Ian_Edwards
Well-Known Member
Hi,
My boat has a EmpirBus which controls most of the electrical equipment on board.
The EmpirBus is a Can Bus system and the installation dates from 2007.
I'd really like to change way in which some of the electronics and lights are switched, for example, the master switch board signals an error when I turn on any of the navigation lights. This started to happen when I change the nav lights from incandescent to LED, the system thinks that the bulbs have failed, because the current drawn by the LEDs is much less than the original incandescents.
I have the software to program the EmpirBus, the original software configuration on a CD, and I have done a lot of programming in the past (C, assembler, fortran Basic etc), although it was many moons ago. I also have a spare Empirbus Node and some input and output boards to practice on.
I need to be able to convert the Can Bus to USB (I'm using Windows 10 on a PC). The Empirbus people sell a converter, but it's very expensive.
So my question is will a relatively cheap Can Bus to USB converter allow me to access to EmpirBus? Or is the expensive interface sold by EmpirBus likely to have firmware built into it to do some kind of conversion?
My boat has a EmpirBus which controls most of the electrical equipment on board.
The EmpirBus is a Can Bus system and the installation dates from 2007.
I'd really like to change way in which some of the electronics and lights are switched, for example, the master switch board signals an error when I turn on any of the navigation lights. This started to happen when I change the nav lights from incandescent to LED, the system thinks that the bulbs have failed, because the current drawn by the LEDs is much less than the original incandescents.
I have the software to program the EmpirBus, the original software configuration on a CD, and I have done a lot of programming in the past (C, assembler, fortran Basic etc), although it was many moons ago. I also have a spare Empirbus Node and some input and output boards to practice on.
I need to be able to convert the Can Bus to USB (I'm using Windows 10 on a PC). The Empirbus people sell a converter, but it's very expensive.
So my question is will a relatively cheap Can Bus to USB converter allow me to access to EmpirBus? Or is the expensive interface sold by EmpirBus likely to have firmware built into it to do some kind of conversion?
