Shelly Scanner


Range Extender - how to setup

Second generation Shelly devices (plus and pro series), not battery operated ones, have the ability to act as access points in favor of other devices that, being probably too far away from the main AP, cannot stably connect to this. To use this functionality, you need to perform a few simple configurations steps as described below.
Personally I think it is more handful to do everything from the web GUI of each device, however many (or perhaps even all) of the steps described can also be performed from the app.
So, let's start.

Configuration

On the device that will act as an extender (remember that it must be a second generation device):
  1. activate the AP (password protected for obvious security reasons);
  2. enable the “Range extender” function;
  3. reboot for the new settings to take effect.
On each of the devices (first or second generation) to be connected to the range extender:
  1. set the wi-fi2 parameters of the device in order to ensure connection to the main network (useful in case the extender fails);
  2. using its web GUI, connect (wi-fi1) the device to the “Shelly…” SSID generated by the extender. No static IP here, the extender must be able to manage the connection freely; after all a static IP would have no use since the new device address (as seen from the main AP) will be of the type <IP extender>:<port assigned by the extender>.

Warnings

The function is released in "beta" by Allterco; something may change over time.
At the moment, as far as I know, this funcionality can't be used in "cascade": a device connected to a range extender cannot, in turn, act as a range extender.
There are no limits to the number of devices that can be defined as extenders; however, no more than 10 devices can be effectively connected to each extender.

Useful tools

Shelly Scanner can help you with many of the steps described expecially from v. 0.9.6. At the end of the configuration, just perform a "rescan" (first button on the left of the toolbar) to see the devices connected to the extender together with their port (devices connected to the extender can be reached with <ip extender>:<port assigned by the extender>).