I think my post is not being published

I recently posted a question in help - drivers - regarding Shelly Dimmers and energy reporting.
There have been forty views, but no responses. When I search in the community, I can find the post but it is grayed. I'm not sure what that means, I can't find anything explaining the forum details, but I do see others' posts similarly grayed. I can still click to open it.
It's odd, it seems unusual for nobody in this awesome community to have any input on my issue.
Here's the post:

And if someone could explain what the gray posts are that would be great...

Thanks in advance

I don't see anything unusual, your post is published and visible. Surely someone should be able to help, I personally do not have Shelly devices.

You see as grayed out these posts, that you have read entirely.

4 Likes

Since the thread titles in the search results are hyperlinks, they will change color after you click on them.

3 Likes

Maybe others are like me, and don't know anything about Shelly, or their power reporting in Hubitat.

I wish I could help, but I have no idea what these are supposed to do.

2 Likes

Nothing wrong with your post. It likely didn't receive an answer because it lacks details, perhaps. Shelly makes a lot of devices and there are different drivers that can be used. Being more specific might help to get the attention of those familiar with Shelly products. At minimum, try providing the exact model and driver used and see if that changes anything.

4 Likes

Tagging @Evilborg.

2 Likes

Thanks @bobbyD, it seemed to be an otherwise normal post, just didn't understand what the gray was until others explained it. Everyone on this community forum has been awesome (and I follow several other professional forums), and past questions have been answered in minutes before, so the relative silence was a bit confounding.

As for more details, I did mention the device is the Shelly Dimmer 2, but neglected to mention the driver is the HE built-in driver for Shelly dimmer module.
The child device shows a "generic component dimmer" as driver but I believe that is normal for how child devices install.

My guess is that I'm missing a little detail regarding power reporting from the device, hopefully someone will shed some light on it (see what I did there?)

I also have the Shelly Dimmer 2 and it doesn’t show power reporting with the Hubitat driver. Have you searched for a community driver?

1 Like

No, I have not. I guess I assumed that the official driver would be the most compatible with all the options included, however, this driver may have been built on the dimmer 1 (assuming there was such a device) which may not have had power monitoring.

Generally the built-in drivers are the most "conservative", meaning that only most common options for the type of device are included. For less common capabilities, usually the community fills the gap with a custom driver.

7 Likes

Could you explain why that is, I have always wondered and many others I'm sure also wonder why not support all capabilities right off the bat instead of waiting for the community to do it? Sorry if that has been explained before.

1 Like

My guess -

Because there's no way to hide unused/rarely used commands, so devices with lots of commands or preferences would be very intimidating and confusing for many users.

It would also be confusing for some as to why some devices can do x thing, but why device y cannot. It makes the layman end user experience more confusing.

The fact that it takes less time to write a more limited driver probably doesn't hurt either. :slight_smile: maximum code reuse, and maximum device coverage on core functionality.

6 Likes

Energy reporting, in particular, can be a problematic capability when used incorrectly. It’s a useful one, though.

It’s always a judgement call what’s the right balance between seamless/trouble-free user experience and tying users’ hands with limited featuresets.

2 Likes

Some manufactures load their devices like they are Swiss Army Knives, which would make the driver too busy and confusing to most people. Thus our engineers are trying to keep the drivers uniform accross all protocols.

5 Likes

Thanks for the clarification!

In all honesty I think he would be more inclined to use a HEM device instead of getting individual power consumption.

1 Like

Pardon my ignorance, what is an HEM device?

Home Energy Meter such as the Aeotec HEM with clamps:
https://www.amazon.com/Aeotec-Aeon-Labs-ZW095-ZW095/dp/B00XD8WZX6

Ahh.. that's sorta what I thought, but wasn't sure. Are those very hard to install? how do they monitor all the circuits if there are only 2 clamps? or is it just general over-all use?

This particular example iReally meant for a single 240 device but you can get a whole house monitor like the IoTawatt:

Know @ogiewon has one and it’s integrated with HE. I have a Sense that I do not recommend.

1 Like