Shelly is an extremely exciting smart home manufacturer. Why? In contrast to many other smart home products, Shelly devices are for enthusiasts.
Not only do they offer a very wide range of functions, but in contrast to 99% of all competing products, they can also be used completely offline and without the cloud if you want.
And that, if you want, is an important point! You can also integrate Shelly products into the manufacturer’s cloud to control them on the go, but you don’t have to.
Accordingly, the Shelly Smart Home products will continue to work if the manufacturer ever goes bankrupt or the servers close.
So much for Shelly, this test is about a special Shelly product, the H&T Gen3.
The H&T Gen3 is a temperature measuring device with ePaper display, WiFi and battery operation.
At around €30, this is anything but too expensive. At least at first glance.
Let’s take a look at the Shelly H&T Gen3 in the test!
Shelly H&T Gen3 im Test
The Shelly H&T Gen3 is a small display unit. This has a fairly large ePaper display, which also looks good!
The housing, in turn, is made of plastic.
Here we also come to a first important point: the plastic used and the general feel seem below average!
We definitely don’t have a premium product here, at least as far as the case is concerned.
Also, in my opinion, this is not functionally well thought out.
This is not an easy way to set up the Shelly H&T Gen3! Shelly has not flattened the bottom, so the H&T Gen 3 has to be hung on a wall. I think this is a bit too short-sighted; I would have liked to have simply set up the H&T Gen3.
You can remove the back of the temperature measuring device. Below you will find a button for setup as well as the battery compartment.
4x normal AA batteries or rechargeable batteries fit into the H&T Gen 3. These should have a term of up to 1 year. Even if this value only comes close, it would be impressive.
Alternatively, you can also use a USB C port on the side for a constant power supply.
The ad
On the front of the H&T Gen3 we find a very good ePaper display with +- 2.3 inches. This shows you the following in a very legible manner:
Time Battery level Temperature Connection status Humidity
App and features
To set it up you first need the Shelly app. The H&T Gen3 has Bluetooth and WLAN. However, this uses Bluetooth for the first WLAN setup.
The Shelly app is, to put it mildly, “special”. So it is extremely extensive and intricate! I find the app very confusing, at least at first.
I would therefore not recommend Shelly products to any “beginner” who is looking for a smart home system that is as light and simple as possible.
Functionally, the app is fantastic! Despite the fact that we only have one “thermometer” here, there are tons of functions and settings.
Current temperature with diagram of the last 24 hours Humidity Historical temperature values with CSV export option Min/Max/Average values Historical humidity values with CSV export option Temperature offset Humidity offset Various connection options including WLAN, Bluetooth, MQTT etc.
First of all, in addition to the live values, you can also see, evaluate and, if desired, export historical values and further process them in applications such as Excel.
Of course, you can also create notifications, for example when a temperature falls above value X or value Y.
Essentially, the Shelly H&T Gen3 can do everything you could want from such a product.
With WebUI
The H&T Gen3 also has a WebUI, which you can access by visiting the IP address in your web browser, theoretically.
In practice, you have to put the H&T Gen3 into “Setup” mode, because in normal battery operation it only briefly connects to your WLAN once every few minutes to transmit the values.
MQTT, HomeAssistant and possibly Matter
The H&T Gen3 can also be connected to 3rd provider systems via MQTT. The H&T Gen3 can also be integrated and used in HomeAssistant.
To use it in HomeAssistant, I only had to create the following web socket entry:
ws://homeassistantipaddress:8123/api/shelly/ws
(Those)
Theoretically, Shelly also speaks of supporting the Matter standard on his website. However, I couldn’t see anything in practice. It is therefore possible that this will only be submitted later.
Cloud and Internet optional!
With Shelly, the cloud and internet connection is optional. You can also use the H&T Gen3 completely offline, but then you can only access it from the local network or you then have to connect it to systems such as HomeAssistant.
Great from a data protection perspective, and if the manufacturer’s servers go offline or support is discontinued, you can continue to use it locally. So we don’t have an “expiry date” here.
Measurement accuracy and update interval
I compared the measurements of the H&T Gen3 with my froggit HP1000SE PRO weather station.
Here I can make it short, For me the values were identical to this one to within +- 0.2 degrees. Accordingly, I would describe the measured values as accurate.
However, that is Update interval of the H&T Gen3 is very low! This applies both to what is shown on the display and to the values transmitted. We’re talking about +- 15 minutes between sending/updating values.
However, this of course also makes sense for a device that uses batteries.
Conclusion
Are you an advanced user looking for a way to monitor and record temperature?
Then the Shelly H&T Gen3* is an excellent choice! The range of functions and the beautiful ePaper display are particularly impressive. The potentially extremely long battery life, despite the WLAN connection, is also outstanding.
The Shelly app is a little more special, but especially if you are an advanced user that shouldn’t scare you, quite the opposite.
The range of functions of the H&T Gen3 is very large and the fact that it can optionally completely dispense with the cloud and internet connection is great and sets this model apart from many others.
In short, like most Shelly products, the H&T Gen3 is an exceptional but very good smart home product.
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