The Victron VenusOS 3.70 update brings native Shelly smart home integration — and for our customers, this changes everything.
If you've followed us for a while, you'll know we're big fans of Victron Energy — and for good reason. Their inverters, solar charge controllers, Cerbo GX, and MultiPlus systems are the gold standard for serious energy installations, whether you're running a home battery system, a solar setup, an off-grid property, or a boat. Victron's reliability, depth of data, and open ecosystem are what set them apart.
And if you've been watching the smart home space, you'll likely have come across Shelly — the brilliant Bulgarian company that makes incredibly compact, affordable, and capable Wi-Fi smart switches, relays, energy meters, dimmers, and sensors. They've built a massive following among home automation enthusiasts because they're genuinely good: cloud-optional, locally controllable, and packed with scripting capability.
Until recently, getting these two ecosystems to work together required some DIY tinkering — Node-RED flows, third-party scripts, or Home Assistant as a bridge. All perfectly doable, but not exactly plug-and-play.
That changed in February 2026 with the release of VenusOS 3.70 — and the integration is now native, elegant, and genuinely exciting.
VenusOS is the operating system that runs Victron's GX family of communication and monitoring devices — most notably the Cerbo GX, the Ekrano GX, and the Venus GX. Think of the Cerbo as the central nervous system of your Victron installation. It sits in the middle of everything, monitors all your Victron kit (batteries, inverters, MPPT controllers, chargers), connects to the internet via the VRM portal for remote monitoring, and now — with version 3.70 — it speaks fluent Shelly.
Released 25 February 2026, VenusOS 3.70 is one of the most feature-rich updates Victron has shipped in years. The headline features include:
| Feature | What It Means For You |
|---|---|
| 🏠 Native Shelly Integration | Gen2+ Shelly devices appear automatically in your Cerbo GX switch pane — no scripts required |
| 🔌 Expanded Switch Pane | GX relays, Shelly switches, Node-RED virtual switches, and Garmin EmpirBus all in one unified control panel |
| 📊 Energy Monitoring | Shelly energy meters surface their data directly in the GX interface |
| 💡 RGB Control | Shelly RGBW light controllers can be set via presets right from your GX display |
| 🔆 Dimmer Support | Dimmable Shelly outputs show a slider in the switch pane for smooth control |
| 🔁 Node-RED Virtual Switches | Automate anything with logic-based virtual switches from Node-RED |
The good news: it's surprisingly simple. As long as your Shelly devices (Gen 2 or newer) and your Cerbo GX are on the same WiFi network, VenusOS 3.70 will automatically discover them. They show up in a new menu at Settings → Integrations → Shelly devices, where you can enable the ones you want. Once enabled, they appear in the unified Switch Pane on both the Cerbo GX display and the remote VRM console.
Supported device types right now include:
Control any switched circuit directly from the GX switch pane. Think pool pumps, hot water tanks, or outbuilding circuits.
Full slider control for dimmable Shelly devices — set the perfect brightness level for any space from your energy system display.
Shelly energy meters surface real-time consumption data directly into the Victron GX interface. Know your loads intimately.
Set colours and scenes for Shelly RGBW light strips via presets in the GX UI. Yes, really — your inverter controls your mood lighting.
Okay, here's where it gets genuinely fun. When your energy management system knows exactly how much power is being generated, what state your batteries are in, and how much load you're drawing — and it can also switch things off and on — you can start building a genuinely intelligent home. Let's look at some practical examples.
This is the big one. A Shelly 1PM or Pro relay on your immersion heater, combined with a Node-RED flow in your Cerbo GX, means your hot water can be set to heat only when solar production exceeds demand and the batteries are above a threshold. Free hot water from the sun — with zero risk of flattening your batteries overnight. No expensive diverter needed.
Pool pumps are energy-hungry beasts that ideally run during peak solar hours. Drop a Shelly relay on the pump circuit and let your Victron system schedule it around your solar yield. The pump runs when the sun shines. Simple, effective, and it'll pay for itself embarrassingly quickly.
Retrofit Shelly dimmers and switches behind your existing wall plates — no rewiring needed in most cases. Then automate: lights dim when your battery SOC drops below 20%, outdoor lights switch off at midnight, and your kids' rooms (inevitably) left with lights on get auto-switched after 11pm.
If you're running off-grid or on a tight battery budget, Shelly switches on electric panel heaters can be your first load-shedding line of defence. When battery SOC hits a floor threshold, non-critical heating loads drop off. Comfort is preserved, batteries are protected.
Using Shelly energy meters (like the excellent EM Gen3 or Pro 3EM) on individual circuits, you can finally see exactly where your energy is going — appliance by appliance. That data feeds into your Victron system for a complete picture of your home's energy flows.
Got a holiday let, annexe, or barn that's on your system? Shelly's wireless retrofit switches mean you can monitor and control those circuits without running extra cabling, and manage them centrally through your Victron Cerbo GX — or remotely via VRM from anywhere in the world.
The Victron integration requires Shelly Gen2 or newer devices — which covers the vast majority of the current Shelly range. If you're buying new, you're almost certainly getting compatible hardware. Here's a quick overview of the most relevant products for an energy-aware installation:
| Device | What It Does | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Shelly 1PM Gen4 | Single channel relay with power monitoring | Immersion heaters, appliances, lighting circuits |
| Shelly 2PM Gen3/4 | Dual channel relay with power monitoring + blind/shutter control | Motors, roller blinds, two independent circuits |
| Shelly Pro 4PM | 4-channel DIN rail switch with per-channel metering | Consumer units, distribution boards |
| Shelly Pro 3EM / EM Gen3 | Three-phase or single-phase energy meter | Whole-house or circuit-level sub-metering |
| Shelly Dimmer Gen3 | Dimmable light control, works without neutral wire | Retrofit dimming in older wiring situations |
| Shelly RGBW PM | RGB + white LED controller | Accent lighting, status indicators, mood lighting |
| Shelly H&T Gen3 | Temperature & humidity sensor | Climate-aware heating/cooling automations |
Gen2 ✓ Gen3 ✓ Gen4 ✓ Pro Series ✓ Wave Series — check compatibility
One important note: Shelly's Z-Wave "Wave" devices operate differently and may need additional bridging. If you're building a new installation, stick to the Wi-Fi Gen2+ range for seamless Victron integration.
The native Victron–Shelly integration covers the essentials beautifully. But if you want to push further — and many of our customers do — VenusOS 3.70 has you covered with two powerful tools:
VenusOS includes Node-RED natively — a visual flow-based programming tool that lets you wire together logic without writing traditional code. You can create conditions like "If battery SOC > 85% AND solar generation > 2kW, turn on the Shelly relay connected to the hot water tank". The 3.70 update added virtual switches in Node-RED that appear in the switch pane alongside physical Shelly devices — incredibly powerful for building sophisticated multi-condition automations.
Both Victron and Shelly have excellent Home Assistant integrations. Using Home Assistant alongside your Victron system opens up a world of additional automation possibilities — voice control via Alexa or Google Home, complex multi-device scenes, third-party service integrations, and a gorgeous dashboard that can show your complete home energy picture in one view. Think of it as an optional extra layer of capability on top of the solid Victron + Shelly foundation.
What makes this combination special is the intelligence flow: Victron knows about your energy (generation, storage, consumption). Shelly knows how to control loads. When these two talk natively — whether through the built-in integration, Node-RED, or Home Assistant — you can build a system that automatically optimises your energy use around your actual circumstances, in real time. That's the difference between a solar installation and a smart energy system.
Here at The Energy & IT Guy, we're Victron-trained installers and genuine enthusiasts of both these platforms. We've been hands-on with VenusOS 3.70 since it landed, and we're already deploying Shelly devices as part of our Victron installations.
Whether you're starting fresh with a new solar battery system, or you already have a Victron install and want to add smart home control on top of it — we can design, supply, install, and configure the whole thing. That includes:
We'll assess your property and energy habits to design an installation that genuinely fits your life — not a generic off-the-shelf package.
Full Victron and Shelly hardware installation, correctly wired and compliant — not an extension lead with a bit of tape.
Node-RED flows, Shelly schedules, and VRM configuration — we set it all up so it works intelligently from day one.
We stay in touch. Firmware updates, new automation ideas, expanding the system — we're your long-term energy IT partner.
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