Be sure to check my other articles on the Shelly devices.