Living aboard
The boat is home — pressurized and powered around the clock while you're at work or away for the weekend. Aboard, you want instant local visibility; away, you want the same protection as any unattended boat.
What can go wrong
The slow, boring failures — not scare stories.
A line fails while you're at work
Freshwater plumbing is under pressure all day. A fitting that lets go at 9am runs unattended until you're back — hours of water into the bilge or a locker.
Slow drips behind panels
A weeping water heater or a hose seep hides behind joinery until something is soaked and the smell shows up. The early signal is the one you never see.
The bank quietly loses capacity
House batteries age. You find out during an outage — unless something was watching the voltage curve the whole time.
A week away, no idea what state it's in
Haul-out, a work trip, visiting family. The boat sits and you're left guessing.
How Guardian covers it
Each risk maps to something that ships today, with the plan tier it needs called out honestly.
Instant local visibility, no subscription
Aboard, the app talks straight to the gateway and sensors over the boat's Wi-Fi — no internet, no cost. The in-app Flooding Sentry watches the bilge whenever the app is open.
Catch leaks early, bound the worst case
Shelly Flood sensors under the water heater, head, and galley sink catch drips fast. Whatever the tier, every LinkTap valve open carries a volume/duration limit, so a burst line ends bounded — not running all day.
Watch the bank and its trend
The Shelly Plus Uni reads the house bank with chemistry presets (flooded, AGM, gel, LiFePO₄) and a calibration offset. A Shelly Plus H&T (~$30) adds cabin temperature and humidity to catch freeze and mold risk. History shows the slow slide before it strands you.
Same protection when you leave
The cloud flood-shutoff fallback works with the app closed on every tier, and so does the away push telling you it fired. Closing the valve from off the boat is free too. What Basic adds is valve control — opening the valve from the app, run programming, live flow metering — and automatic remote monitoring, so status is current before you look, plus a month of hosted history. Premium adds SMS escalation for the alerts that can't be missed, plus ~3 years of history.
Share it with your partner
Add the people who share the boat with real roles — Full Admin or Monitor & Control — so everyone aboard can see and operate it from their own account. Inviting needs a paid plan on that vehicle (Basic up to 3 people, Premium up to 10); being invited is always free.
The setup
Off-the-shelf hardware, bought once. The core app is free.
Recommended hardware
- LinkTap G2S valve + Gateway — freshwater shutoff at the source~$135–160
- Shelly Flood Gen4 ×2–3 — water heater, head, galley~$30 each
- Shelly Plus Uni — house bank voltage
- Shelly Plus H&T — cabin temperature & humidity~$30
- Shelly PM Mini Gen3 — shore power~$25
A full liveaboard build lands around $300 one-time. You already have Wi-Fi aboard, so no extra connectivity is needed for the away features — see the connectivity guide if you want a cheap always-on backup.
Recommended plan
Basic — $3/mo · $12/yr per vehicle
Basic covers the away days that matter most. If you travel for weeks at a time and want SMS plus longer history, step up to Premium ($5/mo · $30/yr).
Every vehicle can try one month of Basic free, started from the app's Account view.