September 7, 2023  Massive Engine Gateway firmware update

New YDEG-04 firmware 1.40 has been released with enhanced BRP, MAN and SmartCraft compatibility and added experimental support for VW Marine engines.

BRP Rotax, MAN and SmartCraft

With the invaluable help of our dear customers, we have managed to make several significant improvements in relation to non-J1939 engines and application-specific J1939 engines support.

 

BRP Engines

Enhanced support for old BRP engines (2005-2007) was added. Most of the data is sent by these engines only in response to a request. The Engine Gateway tries, if possible, not to send requests to the bus and remains a silent observer, but in this case, you will have to be content with only engine speed and hours. With the new mode, you will also get coolant temperature, batteries voltage, exhaust gas temperature and intake manifold pressure. To enable this mode, please use setting:


        BRP_ROTAX=REQUESTS

In new installations, we recommend to start with the setting:


        BRP_ROTAX=ON

and turn on requests only when you see the lack of data.

We also have added BRP engines gear position and engine load support. Fuel level also was added for engines manufactured after 2021.

Some minor bugs like incorrect fuel rate and boost pressure values decoding were fixed.

 

SmartCraft Engines

The improved HANDSHAKE mechanism now works correctly in multiple engine setups. If one of the engines is missing in a SmartCraft multi-engine setup, try a new setting:


        SMARTCRAFT=ENFORCE

that forces Engine Gateway to actively query both engines data every second.

Support for SmartCraft rudder position was added. If you got valid rudder data on SmartCraft Can-P bus, Engine Gateway will send an extra NMEA 2000 PGN 127245 "Rudder", with zero "Rudder Instance" (first or single rudder).

Some minor bugs like incorrect engine load data and missing engine alerts were fixed.

 

MAN Engines

Or any other engines with two J1939 data sources for single engine data. J1939 bus allows multiple engine controllers on a single engine bus. While integrating latest MAN MMDS-CLC engine we have found a J1939 bus data sources configuration case when main engine and transmission data were sent from address 39 but fuel rate and engine warnings data were sent from a separate controller with address 0.

Yes, Engine Gateway was capable to get, say, main engine controller, transmission and battery data from a separate sources with a different J1939 addresses — which can be chosen in Gateway settings, but for this time we have opted for a more radical "generic solution" — to gather all data from two arbitrary J1939 addresses using a modified ENGINE_x settings behavior. With new setting:


        MAN_ENGINE=ON

settings ENGINE_4...ENGINE_7 will be used to select "secondary" J1939 data source address:

  • ENGINE_0 and ENGINE_4 will be mapped to NMEA 2000 engine instance 0,
  • ENGINE_1 and ENGINE_5 will be mapped to NMEA 2000 engine instance 1,
  • ENGINE_2 and ENGINE_6 will be mapped to NMEA 2000 engine instance 2,
  • ENGINE_3 and ENGINE_7 will be mapped to NMEA 2000 engine instance 3.

Example configuration for port engine:


	# enable secondary J1939 sources address selection and mapping
	MAN_ENGINE=ON

	# main engine data are on J1939 address 39, map to NMEA 2000 engine instance 0 (PORT)
	ENGINE_0=39
	ENGINE_1=OFF
	ENGINE_2=OFF
	ENGINE_3=OFF

	# fuel rate and DTC are on J1939 address 0, will be mapped to NMEA 2000 engine instance 0 (not 4 !)
	ENGINE_4=0
	ENGINE_5=OFF
	ENGINE_6=OFF
	ENGINE_7=OFF

	# transmission data are on J1939 address 39, map to NMEA 2000 transmission instance 0
	TRANSMISSION_0=39
	TRANSMISSION_1=OFF

	# voltage sources are on J1939 address 39
	BATTERY_0=39
	BATTERY_1=OFF

	# map "charging" voltage source to NMEA 2000 PGN 127489 "Engine Parameters, Dynamic"
	# data field "Alternator Voltage", NMEA 2000 engine instance 0
	NMEA_ALTERNATOR=CHARGING

	# map "Keyswitch" voltage source to NMEA 2000 PGN 127508 "Battery Status"
	# with battery instance 0 ( as we use BATTERY_0 above )
	NMEA_BATTERY=KEYSWITCH

 

Vovlo MDI Engines

Fixed MDI low oil pressure warning, it was incorrectly mapped to NMEA 2000 fuel pressure warning.

All Volvo MDI users are highly advised to perform an update.

 

Various Fixes and Improvements

Fixed HOURS_OFFSET value truncated when saving YDEGSAVE.TXT file.

Conversion of J1939 PGN 65257 "Fuel Consumption (Liquid)" SPN 182 "Engine Trip Fuel" to PGN 127497 "Trip Fuel Consumption, Engine" (data field "Trip fuel used") was added.

 

Experimental Features

Support of VW Marine CAN bus data was added. You can get RPM, torque, coolant temperature, fuel rate, fuel level, intake temperature and boost pressure data from Volkswagen marine engines. Note that VW Marine CAN bus speed is 500 kbps, so use setting:

	ENGINE_CAN_SPEED=500

along with:

	EDC2=ON

We urge all VW Marine to test this new feature, please, contact our technical support team.

Again, we are very grateful for all users who helped us to improve our gateway and were brave enough to invest a lot of time and effort to debug concrete issues and painstakingly following all our instructions precisely.

The firmware update is version 1.40 and is available for download.

 

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