Company page

We have been designing marine electronics since 2014, and since 2015 we have been manufacturing our products under the Yacht Devices brand. We are also proud members of the National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA).

Many great stories begin with curiosity, passion, and inspiration. Ours is no different.

We didn't start this company to make money. We didn't dream of changing the world. In fact, we never imagined it would become a business at all.

Back in 2014, Raymarine chartplotters could display barometric pressure—and every sailor knows that a barometer belongs on board—but there simply wasn't a compact device capable of sending atmospheric pressure data onto an NMEA 2000 network. So we built one. That was the Barometer YDBC-05.

And, almost for company, we also created the Thermometer YDTC-13. (The "13" in its name is no coincidence—it took that many redesigns before this deceptively simple little device finally became the product we were happy to release.)

At first, we thought a standalone thermometer would be of little interest. After all, most Airmar transducers already report water temperature.

Instead, it led us to three important discoveries.

First, we attended our first NMEA Conference in Naples and found ourselves welcomed into an incredibly friendly community. We had the privilege of meeting many of the people whose work had inspired us for years, including Ben Ellison.

Second, our customers greeted our products with warmth and enthusiasm that honestly surprised us.

Third—and perhaps most importantly—they showed us uses we had never imagined.

One customer installed the thermometer inside a livewell so he would know when to replace the water before it became too warm for the fish. Another embedded it in a freezer compartment to cycle the compressor and save precious battery power on a sailing yacht. Our friend Krzysztof from Poland even machined a custom through-hull adapter after his customer's depth transducer lost its temperature sensor. Replacing the entire transducer would have been expensive and impractical, so he found a better solution using our sensor.

In those early years we had very few dealers. That made us focus on something we still believe in today: every product should be simple enough for a technically minded boat owner to install without needing a marine engineer.

That philosophy led to the Engine Gateway YDEG-04 in 2016.

There were already engine gateways on the market, including one from Maretron, but they were physically large, expensive, difficult to configure, and did not properly support our Volvo Penta D2-40F engine. Configuration required proprietary software and dedicated hardware.

We wanted something different.

The YDEG-04 was compact, could be configured simply by editing a text file on a microSD card, and didn't require specialized knowledge. Owners began sending us diagnostic logs recorded by our devices, and together we explored proprietary engine protocols that manufacturers had never documented. Every successful decoder felt like solving another fascinating puzzle.

One story in particular has stayed with us.

A customer named Sascha from Germany owned an engine for which no gateway existed. He managed to capture some communication logs using a homemade adapter and contacted us. We built a prototype adapter specifically for him, and over the following months we exchanged firmware versions and log files. He enthusiastically tested every new release on his boat, sent us fresh recordings, and together we gradually made it work.

That collaboration resulted in the J1708 Engine Gateway in 2017. Since then it has grown to support additional protocols, including J1587 and Cummins KCM II, and it remains a unique product on the market.

We've always treated every new product like a child.

That was true ten years ago, and it's still true today.

We continue to build products that make us proud as engineers, even when we know they may never become commercial bestsellers.

That's how the NMEA Bridge came to life in 2016: a tiny device with its own built-in programming language for processing CAN bus messages in real time.

And in 2024 we introduced the Python Gateway: another compact device that allows users to process marine network data by writing programs in Python.

Compared with engine gateways or Wi-Fi products, these devices will always have a smaller audience. But almost every time someone needs one, it's because they're facing a problem that seemed impossible to solve.

And there is something deeply rewarding about occasionally getting to be the superhero in someone else's story.

We are grateful to be part of the boating community and to work for what we believe is the most appreciative and inspiring audience in the world—people who are just as passionate about the sea as we are.

Many of you have been with us for years. Some have become friends. We hope to continue surprising you with new ideas and new products for many years to come.

And if one day you run into a problem that seems impossible to solve, we hope you'll give us the chance to solve it together.