December 3, 2018  Gateways and Router update

Digital switching support in all products, Web Gauges barograph with the support of the Digital Barometer history, extended list of conversions between NMEA 0183 and NMEA 2000, comparison with competitors (table)

Figure 1. Digital switching buttons in Web Gauges

Web Gauges of NMEA 2000 Wi-Fi Gateway, NMEA 0183 Wi-Fi Gateway and NMEA 0183 Wi-Fi Router now have digital switching support for standard NMEA 2000 devices managed by PGN 127501 "Binary Status Report" and PGN 127502 "Switch Bank Control".

As 16 digital switching banks (with instances 0-15) and 16 channels are supported, you can in theory add 256 unique buttons to the Web Gauges data pages. However Web Gauges have four data pages, and the layout contains from one to twelve placeholders, so the actual maximum number of buttons is 64. You can choose an icon from the list and enter your own single or two line text label to the button.

To add new controls, we've changed the behavior of Web Gauges. In order to edit the data pages you will need to turn on the "Edit Mode". To do this click SET, and then set the "Edit Gadgets" setting to "On". To exit the "Edit mode", click on "Exit" at the top of the data page, or click "SET" and set "Edit Gadgets" setting to "Off".

Figure 2. Edit mode is active

The Web Gauges send NMEA 0183 $PCDIN sentence with wrapped NMEA 2000 PGN 127502 to switch the channel's state. If Server #1 of the Gateway is configured as "Read only" (factory setting), the buttons will be able to display the channel state only. To allow the control, you should configure it to work in both directions.

Here is how it works in real life (red text — sent by Web Gauges, green text — the received answer):

	$PCDIN,00EAFF,00000000,00,0DF201*55
	$PCDIN,01F20D,0001900E,BB,0011FFFFFFFFFFFF*2C
	$PCDIN,01F20E,00000000,00,00FCFFFFFFFFFFFF*55
	$PCDIN,01F20D,0009716A,BB,0010FFFFFFFFFFFF*28

The first line is a request to all devices to report the state of the switching bank (sent once when the Web Gauges are loading). We have received only one answer from the NMEA 2000 device with the address 0xBB and bank instance 0, it has four channels, channels 1 and 3 are on, channels 2 and 4 are off (line 2). Web Gauges send the command to turn off channel 1 (user pressed the button, line 3), and the switching bank reports that channel 1 now is off (line 4).

The NMEA 0183 Gateway YDNG-03 and NMEA 2000 USB Gateway now support the $PCDIN messages required for digital switching. The NMEA 0183 Wi-Fi Gateway YDWN-02 and NMEA 0183 Wi-Fi Router has no NMEA 2000 link, so in order to be able to read the state of digital switching devices and control them, they should be connected to the NMEA 2000 network via NMEA 0183 Gateway YDNG-03 (it is important not to forget to remove the DIN sentence from the filters, it is "off" by default).

If you are a software developer, we will be happy to help you with the support of digital switching in your own products. If you are a hardware developer, we can test your devices or help to make them compatible (although they already should be, if you are following the NMEA 2000 standard).

Our own devices for digital switching are on their way and they will be released this week (the Manual is already available), subscribe to our mailing list to find out about it first!

Figure 3. New barographs (48 hours and 10 minutes)

We have also completely re-written the barograph in Web Gauges. Now it displays the history in the interval from 48 hours to 10 minutes (Web Gauges also has a simple text data bar with the actual value only).

The history is downloaded from our Digital Barometer (firmware 1.50 is required) and stored in the browser's local storage. If you have a new Digital Barometer and it was on during the last 48 hours, you'll get graphs in a few seconds after the Web Gauges page is opened. Similarly, as for digital switching, you should configure Server #1 to read-write access, otherwise Web Gauges will not be able to send requests.

Web Gauges save actual atmospheric pressure and historical data received to the browser's local storage. If you have an old Barometer, or barometer from another company, the saved history will contain the data only for the time when Web Gauges were loaded at this device. That is, the pressure graph will not be lost upon page reload or smartphone reboot, but may have gaps if you turn off your smartphone for some time.

In the new updates, we've also fixed some bugs and extended the list of messages converted between NMEA 0183 and NMEA 2000 (it is the same for all our gateways).

UPDATE: the actual version of the table is available here.

* These proprietary sentences are used to transfer raw NMEA 2000 messages over NMEA 0183
** AIS VHF messages supported: YD - 1-5,9,11,18,19,21,24; ActiSense - 1-5,9,18,19,24

In the table above you can find the list of conversions available in our gateways, the gateways of ActiSense and Maretron (data source is available through the link in the header) as well as the list of supported messages in the popular iNavx application.

It looks like our gateways are winning, having the widest range of supported messages. To stay on top of the industry changes we release updates at least quarterly. The plan for the next update is to add DSC/DSE VHF messages support and to fill all the possible gaps in the table above. Subscribe to our mailing list and stay tuned!

Firmware updates for all mentioned products are available in the Downloads section.

Next articles:

• New product: Rudder Angle Adapter YDRA-01 /  November 21, 2018
• Sensors have become smart! /  November 9, 2018
• Meet us at the METS Trade Show /  October 26, 2018

Previous articles:

• New digital switching products /  December 6, 2018
• NMEA certified, MFD compatible /  December 13, 2018
• Merry Christmas and Happy New Year /  December 21, 2018

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