Battery & Low Voltage setting on fishfinder question

[nyykk1]

I have a humingbird fishfinder and I can set a low voltage setting, what should I set it to? I have two batteries with a battery switch. I have a starting battery and a dual purpose battery hooked up to a battery switch (1-2-both). When I was out the other day and I had the low voltage set to 10v with the battery switch set to both. With the engine running, I was getting the low voltage warning. Shouldn't the batteries be reading higher than 10v while the engine is running? Are the batteries hooked up correctly and getting charged?

This is how the battery switch is hooked up. The (-) from the motor is hooked up to a powerbar bus. The 2 (-) on each batteries are hooked up to each other and the (-) from the starting battery is hooked up to the powerbar bus along with the (-) from the fuse panel. The (+) from the engine is hooked up to the common on the switch. A (+) from the switch (1) goes to the starting and a (+) from the switch (2) goes to the dual purpose battery.

 

[dingbat]

Re: Battery & Low Voltage setting on fishfinder question

Your batteries are pretty much spent at 12 volts so I'm not sure what good your doing by setting the alarm at 10V.

If your under 10 volts at the FF but everything else is OK you have a wiring problm to the fish finder. A loose or corroded wire or fuse is usally the culprit.

Here is a generic diagram of the dual battery setup. Is this something like you have?

 

[nyykk1]

Re: Battery & Low Voltage setting on fishfinder question

Yes, that is my wiring configuration for my batteries.

I was setting the low voltage setting to the lowest setting without setting of the low voltage alarm, but it eventually went off at 10v.

I took your suggestion and re-wired the fishfinder to the fuse panel and now I have the low voltage set at 12.5v with no alarm, when I set it to 13.0v the alarm goes off. This is w/o the motor running.

Thanks!!