Replaced all the rocker switches at the helm with backlit switches

[MilesPrower]

The majority of my boating trips involve running out before sunrise or coming back after sunset. I have two boats, and I got tired of trying to remember the layout of the switches at the helm of each of my boats. On my 255 FSH, the switch labels were impossible to read at night without turning on a light. The standard Map Light, even in red mode, was too bright and caused a dangerous reflection on the windscreen. Therefore, I decided to swap out all of the FSH's switches with backlit dual-lamp switches that I purchased from New Wire Marine. Now, when I flip on the Nav lights, all of the switch backlights turn on, which allows me to positively identify the switches without ruining my night vision. Enabling any single switch turns on its second "on-indicator" lamp at the bottom of its rocker, so I can easily discern at a glance which systems are on or off.


My (very dirty) helm, before I replaced the original Contura V switches:




My (slightly cleaner) helm, right before sunset, with new backlit Contura V switches and rockers from New Wire Marine:




During and after sunset:




The sunset, as rainclouds were slowly rolling out, was gorgeous:




Navigating a tight channel on my moonless run back:




To achieve the backlighting, I bought dual-lamp Contura V replacements for every switch (including the No Wake / Cruise momentary-toggle and Blower rocker switches that aren't visible in the photos), except for the Nav/Anchor and Horn switches. For the Horn switch, I just repurposed its original "on-indicator" lamp to a backlight. The Nav/Anchor light was already a dual-lamp, and it didn't really need a separate backlight. Most of the replacement rocker covers come from one of the standard cover kits from New Wire Marine, but a few of them (like the Trolling Motor and No Wake ones) are custom covers.

To supply power to the backlight and on-indicator lamps, I bought a pack of crimp connectors that I wired and inserted into the original quick-release connector housings. A few of the connector housings I had to fully replace, because their replacement switches had an alternate pin layout, but I had no problem sourcing the crimp connectors and housings from Mouser. If you have an appropriate crimp tool and a pin remover, wiring and replacing the connector housings is dead simple.

Pulling the old switches, re-pinning the connector housings, and mounting the new switches took me less than 2 hours. With that said, researching and purchasing all of the parts required for the project took me many more hours. As with most projects that utilize modular subcomponents, a good deal of nomenclature and part-number deciphering is required (PDF). In particular, my Trolling Motor switch, which operates a remote high-current solenoid connected to the TM battery bank, required careful research. The TM switch's backlight lamp is powered in the same manner as all of the other switches, but its on-indicator lamp is powered separately from the TM battery bank via the remote solenoid — while the grounds for the two lamps remain separate.

I also added foam gaskets under each switch. Without gaskets, the original switches leaked a good deal of water into the helm closet whenever I rinsed the helm.

 

[MilesPrower]

I forgot to mention that I chose switches with regular incandescent lamps — not LEDs. I was certain that I would be dimming the backlights, and I didn't want to risk RF noise from a PWM LED dimmer affecting all of the electronics in my helm locker. I'm dimming the incandescent lamps with a simple high-power resistor. I can't remember the exact value I ended up choosing, but it's somewhere in the 6-10 Ω range.

Also, in that last photo, all of my screens and backlights look super bright. They're actually quite dim — at their dimmest settings. My phone's camera (Pixel 9 Pro) is greatly amplifying the available light.

On a tangential topic — the Connext screen is way too bright, even at its dimmest setting. When I mounted the NSS12 evo3S above the Connext, I cantilevered the NSS over the Connext so that the Connext is blocked from view when I lean forward.

 

[CastawayRK]

Nice! I’ve commented before that I wish the switches were backlit from the factory.
Cheers

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

Totally awesome job!

A lot of research went into that project and it turned out great! That was really smart using incandescent bulbs to avoid any RF issues. I don’t know a whole lot about LED technology, but I do know that when dimming them it’s possible to pick up flicker so you may have avoided that issue as well. How did you arrive at 6-10 ohm resistors? Is there a reason you didn’t just use a rotary pot?

New Wire Marine makes great products and are easy to deal with, I replaced a few of my rocker switch toggles with New Wire Marine ones. I replaced my horn toggle with a red one for quick use, and I found that the oem back lit switches are hard to see in daylight sometimes so I changed those toggles out to ones with lens on it.

 

[MilesPrower]

Nice! I’ve commented before that I wish the switches were backlit from the factory.
Cheers

Thanks @CastawayRK — if you decide to do the same, the majority of the switches are:

V1D1-G66B

With the exceptions being:

VAD1-G66B Blower
VAD2-U66B Trolling Motor (separate grounds)
VLD1-A60B No Wake / Cruise

And as I mentioned, I kept the original switches for Horn and Nav/Anchor Lights, but I did replace their covers with new ones.

I'll have to dig through my receipts to find the part numbers of the connector housings I had to replace. As I mentioned earlier, the majority of the housings remain unchanged, and I only had to crimp and insert new connectors into those housings.

 

[chileanJK]

Nice center console!! good job!

The camera on the upper left is a tablet? how it works? I'm thinking in replacing the big mirror for a screen/camera set up.

 

[MilesPrower]

Totally awesome job!

A lot of research went into that project and it turned out great! That was really smart using incandescent bulbs to avoid any RF issues. I don’t know a whole lot about LED technology, but I do know that when dimming them it’s possible to pick up flicker so you may have avoided that issue as well. How did you arrive at 6-10 ohm resistors? Is there a reason you didn’t just use a rotary pot?

New Wire Marine makes great products and are easy to deal with, I replaced a few of my rocker switch toggles with New Wire Marine ones. I replaced my horn toggle with a red one for quick use, and I found that the oem back lit switches are hard to see in daylight sometimes so I changed those toggles out to ones with lens on it.

Thanks @FSH 210 Sport !

I didn't have a high-power pot lying around, but I did have a bunch of high-power resistors that I tried until I arrived at the desired dim level. All of that backlighting pulls something like 250 mA. So I needed a 5+ Watt resistor (0.25 × 14.1 = 3.5). A "standard" resistor is rated for 1/4 Watt. I could've crimped on one standard resistor at each and every switch, but that would've taken too much time. A single high-power resistor feeding all of the backlights was the easiest solution.

BTW, I adhered the resistor (which is a big heatsink) to the steering rack using thermal tape. It stays nice and cool, because the rack is thermally coupled to the water via steering cables. (Of course, that's mostly an exaggeration. I seriously doubt those cables are doing much in terms of transferring heat to the water.)

And the red horn switch... Same! I kept the original switch, but I put a red switch cover on it like you did. (I also rewired it so that its single lamp is now a backlight. I don't need an on-indicator for it when I can hear the horn )

And yeah, PWM dimmers, by design, cause flicker, usually at a high frequency that can't be perceived by the human eye. But if the PWM coupled to the LEDs results in any subharmonic distortion (or if you have two PWMs interfering with each other at slightly different frequencies or duty cycles), you'll see the lower-frequency flicker that results from intermodulation.

In my case, I often have 6 GPS receivers at the helm (2 MFDs, the Cruise Assist system, the auto trim controller, a satellite communicator, and my phone). And maybe the Connext has a GPS receiver in it too. Plus three transducer terminations. So I didn't want to risk any more high-frequency interference. (My hardtop has 3 more GPS receivers in the GPS compass for the Simrad network, the GPS compass for the Class B+ AIS transceiver, and a Samsung tablet for my night-vision camera. Plus boat Wi-Fi.) That actually sounds completely nuts. Nerd alert to the max.

 

[MilesPrower]

Nice center console!! good job!

The camera on the upper left is a tablet? how it works? I'm thinking in replacing the big mirror for a screen/camera set up.

It's a waterproof Samsung Tab Active5 Pro connected to a Sionyx Nightwave night-vision camera. You can see the Sionyx camera on the hardtop in the second-to-last photo of the first post. The app I use is nExt Camera. It's the only camera app that works reliably and has zero ads or annoyances. The developer of the app is very responsive — they answer emails within hours.

I own two Sionyx Nightwave cameras (plus a handheld Sionyx for hunting) as well as an expensive-ass Black Oak LED Nitron XD. The second Sionyx and the Black Oak are mounted on my other boat. I posted a side-by-side comparison video of the much-cheaper Sionyx vs. the Black Oak on THT. As you can imagine, the grumps at THT got all spitty over it. I have to admit, I love soft-trolling the THT grumps.

The Samsung Tab is on a key-lockable RAM Mount, and because its the 5G version, I can run it as a hotspot to give the whole boat internet access, among other uses. I carry the Samsung between boats.

To the right of the Samsung is a second RAM Mount. This one is dual-purpose. I use it for a satellite communicator when I'm fishing the continental-shelf dropoff, 20 miles offshore, which is out of cell-phone range. For wakeboarding inshore, I mount a big mirror on it.

I have a thick HDPE plate bolted to the bottom of the hardtop frame for those RAM Mounts (plus whatever other farkles I might want to add in the future). I replaced the original bolts that hold the hardtop to the frame — using longer bolts that go through that HDPE plate, plus through the base of a buttress inside of the hardtop that I fashioned out of HDPE and stainless-steel. The buttress mechanically couples the radar tower to the frame. Without the buttress, the radar would've wobbled enough to affect its imaging in anything but glass-smooth water. With my radar mounted solidly, the radar can image a swimmer in the water, even when the swimmer is next to a shoreline. It can also image a pelican gliding above the water a mile away. Seriously — these are not exaggerations.

Speaking of pelicans, check out the comparison video starting at the 2:00 minute mark. If you watch it fullscreen in 4K resolution, you can see pelicans on the starboard channel marker. They're flying, diving, and hunting in near-darkness on a moonless night! (A pod of dolphins is also on the marker.) Pelicans clearly have great night-vision, and they know exactly what they're doing. New-moon tides mean lots of baitfish and predator fish following tidal currents through channels. I do most of my inshore fishing at night, and new/full moon nights are by far the best.