12v Battery Monitoring

Does anyone know of a way I could monitor a standard 12 volt battery? I am wanting to put something on a boat, and there are water/temp sensors but I can’t find anything for monitoring DC voltage. Thanks in advance

This might fit the bill. The manual talks about using it with their “Gateway” and app, but if it really is Zigbee, likely should work with ST.

Zigbee specification allows for many different “profiles“ and they do not all work together. It even allows for custom profiles.

Smartthings supports part (but not all) of the Zigbee 3.0 profile.

Zigboat is NOT certified for Zigbee 3.0. In fact, because it describes tunneling, I’m pretty sure it’s using a manufacturer proprietary profile, and will only work with its own gateway.

There are lots of certified zigbee devices that don’t work with smartthings, so you have to research a little deeper to find out the profile. For example, control4 Zigbee devices generally don’t work with SmartThings. Neither do green energy Zigbee devices like the friends of Hue switches.

FAQ: Zigbee Application Profiles, or why not all zigbee devices work with SmartThings

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There are some Shelly devices which are popular for this use case, particularly the Uni. Here’s some discussion from their webpage.

I’m not sure if this capability is exposed through the official cloud to cloud interface. You would need to ask Shelly support.

But you should be able to do it with a commmunity built edge Driver. You can talk to people in that thread to see if anyone’s using it for battery monitoring, but I think some people are.

Shelly are WiFi devices, not Zigbee, but the good news is that means they have excellent range.

Edge Shelly drivers for Gen1 and Gen2 Devices

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Hi Everyone, this thread has been super useful. I am looking to do the same integration but using a 48V battery. Does anyone know of a smartthings compatible device that will all me to monitor voltages up to 60V? I basically want to trigger an external action when the batteries drop below 42V (i.e. trigger mains charging, as its been a bad solar day). Thanks in advance, Neal.

You could use a voltage divider circuit to reduce the solar battery voltage to the range that the Zigboat accepts

A 5:1 divider could be set up with 2 10k resistors in parallel that is in series with a 1k resistor

Then the solar battery would connect from the top of the 10ks to the bottom of the 1k and the Zigboat across the 1k resistor

The routine would then need to account for the 5:1 scaling for the trigger value

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Has anyone found a device that monitors 12 volt DC battery voltage that will integrates well with ST? I’d like to monitor the lithium battery voltages on my RV while it’s in storage and can’t seem to find any device that that works directly with ST. Am I missing something anyone? Thanks.

It depends what you mean by “works directly.“ Did you see the Shelly Uni in my post #4 above? This is a popular use case for that device.

I apologize for not clarifying. I’m looking for an end device for simply monitoring the 12 vdc battery level that would integrate with the Smartthings app. Seems like everything I’ve seen requires using a different app and since I’m a newbie I’m just looking for a device that would wire directly to the the battery circuit and I could look at my ST app along with all my other ST devices without having to use a different app. Thanks.

You might have to use a separate app to set it up, but once it’s set up, it would show up in the SmartThings app like any other device. That’s how all the SmartThings integrations work. :man_shrugging:t2:

Thank you for your reply. Is this the device you are referring to?

Yes, that’s the newest model. :sunglasses:

Thanks for your advice and patience.

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No problem. We often say SmartThings is a very versatile platform, but not very “discoverable.“

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I was able to get the Shelly Uni Plus to display the battery voltage correctly however the SmartThings app will only control the relay (which I’m not going to use) and not the battery voltage. Can anyone help with how I can get the SmartThings app to indicate the battery voltage also? Again, I’m new to this so sorry for my ineptitude. Thanks.


The cloud->cloud integration would have to support that. That integration is the vendor’s responsibility so I’d reach out to Shelly support.

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Thanks for your reply. I reached out to Shelly support and this was their response.

"This is a limitation from SmartThings.

We are not aware if they are going to support such feature in the future.

Thank you for your time.

Best Regards,
Shelly Support Team"

At this point the case is closed and confirmed battery voltage is not supported in ST.

Sounds like a cop out to me. There is a production capability for voltage measurement:

{
    "name": "Voltage Measurement",
    "status": "live",
    "attributes": {
        "voltage": {
            "schema": {
                "type": "object",
                "additionalProperties": false,
                "properties": {
                    "value": {
                        "title": "Number",
                        "type": "number"
                    },
                    "unit": {
                        "type": "string",
                        "enum": [
                            "V"
                        ],
                        "default": "V"
                    }
                },
                "required": [
                    "value"
                ]
            }
        }
    },
    "commands": {
        
    },
    "id": "voltageMeasurement",
    "version": 1
}
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