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What you need
The gateway
One MUXEN serial gateway running the VE.Direct firmware, product ID 010010002 — either generation. Both have the same four ports and behave the same way; see VE.Direct gateway (010010002) — Overview for the two images.
On the Victron side
| Working Victron equipment | already installed, powered and configured with the Victron tools. The gateway reads a device; it does not set it up |
| Equipment the gateway knows | MPPT solar chargers, battery monitors and shunts, Phoenix inverters, chargers, buck-boost DC/DC converters. The identifiers are listed in Reference — VE.Direct gateway |
| One VE.Direct cable per device | VE.Direct is point to point. Two devices cannot share a port, and one device cannot feed two ports |
If you are unsure whether a device is supported, read its VE.Direct output before ordering anything: the first line of every block is PID, and that value is the only thing the gateway matches on.
Wiring
| Connector | Goes to | Speed |
|---|---|---|
| CAN | the boat's MUXEN bus | 500 kbit/s |
| Ports 1 to 4 | one Victron VE.Direct port each | 19 200 baud, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit — fixed by the firmware |
The serial parameters are the VE.Direct standard and there is no parameter for them. Both directions are used: the Victron device sends its text block continuously, and the gateway sends the on/off command back down the same cable.
The MUXEN bus is an ordinary 120 Ω CAN bus: two wires and a common ground, one 120 Ω termination at each physical end of the bus and nowhere else. The gateway is terminated only if it happens to be at the end of a segment.
The four VE.Direct ports are electrically separate from the MUXEN bus, and separate from each other. A fault on one port takes out one device, not the box.
Which port is which
The ports are numbered 1 to 4 in connector order, and the numbering matters: the first time a device is seen on a port, the MUXEN instance it gets is the port number minus one.
| Port | Instance given on first sight |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0 |
| 2 | 1 |
| 3 | 2 |
| 4 | 3 |
So four MPPTs plugged into ports 1 to 4 come up as solar chargers 0, 1, 2 and 3 with nothing to configure. You can renumber them afterwards — read Common mistakes — VE.Direct gateway first, because renumbering has one trap.
The box's own inputs and outputs
One relay and one analog input, independent of the VE.Direct function. The relay can be driven from the MUXEN bus by a command frame, or by an equation written into Relay1Eqn and evaluated from what passes on the bus. The box's own I/O frame is not published by default (EnGenIo = 0); the relay works either way. See Reference — VE.Direct gateway.