Adding electronics ?

[babills]

I am adding a hummingbird 597 hd di and a uniden vhf radio to my new to me boat. I am adding a separate battery for this purpose. I have a positive and negative wire going from the battery to a buss bar up front. Can I take the positive and negative from BOTH electronics and put them on the same screw on the buss bar? And if not how should I do it? Thanks

 

[typed by ben]

one possibility is noise from high current draw adjacent to your ff/radio wiring. that could come from a trolling motor power cable or perhaps starter leads but they would need to be adjacent to your ff/radio wiring, keep them farther apart and this effect will be minimized. they can cross each other but not lay next to each other. but that has nothing to do with whether or not you wire them together.

if you make the two devices common, you introduce transducer interference to the radio, heard as clicking through the speaker. this is one reason everybody recommends having a separate battery for your fishfinder

you may luck out and not have any problems. but #2 is the one i rate the highest probability of occurring.

 

[bgeddes]

Can you connect them both to the bus bars and get them to work? Very probable, but not please don't. The negative wires are fine connected all in one place. Good practice is to add a fuse or circuit breaker for each device connected to the positive side. This can be as simple as an inline fuse (and either or both devices may be already equipped) or a complex circuit breaker setup.

A couple bucks buys an inline fuse holder and fuse for each unit and could prevent very bad things while on the water. Start simple and go from there. The wires from the fuse to the bus bar can both go under the same screw.

 

[earl60446]

I frankly don't understand how you could have a pos and neg wire from a battery going to a single buss bar, that is a dead short. Impossible.

You also cannot put neg and pos leads from electronics to the same buss bar and expect them to work, you have reversed the polarity on one of the devices. Use 2 buss bars, one for pos and one for neg, and use fuses for every device.

Tim

 

[babills]

maybe buss bar is not the right term. I have a bar on my boat a wire goes in the bottom screw from the battery. and has a screw right above it for a wire from the device. I am putting positive and negative from the battery n 2 different screws right next to each other but they do not connect, so they don't short. I want to add they pos. from both devices to the hot wire and same with neg.

 

[SumDumGuy]

terminal block, perhaps.

 

[bgeddes]

Babills,

Forget the terminology and semantics, they are irrelevant. The issue is your safety and the longevity of your valuable electronics.

Make sure you have a fuse (or circuit breaker) inline with each device. Without knowing the exact details of the electrical layout of your rig you might also want to protect the wires that run from the battery to whatever the connections are where you plan on adding the GPS and fishfinder. The size of the circuit breaker or fuse should be based on the size of the wire. The idea being if the wire(s) rub through the insulation and come in contact with some they shouldn't the protection device sacrifices itself and doesn't fry something important.

As far as noise and interference from other onboard gear, try it and go from there. If you have a problem, it can be resolved without too much of an ordeal.

I don't live in Michigan anymore, but it will always be home.

 

[babills]

Well I have it all wired up and installed. Thanks for the help. Everything works great going fishing Tuesday for the real test.

 

[SumDumGuy]

Cool! 8)