DIGITAL YACHT: BilgeIQ has been awarded the DAME Award at the Metstrade show!
Digital Yacht BilgeIQ
Bilge IQ integrates seamlessly between your bilge pump, float switch, and power supply to provide comprehensive monitoring. It tracks pump activations, runtime, voltage, and amperage, allowing users to configure custom alerts for any of these parameters.
The inclusion of current (amperage) monitoring is particularly valuable, though surprisingly rare in the industry. In many ways, current tells the real story of the pump’s health:
- Low Current: The pump is likely freewheeling (running dry).
- Rated Current: The pump is moving water effectively.
- High Current: The pump is likely jammed with debris or suffering from a locked rotor.
The Bilge IQ is housed in a rugged, watertight enclosure designed to centralize your bilge system connections. The device features a logical port layout for easy installation:
Bottom: NMEA 2000 network connection.
Left: Inbound power input.
Right: Outbound leads to the pump.
NMEA 2000 Alerting Capabilities Bilge IQ leverages standard NMEA 2000 alerting PGNs to generate onboard notifications. As Digital Yacht has noted, industry support for these standard alerts is currently inconsistent, though slowly improving.
Chart Plotter Compatibility Because implementation varies by manufacturer, your experience will depend on your display hardware:
- Supported: Digital Yacht equipment, Garmin, Raymarine, and Maretron displays.
- Limited/No Support: Currently, Navico (Simrad/Lowrance/B&G) and Furuno platforms generally lack full support for these specific alert types.
Alert Conditions The device broadcasts alerts for the following seven statuses:
- Operational: Pump Running
- High Water: Water at 2nd float switch level
- Fault – Dry Run: Pump running dry
- Fault – Switch: Float switch failure (or switch on but pump not running)
- Fault – Electrical: High Current or Low Voltage
At this year’s ceremony, Digital Yacht were honored to receive the Best New Product Award for the Bilge IQ, a Bilge Pump Controller with NMEA 2000 and Wireless interfaces.
