Smart Oil Gauge - Wi-Fi Heating Oil Tank Gauge with Smart Monitoring - Fuel Tank Gauge Compatible with Alexa - Designed for 275/330/500/550 Gallon Tanks (Vertical/Horizontal)

Edits: 1/12/26 - I finally removed the Smart Oil Gauge and replaced it with the newer model: the Smart Oil Gauge Duo. The new model doesn't have the blind spot at the top of the tank, and has a different body construction. I think I will offer my older model to my friend. It's still working perfectly with its own known drawbacks. One thing to mention is there seems to be no way to remove a sensor from your account through app or website, and I had to contact customer support to have them remove it from the account for me, which they kindly did for me. Hopefully the gauge will get continued appreciation with my friend. 12/11/24 - Years in and it's still going great. The app sends you notifications to alert you if it hasn't received a transmitted reading from the gauge after a few days so you can go and troubleshoot. Usually turning the gauge off and on again per its power switch under its cap fixes most things. The gauge doesn't seem to like the SON(Self-Organizing-Network) setting on my router, and would have awful connection issues so I turned the router setting off. I believe the gauge works best on a 2.4ghz wifi network. 6/2/22 - Soon after writing this review, I noticed that the app DID add push notifications a couple months ago. They happened to be off by default in my phone's settings. 7/25/22 - After 1 year and 6 months of once per 24 hours data reporting, battery finally started to report "Fair" for a couple weeks and then advanced to the lowest level of "Poor" and sent a low battery notification via push notifications and email. Original Review: I got tired of watching my dad constantly go outside to check the mechanical oil gauge on the tank, so I thought there had to be some sort of remote monitoring for that in this day-and-age. I stumbled upon this and after some research, said "Sure, sounds good!". Installation: I ordered some pipe-dope (pipe glue/sealant) along with it and installed it on a cold winter day (Northeast US) in January 2021. My outdoor 275gal vertical oil tank had a cap on an extra unused port so I didn't have to remove any of the other devices on the oil tank. (fill spout, fill whistle, and manual oil gauge.) With a pipe wrench and a 1.5 foot long piece of discarded metal pipe as a handle extension, I was able to get the rusted-stuck cap loose and removed. I took my pipe dope and painted it all around the outside of the metal bottom threads on the Smart Oil Gauge (avoiding the sensor within the black colored area on the end) and screwed it into the hole. It doesn't screw all the way in; it leaves about 5 threads exposed once I tightened it as comfortably tight as it would go. Setting it up with the wifi network went smoothly and I set it to report its readings once every 24 hours, which is the maximum time between reports. Its "brain" is located underneath the white plastic screw-on cap on top. There is a small circuit board with a couple of wires connected, and a compartment with a power switch for your two lithium AA batteries and some styrofoam to keep stuff in place. Somewhere in there is the "configuration" button for wifi syncing and such. You are instructed to wrap teflon tape around the metal threads where the plastic cap screws on to seal the compartment from moisture penetration. Battery: The less you make it report, the longer your battery lasts. Trust me you don't need a report more frequently than 24 hour intervals. I even forget to look at it for days at a time. The app's battery report has a total of four possible readings: Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor. (See 7/25/22 Edit At Top) At the time of writing this review, one year and four months after installing it, I still haven't had to change the battery. The battery started at "Excellent" and now reports "Good" which is one step lower. There was a time where it reported "Fair" for a short while, but then it went back to "Good" somehow. Cons: I ended up purchasing replacement batteries when I had a one-time connection problem in which we had a lengthy power outage and the Smart Oil Gauge struggled to get back online afterwards and didn't report to the app for about a week(which the app notified me), so I thought it was suddenly dead. While troubleshooting, I thought perhaps it had lost the network and I would have to reset its connection, but when I followed the instructions to reset the network connection, everything kept failing and timing out. I emailed support about the issue during the troubleshooting process and they gave me the same network-resetting instructions from the manual. I replied to tell them that resetting the network failed and how I even rebooted my router, and they emailed back with something along the lines of "Thank you for letting us know that we helped fix your problem!". It turns out going outside and shutting it off for a minute and then turning it back on by its power switch, knocked it out of its tantrum and it has been working normal ever since and automatically reconnected back to the network. The readings can come up as a couple of gallons more or less than actual when the outdoor temperatures are in the extremes. (Hot Summer makes gallons read higher, Cold Winter makes gallons read lower than actual.) This can make it seem like you are using more, less, or even negative amounts of oil on some days. It's a minor annoyance but not really a problem because it's not like we push the tank gallon by gallon. We just refill when we get around 1/2 tank. You cannot choose what time the gauge reports to the app. You can choose the approximate interval, but not the time. That means that sometimes my gauge reports before or after the 24 hour mark, so that ends up having the time of the update drift all over with no way to reset it to a specific time. Some weeks my 24-hour reading would come in 1am, other weeks 3:15pm etc. It drifts. Unfortunately this drifting causes a strange effect in the app, which once you hit 12am and begin a new day, the app no longer allows you to view the previous day in detail, as there is no scrolling through day-to-day readings. There are graphs of level and usage rates for "Today", "This week", "This Month", and "This Year". That means that if your gauge has drifted to updating at 8pm, then you only have 4 hours to view today's readings in detail before the daily slate gets wiped clean and you can only view the day as part of time-stamped dots making up the graph in "This week". Anything beyond a year is lost as there is no history collection beyond that. (See 6/2/22 Edit At Top) The app's notifications are done through odd combinations of email and text messaging. Certain notifications can only be sent through entering an email into the box in the notifications page, and some can only be received through entering a phone number to text. For some reason the app doesn't do regular push notifications to tell you when your tank is at 1/2, 1/4 etc. My tank is 275gallons and is set to that same amount within the app. The sensor reads "Full" at 230 gallons--presumably because the sensor needs space above the oil to read properly, or because of how far the sensor drops down into the tank when screwed in. This means that if you end up filling beyond your "Full" reading, it's going to seem like you aren't losing any oil for however long it takes you to finally drop below your "Full" level." This level is likely to be different for those with other tank sizes or configurations. You can use the FuelSnap oil marketplace to order oil from your choice of local participating oil vendors at the click of a button with the addition of a payment source. FuelSnap is not a subscription service, but built into the app. All in all, I am quite happy with it though it can use some app improvements.

Works as advertised. Set up WiFi before installation. Once I remembered the correct password for our WiFi, the rest of the setup was easy. Note for installation you’ll need a pipe wrench big enough to bite on a 2”pipe, and oil-rated thread sealant (Teflon dope or yellow tape). Seems to be very accurate, the app works well, and it will send me alerts and emails at pre-determined levels. I can give up my weekly trips to the basement just to check the tank. No worries about running dry anymore. I did that once, and purging the oil line and the burner is not much fun.

To be honest I loved the idea of a smart oil gauge. I started building my smart home back in 2012. A smart oil gauge was a awesome addition. I bought my first one in Sept 2017. It didn’t last. Last reading from that unit was 12-20-17. First off the device is very fragile. According to the instructions they want you to thread this into your tank without too much force. The gauge of the metal is very soft. My wrench dug into the metal too easily. Next once installed it seemed to work but for 2 weeks it kept saying that the tank was full and that I only used a couple Gallons. Actually it never changed even when I ran out of fuel. I will say this. The company did everything they could to help at the time including replacing that unit. They told me that there were a few units that went out to Amazon that were defective. I got a replacement in 2018 So now I got a replacement and guess what it didn’t fare that much better. It worked for about 7 months and then it died completely. Don’t know exactly when it died because it just kept showing the same fuel levels until Oct-13-2018. I thought it was batteries and drove over an hour to a store to but these special batteries only to find out it still didn’t work. I got emailed back and forth and spoke to someone on the phone and they kept trying to have me trouble shoot my WiFi connection. I’m a network engineer and I told them that I took a voltage meter and tested everything on the board as well as the battery compartment. No voltage anywhere. It was dead. I never heard from them again. My picture for this review is from Nov 2 2020. That where I left it. Piece of junk. The bad think is that there aren’t a lot of option on the market that can do what this claims. If they made a better product they could rule to industry. Just a side not I actually ordered another one recently. for mere kicks to see if they have made any improvements.

Update: 5 years now and I will need to change the batteries again soon. The accuracy continues to be very good. I have run the tank nearly empty and the delivery driver said I probably had about 5 gallons left. I show off the graphs to people whenever someone mentions probably needing oil. At least two have then gone out and bought their own. Update: After nearly two years it is still working well. I changed the batteries once, after about 18 months, and it just continued where it left off a few days earlier. I probably check once a week in the winter. I have email alerts set up for 1/4 and 1/8, refilled, and high use. In the winter I burn up to five gallons a day. The 1/8th notification is about a working week in the winter. I ignored it once and learned how to bleed the oil line and restart the burner. The gauge accurately reports level when empty. This has done everything I expected, or wanted. This is a very satisfying piece of home automation. My two favorites are this and the WiFi garage light switch, I use that more, but this is more important. Seems to be working well. I have no clue how accurate it is, but I am sitting at my desk 60 miles from home and I know I have 193.6 gallons of oil in my 275 gallon tank. Even if I was standing looking at it I couldn't know that. I expect it is within ten percent, I won't have any way of knowing until I get more oil delivered, and that won't be for some time. If I don't report back then the numbers must have matched quite closely. The only problem I had with it was nothing to do with the product, installation would have been easy if some fool hadn't walled in the tank, so I had to stand on a ladder and stretch along the top of the tank. Other than the awkward position the installation was easy. I linked the gauge to WiFi in the comfort of my living room and then went down into the basement. I unscrewed the plug from one of the two spare skin fittings and carefully cleaned the old pipe dope from round the hole as I went, don't want to drop that inside. I liberally coated the threads with good quality thread compound that is rated for oil pipes and then carefully threaded the gauge in and tightened it down with a pipe wrench. Returning to the lounge I found that the tank was reporting 100% full... well... that's because it only measures a few times a day. Realistically you can't make any use of a more frequent measure so why waste the battery power. After six hours I checked again and found I was down to 209 gallons. Over the next few days it went down to 208. Apparently I use about 0.3 gallons per day in the summer. Who knows that sort of thing? I can even see the higher rate of use in the morning when we have showers.

The setup instructions are very sparse. I didn't get it connected on the first try, I consider that a black mark for any network device as simple as this one. Following the instructions for both the standard and alternate setup methods several times each led me to check the Smart Oil Gauge website. Lo and behold, detailed instructions that worked! It only took me about 90 minutes to get this far, and I hadn't touched a wrench yet. If they had labeled their instructions a "quick start" guide and provided a QR code for the webpage or at least make the information there more obvious than an afterthought I wouldn't be complaining right now. The installation, by contrast, was ridiculously easy. I had to buy the adapter for the 1 1/2 inch female pipe threads on my tank. You might want to check that before you order, I couldn't find it on Amazon so. you need to order directly. Also, when they say that a standard reducer won't work, believe them. The proper adapter has an ultrasonic waveguide in it to prevent unwanted reflections from messing with the readings. I'm assuming this might be behind some negative reviews claiming unpredictable performance. Also a probable issue is the native, mechanical tank gauge. It's often a float on a lever (think of an old fashioned toilet tank ball float) where the lever extends sideways to float in the tank. When I opened the tank plug I took a flashlight and looked inside so I would know the layout. The float arm and float extend directly under the fitting I installed the device in. There may well be enough scattering off of this arm to disrupt the device function. (this would be the other thing I would expect causes some of the performance issues noted in reviews). I will monitor its performance and if it does anything hinkey I will have to spend an entire Saturday replumbing the fill fitting to reverse the float arm and hopefully remove any interference. Once I had hooked it up (no pipe dope on the device threads and no pipe wrench either please) it worked instantly. Other complaints I saw here were about accuracy. ?? What did you have before, was your float gauge THAT good? The value in this is that it will tell you how much oil you have in quarters of a tank, although it will report down to eighths. It's not at all difficult to monitor both this device and the float gauge to get a feel for the levels reported. I wonder if these folks realize the technology that goes into modern cars to be able to report fuel remaining in terms of miles to go? It sure isn't going to fit on a 1 x 3 inch PCB along with a Wi-Fi interface, not for $180. All in all, I think this is going to be well worth the investment if only because it will make it a lot harder to forget to order oil. because I forgot to check the tank. It will email, alert, and/or text you information that you select when you hit certain milestones. I will increase my rating to 5 stars if this thing makes it for a while without hiccups, in the meantime I feel it's worth the $180 to try it out.

I absolutely love this thing! Here are my pros and cons, and pros greatly outweigh the cons. First, I almost bought the set of two for more accuracy, but one sensor works awesome. If I put 5.5 gallons in my tank, the guage will go up by 5.5 gallons. Sometimes it might say 5.4 or 5.7 gallons, but that's still extremely accurate. Second, the batteries that came with it just started saying they were low after running for 1 year 7 months. I have it setup to transfer the data, that the guage transmits to update the fuel level up in the guage's app., every 4 hours. It senses the level of fuel in the tank every hour, but only transmits every 4 hours to save battery life and still have no gaps in the data in the app. Third, no more having to go down to the basement to check my oil level. I can check my oil level from anywhere in the world! Now for the negatives: First, if you add smaller amounts of fuel more often than getting a big delivery all at once, the fuel use graph will be way off because it shows adding fuel is negative usage when it figures out things like how soon before you run out of oil. Second, I setup networks for a living and it took a lot to get it connected to my Wi-Fi. Part of the problem was that I have 3 Wi-Fi bands, all with the same name, and the router and device automatically connect to the best signal. But, since this only uses 801.11n (2.4GHz), it can get confused because and the device just shows all three as the same name, and since it doesn't show the guage's MAC address. You don't know if it's failing to connect because, although it's connecting to the correct SSID, you can't tell if it's the 2.4, 5 or 6 GHz it's trying connect to. The easiest solution is to just rename the SSID of each frequency so you can tell by the SSID if you're trying to connect to the 2.4GHz band.

BEWARE!!! Sensor is +/-14-21% Updated 2/9/2021: For the past few days, my "Smart" oil gauge was reading below 1/4 of a tank. I contacted the oil company to let them know and they dispatched a delivery. This morning, it read 56.7 gallons. Oil was delivered and eventually it updated to 3/4 of a tank or 207.8 gallons to be precise. That's 151.1 gallons that was pumped into my tank. I went home during lunch to let the dog out and I grabbed the receipt / invoice from the oil company to learn they pumped 190 gallons. With nearly a 40 gallon difference between what the oil company claims to have pumped and what the "smart" oil gauge said...I made a phone call to the oil company, quite unhappy. After hanging up, it occurred to me that I could check the manual buoyancy gauge on the tank to see if it agreed with the smart oil gauge. It did not. The old mechanical style gauge read full while smart oil app still is saying 3/4 of a tank. I've read that temperature, as well as how close to full the tank is can have an impact on the accuracy of this meter. I would have never expected that I would see variances of up to 40 gallons...that's the difference between 1/4 tank and empty for me (or 3/4 tank and a full tank). It's pretty janky to say the least. Yes, battery level is good and all of that other stuff. With this said: This device isn't horrible, it's just not very accurate at all. You will still get a rough idea of how much oil is left in your tank (+/- 40 gallons). It's convenient. If you're at work and the oil company calls to offer a delivery, you can check how much oil is in the tank. If you pull up the app while away from your house, you can see if you need oil...but yeah, it's not super accurate at all. I have a 275 gallon tank, it's about full right now according to the mechanical gauge and the app is reading 207.8. (which is actually 67.2 gallons off). ====================================== EARLIER REVIEW: This is a "smart" oil gauge. It's easy to install. After you get it up and running you'll end up with an app on your smartphone that shows a tank divided into 8ths (1/8, 1/4, 1/2....FULL), along with an actual gallon reading (228.7 gallons), how many gallons you're using on average per day, how many days at this rate until you're at 1/4 tank and how many days until you're at 1/8th tank. If you live in an area with oil companies who participate in the FUEL SNAP (fuelsnap.com) program, you'll have a convenient link to click where you can see who is selling oil at the cheapest rate. Unfortunately I live in an area where there are no participating dealers and I'm too lazy to use the Fuel Snap invitation to invite them...Fuel Snap should do this. There may be other benefits to being in a Fuel Snap area / network...your oil provider might be able to read your oil gauge and automatically deliver oil based on how much you have left...that would be awesome. I did read about one user who shared their logon with their oil company and they'll deliver automatically based on the gauge reading. At the very least, you'll get a more accurate reading of your oil versus a standard mechanical gauge. You'll also get intelligence into how much oil you're using on average. You'll get the convenience of being able to check your phone or ask Alexa how much oil is in the tank. Nothing is without a downside: First this thing isn't cheap. I think $150 for this gauge is on the expensive side for what it is. Secondly: the batteries are not regular AA and must be ordered from the manufacturer. I haven't had this for very long so I'm not sure how often you'll have to replace batteries. Third, I noticed the other day while I was in my basement that it does put off an audible noise. It wasn't super annoying or anything but I could hear it. What would make this thing a little more useful is if it integrated more closely with Alexa. I shouldn't have to say "Alexa Ask Smart Oil Gauge..." that's stupid. Even cooler would be if there was integration with a smart thermostat so that we could correlate the number of gallons to the rise of temperature in a house on a timeline. i.e. burning oil for one hour raises the temperature in the house by one degree with outside temperature of X.

I'll start by saying that customer service on this has been great so far. My gauge arrived with dead batteries which left me a bit worried that perhaps the gauge itself was the cause given the expected lifespan of the batteries. The support person was quick to reach out to me and sent new batteries in very short order. Two days later I had the replacement batteries and was able to configure the gauge using my Android phone. The configuration process took a few attempts, initially caused by some network configuration issues on my part (long story short 2.4GHz extender connected to the farthest possible node in my mesh network). It timed out trying to connect to the device on my next attempt, but succeeded on what became my final attempt. Once connected, the app immediately had a reading. So far the only thing that I would change would be to make the gauge flash its LED continuously while in configuration mode so that the user knows they successfully entered the required mode to continue setup. Things you should be aware of when purchasing this: -- Does not use the same AA batteries that you would use elsewhere in your household. -- Requires a 2.4GHz WiFi network. This shouldn't be a problem for most but be prepared to make sure that your 2.4 and 5GHz networks have distinct names to connect to.

Was told it was not recommended for Canada. Hooked up and works great. Just make sure tank is compatible in size.

This product is only for US. It will only work in US, as the app is only available in US. Amazon mistakenly shipped me this to uk, and I’ve had to return it.

Product does not work on fiberglass tanks. Guage gets false reading saying always full Seller does not sell any adapters that the original company only provides to American only customers.