Shelly Modem Reset

Shelly Plus Plug US Automates Power Cycling for Critical Equipment

The Problem

A North American grocery chain with over 2,000 locations experienced a regular need to power cycle cable modems and cellular gateways in their stores. Given the need for inventory management, point of sale, human resources, and administrative communications, network uptime is an absolute necessity. Outages severely affect optimal performance of the retail location as well as impacting customer satisfaction. Several key factors made this typical IT task a significant organizational challenge:

• Experience - Retail specialists may not recognize the correct device to power-cycle
• Distance - Some locations are as much as a half day’s drive from the nearest support center. Each location has a distinct SSID and password, requiring individual provisioning of any solution

The customer required encrypted flash for the storage of credentials as well as MQTT, secured with TLS 1.2, providing the ability to control devices from a central dashboard.

The Solution

Shelly Plus Plug US offers unprecedented features in plug form factor:

• RPC based APIs with multiple transports - MQTT, REST/Webhooks, UDP and Websockets
• JSON payload
• Scripted/automated mass provisioning
• TLS 1.2 encryption
• Encrypted flash
• Built-in JavaScript editor
• Over temperature, over wattage, over current, and over voltage protection
• Locally stored timers, schedules, and power on default behavior

Whether using a webhook from a failover switch, a locally executed script validating your connection, or a remote dashboard application, there are several ways to combine Shelly Plus Plug’s features to deliver exactly the solution needed for this use case, allowing you the flexibility to address the client’s needs in a targeted manner.

The Result

Our digital services partner implemented an Azure-hosted fleet management dashboard to handle power cycling of the relay, monitoring connection and status, as well as other important tasks.

By using MQTT as the transport protocol, the dashboard offers multiple QoS options, as well as a Last Will feature, which can predict if an individual plug (or both plugs in one location) has gone offline for an extended period.

They next validated the provisioning process and offered improvements, allowing the client’s IT staff to print labels with IP address, MAC address, and store number for each device.

The client’s final process involved provisioning, labeling, and shipping several hundred plugs each week, allowing a controlled rollout to all 2300 locations.