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Blue Airco gateway (010010028) — Overview
This firmware makes Blue Airco air-conditioning units part of the MUXEN boat.
Each unit has its own controller and its own panel, and it answers a Modbus RTU line: what it is doing, the temperature it reads in the cabin, the temperature it is aiming at, the mode it runs in, the fan speed, and — on the EVO units — the two fault words of its main and drive boards.
The gateway polls up to four units, one per serial port, and republishes each of them as its own MUXEN HVAC device. From the boat's point of view there are up to four air conditioners on the MUXEN bus, each reporting its own cabin temperature, set point, mode and fan speed, and each appearing on the screens under its own instance number.
It commands the unit
This is not a listener. The gateway writes to the machine, and it does so in three different situations:
- On command from the boat. A MUXEN screen can switch a unit on or off and set its target temperature. The gateway turns that into the Modbus write the unit's own controller obeys, exactly as if the button had been pressed on the unit's own panel.
- On a logic signal. A port can be given a logic expression over MUXEN bus signals (
RemoteCmdEqn); every rising edge of that expression toggles the unit on or off. It is empty by default. - On the state of the batteries. The gateway watches the battery park the unit is bound to and switches the unit off by itself whenever that park is overloaded, low, off, or below
MinSocToWorkpercent of charge. This runs continuously and is not something the boat asks for. Read Commissioning before wiring a unit to a park that does not exist on the boat.
Mode (cooling, heating, dehumidify, ventilation, auto) and fan speed are read only. They are reported to the boat, and they are set on the unit's own panel.
Two generations, detected automatically
Two Modbus register maps are supported: the EVO units (SDC…EVO, "Modbus Evo") and the pre-EVO units, called legacy below. Nothing has to be declared: each port probes one map per pass and keeps the one that answers, and it starts probing again if the unit is replaced by one of the other generation.
The two are not equal in what they report. Only the EVO units carry fault words, so only an EVO unit raises alarms on the boat; see Reference — Blue Airco gateway.
What it is not
- It does not replace the unit's controller. The machine keeps running, protecting and stopping itself on its own; the gateway reads and translates.
- It does not commission the air conditioning. Refrigerant, water circuit, sea cocks and the unit's own settings are done on the Blue Airco side.
- It sets no mode and no fan speed.
- It publishes nothing for a port with no unit on it. A port whose machine is switched off simply disappears from the boat's screens; see Common mistakes — Blue Airco gateway.
Identity
| CAN/Modbus | CAN/Serial v2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Product ID | 010010028 | 010010028 |
| Hardware | 990010053 | 990010063 |
| Software ID | 990050010 | 990050010 |
| Version | 5.17 | 6.6 |
| Image | 010010028-MODBUS-app_blue_airco-firmware.srec | 010010028-SERIAL-V2-app_blue_airco-firmware.srec |
CAN/Serial v2 is the production board; CAN/Modbus is no longer built but is still installed on boats.
Limits
| Units per gateway | 4 — one per serial port |
| Units per port | 1 |
| Modbus line | RS-485, 9600 8N1, slave address 1, fixed by the firmware |
| Each port polled every | 500 ms |
| Published every | 1 s per unit |
| Unit considered gone after | 30 s of silence |
| Alarms carried at once | 32 |
Read next
- What you need — what to order and how to wire it
- Commissioning — commissioning, and the first start
- Common mistakes — Blue Airco gateway — what usually goes wrong
- Reference — Blue Airco gateway — what it publishes, parameters, fault codes
- CAN-SERIAL gateways — what is true of every gateway of this family