Digital switching

Digital switching

With a decentralized digital PBUS system, power consumers are protected and switched via power modules distributed throughout the yacht. The traditional wiring from control or circuit breakers to individual consumers is no longer necessary. Digital control eliminates the fixed switch-consumer assignment, as the assignment is defined and can be changed at any time by the software. This allows, for example, a consumer to be switched from multiple locations, or a single switch to control multiple consumers without the need for additional wiring. This enables a wide range of new convenience features, such as alarm functions or remote switching of consumers. The ETA Power-Bus nodes are based on CAN bus technology (SAE J 1939), which has been optimized for marine and truck applications and forms the basis for the NMEA 2000 protocol. Each power output is capable of switching, dimming, and combining timer functions with its assigned load. The system also detects short circuits and breaks in the consumer's wiring. Each channel can be individually configured via software. The configuration software runs on any Windows-based PC.

Communication with the ETA PowerBus system is via a USB-CAN adapter. The complete system configuration is permanently stored on each PowerBus node. Should a node ever need to be replaced, it is simply swapped out; the other PowerBus nodes in the system automatically reprogram it, so the system is immediately ready for use again. A key safety feature is the emergency function, which allows the circuit to be manually bypassed by simply resetting the circuit breakers. This ensures that even in the event of a total power failure, the connected devices can be restarted at any time.