Remote controlling Diesel Eberspacher or Webasto

[nfluester]

Not sure if anyone has covered this already but with the limited use we got out of our boat in lockdown we wanted to extend our season but needed to be able to remote control our diesel heater on our boat so it's warm when we get down however we have an old Eberspaecher D4 heater that doesn't have support the new Easy start web controllers. I got hold of a cheap used nest thermostat of ebay and managed to wire it up on 12v to make it work. here is the video if anyone's interested on adding it to your own boat ?

 

[Sticky Fingers]

That's cool. Presumably this replaces the heater controller. Mine's a Webasto... do you know if you could control the fan speed and off timer as well?

 

[nfluester]

no reason why it wouldn't work with Webasto they have an "immediate heat" line input by the looks of the manual which you would tap into. i have added he nest in Parallel to the factory Eberspacher controller so we can still use that if we need to.

the nest is not going to be able to do anything clever like fan speed its literally going to tell the unit to heat either via a schedule u program, or manual tuning the thermostat ring up / using the mobile app or telling it to turn off when the thermostat temperature is met however you can still use the units controller to override if you want to.

hope this helps

 

[Sticky Fingers]

Ah OK. Still a cool thing though. Does it stay reliably connected to the marina wifi, or have you got some other solution to that?

 

[nfluester]

we have a 4g router on board with a Three pre paid sim but no reason why it wouldn't connect to marina wifi, it doesn't need a great deal of bandwidth to work ?

 

[Sticky Fingers]

Ok thanks. The wifi at my marina is a thing of significant unreliability not only needing a login page but frequently timing out and forgetting itself. MiFi a much better bet I think

 

[nfluester]

yeah we have a 24gb pre paid card it's about £42

 

[mrangry]

Thats another thing on the boat to buy list

 

[TernVI]

My LandRover-afflicted friend fitted a Webasto heater controlled by text message many years ago.
I'm not sure what the easiest route to such things is these days, there are SMS relays on ebay for under £20.
I think if you're going to have remote comms with the boat, it might be nice to read back battery voltages and a few other things?

 

[nfluester]

yes as you can see we have a Simarine Battery, temperature and tank monitor that has a wifi option so we can monitor voltage and temps:


however...

unfortunately Simarine don't support the cloud so you either have to join to the simarine as a local wifi hotspot or join the simarine to the boat wifi but then you can only view on board.

my ultimate plan in the coming weeks is to set up a permanent site to site VPN using a cheap lower power Raspberry pi so the boat will literally appear as if it's on our home network more to come on that

 

[mrangry]

I am not fussed about operating the heating remotely, just like it as a controller

 

[wiggy]

Superb video, anyone know if webasto use a similar system with the wiring loom and what wire colour it would be?

 

[lustyd]

yes as you can see we have a Simarine Battery, temperature and tank monitor that has a wifi option so we can monitor voltage and temps:

my ultimate plan in the coming weeks is to set up a permanent site to site VPN using a cheap lower power Raspberry pi so the boat will literally appear as if it's on our home network more to come on that

Have you looked at the RUT240 router? It would probably let you port forward to the simarine but more importantly supports IoT platforms like Azure so you could forward various stats from the boat. I'm planning to add an NMEA connection for mine to get a bunch of info back. Obviously it also supports all kinds of VPN too and runs straight off the 12v circuit (or using PoE up the mast!)

 

[Dino]

Great video. I have a Nest at home and find it is excellent. Planning to service my Eberspacher D4 in the next few weeks so this could be a good upgrade.

 

[Simi]

Any idea if it will run an 8kw 24v planar heater

 

[Dino]

Will this work with the Gen 2 version or I see a few Nest E models advertised on eBay

 

[nfluester]

Any idea if it will run an 8kw 24v planar heater

Yes should do though you will need a 24v to 12v step down to run the nest unit and heat link the on of bit is a relay (switch) so u would need to find which wires the plan ar needs connecting to start or to see voltage on. If u have the model or manual I could probably suss it out

 

[nfluester]

Will this work with the Gen 2 version or I see a few Nest E models advertised on eBay

Sorry I'm not entirely sure. I would guess so but only tested on the latest 3rd gen

 

[Simi]

Just found the planar modem that wasn’t fitted so if fitted can be controlled by my phone looks fairly simple to fit and use

 

[Gumpy]

Where out boat is kept there is no decent wifi or 3/4g signal so a smart thermostat is a non starter.
I have built a system so I can send a txt message to my Eberspacher to turn it on or off and it replies to me when it has.
It uses a gate opener similar to this, only difference is mine has an external aerial.
RTU5024 GSM Gate Opener Relay Switch Remote Control Wireless Door Opener 7E | eBay
Takes 12v and just switches the two control wires to the heater.
Its been working for 8 years and is simple and reliable.