Commissioning

The gateway reads its identity and its settings when it starts, so every change ends with a restart. Write settings with --reboot.

Everything below is run on the boat's Brain.

1. Wire it and check it lives

CAN to the MUXEN bus, one Frigomar unit per serial channel, power on. The system LED must blink once a second. Anything else: see Common mistakes.

2. Find it on the bus

muxen-uds -i can0 uid --scan

The same box answers five times — once as a generic I/O device (function 17) and once per serial channel as an HVAC device (function 21). All five lines carry the same UID. That is normal.

3. Know what it ships as

Device	Function	Ships as	What it is
HVAC, channel 1	21	instance 0	the unit on serial 1
HVAC, channel 2	21	instance 1	the unit on serial 2
HVAC, channel 3	21	instance 2	the unit on serial 3
HVAC, channel 4	21	instance 3	the unit on serial 4
Generic I/O	17	255 (not addressed)	the box's own relay and analog input

Read that table twice. Unlike most boxes of this family, the four HVAC devices are not delivered unaddressed: a gateway taken out of its box publishes as air conditioners 0, 1, 2 and 3 as soon as it is powered. On a boat with one gateway that is convenient. On a boat with two, the second gateway must be renumbered before it is connected to the MUXEN bus, or eight units answer as four.

4. Number the air conditioners

The HVAC devices are addressed directly, by function and instance — not by UID. Numbering by UID works for the generic I/O only.

One channel at a time, each write rebooting the box:

# channel 1, currently instance 0, becomes air conditioner 4
muxen-uds -i can0 -F 21 -I 0 writeconfig --name InstanceNum --value 4 --reboot

# channel 2, currently instance 1, becomes air conditioner 5
muxen-uds -i can0 -F 21 -I 1 writeconfig --name InstanceNum --value 5 --reboot

Pick the order so that no intermediate step collides: while channel 1 still answers as 0, no other channel may be moved to 0. Instance numbers run 0…62 and must be unique per function across the whole boat.

Do this one box at a time. Two gateways connected together before they are numbered publish four colliding pairs.

5. Number the box's own I/O

This one is done by UID, and --preferred-function-code is not optional: the box answers on two functions and without it the tool does not know which you are numbering.

muxen-uds -i can0 uid --uid <the-box-uid> --instance 9 --preferred-function-code 17
muxen-uds -i can0 -F 17 -I 9 writeconfig --name EnGenIo --value 1 --reboot

Skip this step entirely if the relay and the analog input are unused.

6. Tell each channel the Modbus address of its unit

The gateway does not search the line. Each channel talks to exactly one address, RemoteAddr, which defaults to 1. If the Frigomar panel is left at address 1 — the usual case, since each channel is its own RS-485 line — there is nothing to do.

muxen-uds -i can0 -F 21 -I 4 writeconfig --name RemoteAddr --value 2 --reboot

7. Check the Frigomar side is alive

Power the air conditioners up. Within a few seconds each unit that answers should start publishing:

mosquitto_sub -h 127.0.0.1 -t 'device/21/#' -v

One topic per unit, about once a second:

Topic	What it carries
device/21/<instance>/life	cabin temperature, set point, mode, fan speed, running or not

Silence on one instance means that channel is not getting an answer. The gateway publishes nothing — not zeros, nothing — until the unit replies. Go to Common mistakes — Frigomar gateway.

Check the temperature against the cabin panel before going further. If they disagree, you are looking at the wrong channel.

8. Try a command

With the unit powered and its panel awake:

# switch on, forced
mosquitto_pub -h 127.0.0.1 -t 'device/21/<instance>/command' -m '{"command":0,"parameter":1}'

# switch off, forced
mosquitto_pub -h 127.0.0.1 -t 'device/21/<instance>/command' -m '{"command":0,"parameter":0}'

# set point to 22 °C
mosquitto_pub -h 127.0.0.1 -t 'device/21/<instance>/command' -m '{"command":1,"parameter":22}'

runningMode and tempSetPoint on the life topic must follow within a second or two. Set points outside 18…30 °C are silently ignored.

9. Choose what happens on a flat battery

Both forced commands above put the unit in forced mode: from then on the gateway stops protecting the batteries for that unit, and only the boat decides. Hand it back with:

mosquitto_pub -h 127.0.0.1 -t 'device/21/<instance>/command' -m '{"command":0,"parameter":2}'

In automatic mode the unit is switched off by the gateway whenever the battery park it is bound to reports overload, low battery, no battery at all, or a state of charge below MinSocToWork (default 20 %). It is never switched back on automatically.

Which park it watches is BindToParc. A factory box has no park: at its first start the gateway writes BindToParc = 255, standalone, which reports a permanent healthy battery and therefore never cuts the air conditioning. To get the protection, bind the unit to the park its batteries publish:

muxen-uds -i can0 -F 21 -I 4 writeconfig --name BindToParc --value 0 --reboot
muxen-uds -i can0 -F 21 -I 4 writeconfig --name MinSocToWork --value 30 --reboot

Bind it to a park where no battery publishes and the unit is held off permanently. Check the park number on the batteries before writing it.

10. Optional — a wall switch

Each channel can follow a switch published anywhere on the MUXEN bus. RemoteCmdEqn holds a logic expression; every time it goes from false to true, that unit toggles on/off.

# button 1 of Scheiber switch 4 toggles this unit
muxen-uds -i can0 -F 21 -I 4 writeconfig --name RemoteCmdEqn --value 'SFSP(4,1)' --reboot

The toggle obeys the battery gate: it does nothing while the park is in overload, low battery or below MinSocToWork, and nothing at all in forced mode. The full syntax is in Reference — Frigomar gateway.

11. Check the alarms

Make a unit report something it is unhappy about — an unplugged room sensor is usually enough — and check that an alarm appears on the boat, then clears when the sensor is back. Compare the alarm text with what the cabin panel shows.

12. Keep a copy

muxen-uds -i can0 -F 21 -I 4 readconfig --save-as-csv frigomar-4.csv
muxen-uds -i can0 -F 17 -I 9 readconfig --save-as-csv frigomar-io.csv

One file per channel — the four HVAC devices have separate settings.