Shelly Plus 1
2025-03-14 20:47
There was something about this device.
It sparked an excitement in me I don't get very often. One of possibilities. Maybe I'm just way behind the ball, afterall it's just a smart-home device. These things have been around for a while yeah? I actually don't know. It's my new career and I'm a kid in a candystore. Anyway, I think sideways, diagonalways, crosseyed...
It's a Shelly Plus 1 Relay and only cost $41. It can be installed at home behind your switches, devices or at network hubs and be triggered by said switches PLUS other integrating systems like KNX or however you want to use the API.
At work, we are working through the configuration of 4 of these in a home which enable the control of outdoor lighting via switches at the location, at the indoor touchpads, on dedicated tablets, or through your phone app. When I write that out it sounds a bit extreme for a lighting area, but when you think about the end-user, they're all going to look for that toggle in their own way.
Controlling lights on multiple devices isn't what I got excited about though. It's more about the API and the ability to trigger the relays via other devices. You can link up APIs to enable voice recognition software and devices.
Because this is a blog post, I'll stay within theme. Just thinking out loud here. I'm pretty sure I could actually have a physical button on the wall in the lounge, or a digital one in an app, which could activate an API, which listens to me speak, records it, converts it to markdown, builds via my static site generator and posts to the web. How good?! You could take it a step further, do fancy things like nesting another voice recognition of "embed image from this morning", then "next" or "previous" to get the right one, "yes" or "boom!" or "elephant" to accept the image (displayed on some nearby device), then continue with your voice-to-text blog until done.
Ok that all sounded stupid but I'm preeeetty sure it's possible. I'm gonna try it anyway. If I can do anything remotely close to that, I think I've fallen into a niche that'll consume me for a while...
Embracing the naiviety that comes with a new career. Probably break some things, maybe discover some things. Maybe something more...