# Lowrance HDS12 Gen3



## SemperFi (Mar 10, 2014)

Purchased a Lowrance Hds3 Gen3 best way to wire the unit up. Should run directly from battery to unit or come off terminal block by the fuses to the unit.


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## K gonefishin (May 4, 2004)

Battery direct


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## crappiedude (Mar 12, 2006)

SemperFi said:


> directly from battery to unit


 ...and be sure to use at a minimum of 10 ga stranded wire. Biggest problem people used to have was the wire running to the unit was just too light of a gauge.


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## mosquito walleye (Aug 3, 2012)

I just purchased an HDS 12 gen 2 touch, and have a HDS 7 gen 3 in the dash. I am putting the 12 in the back of the boat to look at while trolling. I bought a 15 foot Ethernet cable to connect the 2 together. My HDS 7 is currently wired to my master power switch along with some other things which makes the connection not work when the master power is off. I seem to like it that way, but does everyone think it would be okay so also attach this HDS 12 to the master Power as well since that already has a wire running to the battery for everything else?? When I rigged a Lowrance to my old boat years ago directly to the battery it seems like I had to always unplug the power cord from the unit or it would drain the whole starting battery even when the unit was not in use and off. Has that ever happened to anyone putting it straight to the battery? Makes me never want to do that again.


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## Popspastime (Apr 1, 2014)

The hardest part of any good installation is access. I like to run a heavy wire direct from the battery to separate single (lighted) switch, then to a multi connection fused power strip under the dash. The ground is not an issue because most times there's a grounding assembly there as well provided by the boat manufacturer. At the end of the day after shutting things down I hit the switch and kill any connections to the helm.
mosquito walleye.. That shouldn't have happened, draining and all. The newer units seem to use a bunch more power to function so I like to hook them to a larger capacity battery and also isolate the connections.


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## SemperFi (Mar 10, 2014)

Called Lowrance the past few days, talked to four different tech's each one told told me different answers. They said use 16, 14, 10, and 18 gauge wire.


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## Popspastime (Apr 1, 2014)

SemperFi said:


> Called Lowrance the past few days, talked to four different tech's each one told told me different answers. They said use 16, 14, 10, and 18 gauge wire.


If you look at the power chord for the unit you'll see the size it's per-wired with and it's very small. You can use 18 gauge wire if your unit is 3 ft from the battery source and that's all that's on the circuit. I'd recommend using a heavier wire, 10 or 12 to the pre-wire with a soldered connection, but you do what you want.


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## man164 (Sep 21, 2014)

The problem you can run into is voltage drop. The heavier gauge wire will have less. 

For any power needs for the unit itself 18 gauge wire is sufficient but.... Voltagd drop = current x resistance.

Running lighter wire may lead to the unit having power peoblems from the drop especially when your battery is starting to run low.

Do it once and buy some 10 gauge marine wire and solder all connections.


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