Actisense EMU-1 Engine converter analog to Digital


Have you gotten the boat out at all this Spring yet since getting in the 3rd EMU-1? Wanted to see how they all perform together.

I’m working on getting a single EMU-1 configured for my Center Console and saw what you’ve been doing and wanted to reach out. I’ve been in contact with them and they fixed my issues so far by having me roll back my firmware.

You may also know my fathers business as he is on the island often working since he is a diesel mechanic. East Coast Diesel Services. Our boat is down in Fenwick, DE.
 
Have you gotten the boat out at all this Spring yet since getting in the 3rd EMU-1? Wanted to see how they all perform together.

I’m working on getting a single EMU-1 configured for my Center Console and saw what you’ve been doing and wanted to reach out. I’ve been in contact with them and they fixed my issues so far by having me roll back my firmware.

You may also know my fathers business as he is on the island often working since he is a diesel mechanic. East Coast Diesel Services. Our boat is down in Fenwick, DE.

That's funny, I have your fathers bis. card on the dash of my truck. Just spoke with him two weeks ago.

No I have not gotten to the trial run yet. I have been servicing the engines and waiting for my swim platform to arrive, after that I will test run everything outside of the slip.

On a side note, Actisense is on the 2nd beta release candidate and have fixed a number of items that were not working correctly. So my testing will be of that firmware and not the version you currently have.
 
Did you run new wire to each sensor? If so what is required and where is a good source to purchase it?
 
That's funny, I have your fathers bis. card on the dash of my truck. Just spoke with him two weeks ago.

No I have not gotten to the trial run yet. I have been servicing the engines and waiting for my swim platform to arrive, after that I will test run everything outside of the slip.

On a side note, Actisense is on the 2nd beta release candidate and have fixed a number of items that were not working correctly. So my testing will be of that firmware and not the version you currently have.
That is funny! Let us know how it goes once you get out on the water, looking to see how well the three work together.

Do you have them all displayed on the same unit or do you have multiple different displays?

I'm looking forward to the new software, I tried to get on the beta testing to help provide feedback. But they want to keep it small so hopefully it will be soon. A few of my fathers close friends have some older engines and would like to get this which is why we are doing it on our boat first to make sure that it all works out well. So far from rolling back to 0.70 there haven't been any issues except for configuring the gauges you have to upgrade and then downgrade again.
 
Did you run new wire to each sensor? If so what is required and where is a good source to purchase it?

This is my current setup for the EMU-1. The engine harness comes up to the harness bar and then over to the EMU-1. I have to clean up some of the wires but it works at the moment now. Each alarm has their own wire to the buzzer alarm and to the sensor that triggers the alarm. My father understands more on the engine side while I work more on the electronic side of things.
 

Attachments

  • 501C25C7-B658-4C86-A72B-8BF15E1F5699.jpeg
    501C25C7-B658-4C86-A72B-8BF15E1F5699.jpeg
    209.1 KB · Views: 317
  • AA7DE700-10B8-4CF1-A4F9-00F11A9F5838.jpeg
    AA7DE700-10B8-4CF1-A4F9-00F11A9F5838.jpeg
    190.5 KB · Views: 304
Did you run new wire to each sensor? If so what is required and where is a good source to purchase it?

I put in new senders with isolated grounds for temp, temp alarm and oil pres. kept the existing oil alarm. I used 16/6 marine wire, one run for each engine. I also used shared wire for the ground which originates with the EMU-1 and is the ground used for all electronics. So the senders are isolated from the engines grounds. I had purchased the wire a while ago just for this when I was using the Chetco G2 but never used it until now. So not sure where I purchased it.
 
... Do you have them all displayed on the same unit or do you have multiple different displays? ...

I have everything configured and set up for three engines (instances 0, 1 and 2) and all on the NMEA 2000 bus. There are two GMI 20's dedicated for each engine as multi-gauge like the newer rays have. The GMI's power up with the EMU's that are powered off of each engine breaker. So nothing special to do when starting the engines. The generator EMU is powered off of the Fireboy engine safety breaker. I also have two DSM410's that are for a system monitor and generator display. The DSM's power up on their own separate breaker as do the rest of the electronics on another. All of this can be displayed on the Garmin MFD's as well.

EDIT: added helm pic
Zoomed-Dash.jpg
 
Last edited:
Just a follow up on my sea trials. So I have taken a few trips in the past few weeks and haver verified that this setup works great. I almost trust the digital gauges more then my remote electrical ones tied to the same sender (temperature) as the digital seem to match the mechanical ones on the engines perfectly. The tach's are still a little jumpy, but I am still on the beta RC1 firmware release there is a second (RC2) and also a final release that I have not tried out yet. So I am hoping there final release is a bit more stable of a tach reading. But all in all I could not be happier with this setup and their configuration software works perfectly!

I still need to create a temperature curve for the generator as that was not calibrated and doesn't seem to have any canned curves that work right. But that can be done at the dock so should be very straight forward and only a few hours of calculations.

On a side note for the generator, I added a pulse generator circuit I picked up from Amazon for $8 to be used as a tach signal to be able to log generator hours (didn't care about the tach reading as that is not being used). I hooked that up a week or so ago and it seems to work perfectly. So now all engine hours are being logged digitally and readouts can be displayed both system monitors (Maretron DSM 410) as well as temperature, oil pressure and voltage alarms.

I will post back regarding the newer firmware releases and whether that fixes the RPM jumping around. I will also test with and without my clamping circuit mod.
 
Last edited:
Anyone in the Boston, MA area have NGT-1 interface I could buy/rent/borrow?
 
... I will post back regarding the newer firmware releases and whether that fixes the RPM jumping around. I will also test with and without my clamping circuit mod.

So I had the chance to upgrade to the latest firmware and found it to be pretty nice with the exception of the tach signal being a bit bouncy. All of the other parameters were rock solid and am growing to trust this more then the electronic temp gauge. Going to attempt to figure out why the tach signal is bouncy. It's as if the averaging is not working. I might even try a tooth counter or optical sensor to see if that is any better.

Either way I am extremely happy with these EMU-1's and very glad I switched. The only thing left is to plot the generator temp. that is off as I forgot who's sender I used when I replaced it. Might switch to a VDO and use a standard curve.
 
A few places have the ISO version available like Tackledirect. The USB version I'm told should in the US by the end of the month. What's the difference from the USB? I assume it comes with a pigtail instead of the USB. Would I be able to use it?
 
I installed one EMU-1 in the engine room and wired coolant temp & alarm, plus oil pressure & alarm to both engines in parallel with the gauges. The instructions say to mount the EMU-1 close to the gauges when wired in parallel but doesn't say why. Is it just to make the wiring easier or does it affect the performance?
 
A few places have the ISO version available like Tackledirect. The USB version I'm told should in the US by the end of the month. What's the difference from the USB? I assume it comes with a pigtail instead of the USB. Would I be able to use it?

It has a 9 pin din connector instead of a usb connector.
 
I installed one EMU-1 in the engine room and wired coolant temp & alarm, plus oil pressure & alarm to both engines in parallel with the gauges. The instructions say to mount the EMU-1 close to the gauges when wired in parallel but doesn't say why. Is it just to make the wiring easier or does it affect the performance?

The EMU-1 isn't engine room worthy I don't think. It's not waterproof and the heat may affect it over time. JMO.

The reason for close to gauges is so there isn't long leads connecting the two together possibly causing interference and voltage drops which would cause the gauge and the EMU to read differently. Remember the gauge supply's the voltage bias for the sender, and the sender provides the ground potential for the signal. The two together provide a voltage that the EMU reads.

I mounted all three EMU's behind the helm and accessible from behind in galley, made life real easy.
 
Just a mid season follow up, these EMU's have worked out perfectly. So well in fact I don't stare at the temp gauge like I use too. Between the alarms and the digital warnings (in MFD's) I am content with trusting the EMU's now. Makes for a much nicer cruise. So many options for such an old boat.
 
Still working perfectly but I had one annoying thing going on. Every time I started the engines the EMU's would reboot and sometimes lockup. This was a bad situation given I would have to re-start the engine(s) every time this happened. I finally got this fixed and thanks to another thread around here about electronics dying when the engine starts. I started playing around with idea's and this came about and works great, at least so far with limited testing. Will see how the rest of the summer goes.

Removed schematic - being revised as long term it pulsed a bit. I added the GMI20 to the mix and changed the current draw so this now needs to be revised.

I had tried the one farad cap with a diode but that kept everything powered on too long after switching off, it took too long for the cap to drain and then the low voltage alarms would start sounding until it was fully drained. Bad idea for this situation, great for higher current draw applications like MFD's.
 
Last edited:
Cannot figure out what I am doing wrong. Today I wired six gauges and two tach’s to my new EMU-1, added the EMU-1 and a NGX-1 to my NMEA2000 network. I installed drivers on my win 10 laptop and then Actisense Toolkit. Upon starting the engines (cat 3116s) my Garmin 1242xsv let me know it found a new engine sensor and asked me to set max rpm. When I plug the NGX-1 in to my laptop, Toolkit can see my NGX, but does not seem to be able to see my EMU. I set baud rate, etc Frustrating after wiring everything to not be able to load the configuration. The Garmin can see both units when queried. And it is getting info(albeit wrong) from the EMU. Any ideas?
 
@TheBobC I can't get to the boat until this coming week at some point. But you shouldn't have to set the baud rate or anything else except select the com port, from off line to what ever the NGX is on.

The NGX is a new device and needs to be configured to be a NMEA 2000 to PC gateway or a 0183 to 2000 one. I don't use the NGX, I use the NGT, the original usb to nmea 2000 gateway. Use the toolkit to configure the NGX as a PC to N2K gateway. Once that is set correctly thing should work as expected.
 
Thank you @Skybolt, that was indeed the problem. Once I set that correctly, it showed up.

Now I have two issues to address. The boat has Teleflex gauges on her (CAT 3116's) and none of the existing profiles match well with these Teleflex units.(oil pressure and coolant temp) I am trying to decipher the Custom Gauge Manager, but I am unsure what the easiest way to read the current voltage from the gauge is. Please let me know if you are aware of that. Secondly, the Garmin 1242xsv units seem to only displayed RPM's in 50 RPM increments. I would prefer to be more precise. I believe this to be a limitation of the Garmin, as the NMEA Reader shows the exact measured RPM. I am curious if you have any thoughts on that.
 

Forum statistics

Threads
112,948
Messages
1,422,804
Members
60,930
Latest member
Ebrown69
Back
Top