Control4 Shelly Suite: Shelly Best Practices

Security and Authentication

We strongly recommend against combining customer systems into the same Shelly Cloud email login account, particularly for Control4 setups using Shelly Cloud Authentication. This may affect security of all systems, and if the API key is identified by a malicious customer, they may be able to control other clients devices.     

1. All customer accounts should be separated into different email logins. Shelly only provides 1 API key per account, and this allows access to all rooms/devices within the account simultaneously. Failure to split the systems into separate accounts (instead of rooms) may provide customers with unauthorised access to other customers systems using the API key. One common way to deal with this may be to do EMAIL+CustomerName@DOMAIN.COM
   
2. If Customer's have multiple separate Control4 systems, Chowmain recommends different account emails for each system. 
3. We have found in some circumstances that changing the password may change the API key. If the password changes, it is recommended to check the API key in Control4 still matches.
   
4. It is recommended all Shelly Logins use different passwords for best security
   

Network

We recommend using Static IP's (or DHCP reserved IP's) for both the Control4 Primary Controller and Shelly devices. Failure to do so many affect communication reliability in some cases 

Sleepy devices 

It is recommended that installers utilise Shelly Cloud Agent with Cloud for ease of installation and to help provide reliability of Sleepy devices 

When using Sleepy devices, if Shelly Agent is not used, particularly on Generation 1 devices or when dynamic IP's are utilised, communications may be unreliable

It is strongly recommended to use Shelly Agent with both Cloud and Local enabled for best results 

Shelly Cloud Usage

Chowmain's Shelly Driver does not use Cloud for control. All communications are local and will work during an internet outage 

Our Shelly Cloud communications are used exclusively for:

1. Some sleepy devices require additional programming to correctly connect to the Control4 system. Sleepy devices log into Shelly cloud every 12 hours for configuration changes automatically. To help facilitate this process, we send commands to Shelly cloud too, as well as the module. 

2. Discovery. Whilst Local discovery can be used for devices, on some networks/systems, MDNS may not operate correctly. Cloud provides a reliable and effective mechanism to communicate with modules. 

3. Provisioning and Management. Shelly Cloud provides an easy way to manage devices, and can supplement information provided locally.   

For best results, both Cloud and Local discovery can be enabled simultaneously.    

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