September 11, 2025 Latching buttons support
Latching buttons are now supported in both Switch Control and Circuit Control.
Circuit Control and Switch Control are designed for digital control of loads. This means that loads connected to Circuit Control can be turned on or off from the buttons wired to it, from navigation displays, from mobile phones (via our Wi Fi Gateway), and from auxiliary control stations with physical buttons where Switch Control is installed.
In this scenario, latching buttons do not reflect the state of the load: a user can turn a load on with the button, then turn it off on the chartplotter, and the button will remain in the pressed position. The only element that reflects the load state is the indicator light in the button.
Nevertheless, there is a use case where latching buttons are preferable to momentary buttons. On the Lowrance HDS PRO display shown in the screenshot, using digital switching for loads is not very convenient and requires several taps to switch away from the chart or sonar page. Therefore, the user will prefer to use a physical button installed next to the display.
A reasonable question may arise: why install Circuit Control on this boat at all? The answer is simple: the boat's panel space is limited, and it was decided to use miniature but low power buttons. In this case, high power loads such as bilge pumps should be switched via relays. This is where Circuit Control has an advantage, because it uses latching (bistable) relays and does not consume energy to hold the contacts.
The second reason is the insufficient number of buttons that fit on the panel. Some auxiliary loads - for example, turning on the audio speaker lighting - do not have a physical button and are switched only from the Lowrance display.
Thus, in this installation latching buttons turned out to be genuinely more convenient, because in most cases they reflect the load state.
Moreover, they have another property that can be useful. When power is applied, Circuit Control restores the loads to the state they were in before power was removed. However, in latching button mode, the device switches loads according to the current positions of the buttons connected to it.
You can check the current mode and select a new one with the command:
YD:BUTTONS [ MOMENTARY | LATCHING ]
On the boat described in this article, Circuit Control also controls power to the navigation instruments and to the NMEA 2000 network; for this it is connected to the NMEA 2000 network through a power isolator.
Firmware update for Circuit Control and Switch Control are available on the Downloads page.
September 9, 2025 Ethernet Gateway for Lowrance
With the new firmware supporting StructureScan 3D, your boat's hull may need one less hole.
Lowrance StructureScan 3D transducers provide excellent side-scanning and even build a 3D relief of the seabed. Naturally, they also show the depth under the boat, which can be displayed on Lowrance screens in the field called STRUC, as shown in the screenshot above.
Unfortunately, the MFD does not recognize this value as depth: it does not transmit it into the NMEA 2000 network from the high-speed Ethernet network, nor does it record it in tracks, and so on. This also makes it impossible to use the autopilot's depth-following mode, which is very useful when trolling.
Many users have encountered this problem, and they were usually advised to install another inexpensive sensor that transmits depth data to the NMEA 2000 network. But with the Ethernet Gateway YDEN-02, this can be avoided. Configure the first YDEN data server to UDP, RAW protocol, and port 10754. Please note that the data stream must be set to "To NMEA 2000", in order to prevent data from NMEA 2000 from entering the Ethernet network.
Change the Ethernet network settings by selecting the static address 169.254.4.1 and changing the subnet mask to 255.255.0.0. Now you can disconnect the Ethernet Gateway from your computer and connect it to the Lowrance high-speed network (to a free port on the sonar module or the plotter, whichever is more convenient) using the Lowrance cable 000-14552-001 or an equivalent.
After turning on the sonar, the depth should appear in the list of data sources on the plotter, as shown in the screenshot below.
This new feature has not yet undergone large-scale testing. Therefore, here's how to perform diagnostics if the StructureScan depth data (field STRUC) is present, but the depth data source has not appeared.
For this, you will also need to connect a laptop to the Ethernet network (using a simple RJ45 hub or another proprietary cable adapter). On the third YDEN server, enable the debugging protocol and open the link in a browser:
In the debug window, messages should appear with the header SRV[1] RX and the subheader BINARY. The first byte after the subheader should be 28 HEX (in the screenshot shown as D0).
The next step is to install the free software WireShark. In the list of packets, look for those with a length of 1429 bytes, and among them find those containing the first data byte 28 HEX (see screenshot).
In addition, in the new YDEN-02 firmware, the Web Gauges have been updated. Now they not only display all engine data but also show engine and transmission warnings. The list of measurement units for speed and fuel consumption has also been expanded.
Firmware update for Ethernet Gateway is available on the Downloads page.
May 12, 2025 10-year anniversary
Ten years have flown by like one day! And even though we're no longer a startup, we still love what we do. And maybe even more so.
In ten years, we've created 28 devices for you. And not just created, we are constantly working on our products, making them better and better. For example, our first product, Digital Barometer, is undergoing its third major update.
We are happy to announce that on May 10, Digital Barometer YDBC-06, as well as Digital Thermometer YDTC-14, Humidity Sensor YDHS-02 and Exhaust Gas Sensor YDGS-02 (new generation) passed NMEA 2000 certification and will be available for sale in mid-June. The new sensors have Wi-Fi (which, of course, can be turned off for safety and to save electricity), support integration into smart homes and smart boats via the MQTT protocol, and store date and time stamped measurement history, so the barometer becomes a real barograph!
To configure the Thermometer (to change, for example, the data type from air temperature to cabin temperature), we came up with a clever way 10 years ago to control the instrument settings by sequentially changing the magnetic variation on an MFD. A few years later we released the second generation, where it was already possible to configure the instrument through special strings that can be sent through NMEA 2000 gateways. Not only ours, but any manufacturer, such as ActiSense or Maretron.
Unfortunately, MFD haven't gotten much better since then, and it's still impossible to set up a third-party device from an MFD. But now it is possible to connect to our devices via Wi-Fi and do it all in a convenient interface. If you turn off Wi-Fi, the current consumption of our third generation of instruments is no greater than that of the previous generation.
In these ten years, more than 60000 of our devices have found a new home on your boats. And we sometimes envy them: our Autopilot recently crossed the ocean in a sailboat, and we haven't been able to go that far in a long time. This year we are sure to please you with a new version of Autopilot, which will be able to work without a rudder sensor (which is especially important on large boats with outboard motor) and will support control via web-interface.
Most importantly, we have made dozens or even hundreds of new friends around the world. We are proud of your trust and value our friendship. And these are not just pretty words. It is great to work with passionate people. But the greatest happiness is working with people who are in love with the same thing you are, feeling their passion and genuinely trying to help each other. Some of our products would not have come about without the active help of our users.
A lot of companies want to grow, or enter new markets, or overtake someone. We don't. We will remain a small company to stay close to our users, still feel them, and offer them products that can gracefully solve their problems and make them happy. That's the kind of great plan we have for the next ten years!
And tomorrow we won't answer emails, tomorrow we'll go to a corporate regatta and have fun! But we have a gift for you: with coupon YD10YEARS you can buy our products with a small discount until the end of the month. Hugs, kisses, and we'll see you on Wednesday!
Next articles:
- Raymarine, your turn! / February 17, 2025
- Python Gateway 1.05 Update / February 3, 2025
- Visit us in Dusseldorf / January 18, 2025