Amazon Switch Panel - HOW TO WIRE INTO YOUR BOAT 

You’re not alone! Looking at wiring under a console or on a switch panel can be super overwhelming, but once you take a step back and see where things are routed and how the switches and breakers work it’s not so bad. Thanks for watching, glad it helped!

Great! Thanks for the feedback and for watching our channel!

I have several different but similar switch panels on stock right now…they all end up wiring in the same or similar. Glad the video helped you out!!

Happy to help. Thanks for watching!

Happy to do so. And thank you for watching and commenting!!

Thanks! I like to have each item on its own power source. Less potential failures!!

Awesome, glad this video was helpful for your Blazer too! Thanks for commenting and sharing that.

If you have a free switch I recommend the rocker, it’s on Amazon too. Nothing wrong with a push button too!

Thanks for the kind words. And thanks for watching!!!

Why thank you!!

After watching your video, it really make me feel so confident to work on my boat. Such a great video!

@@rickyho7700 that’s truly the best feedback I could hope to receive about my channel! Thank you.

Yes, those grounds could be used to tie in accessory grounds. As long as they make it back to the negative post on the battery some way then you're good to go. Not all of these switches have that option though...sometimes you'll even order one and something a little different will show up in the package!

Thanks for watching!! Hopefully by the time you’re tackling your project we’ll have another 50 videos with more helpful tips! Electrical and motor components are intimidating, but we’re trying to break them down so that everyone can tackle them with confidence. Stay tuned!

Thanks for watching! That’s a great question. Do you know if the 4.8 amps split between the two USB plug ins? I’ve definitely seen plenty of 2.5 amp chargers for phones and such. I will see if I can do some research and figure this one out.

I do not. You'd need a momentary up/down toggle switch and to tie into your motor's ignition harness...usually green, blue, and red wires that are run for trim on most motors. Generally, green is down, blue is up, red is power.

You could absolutely do that, and I love that option especially if I need more switches for accessories!

I gonna do that.

Great!! Hope it helps. Best of luck on your project!

Definitely lots of ways to do it and plenty of options for switch panels out there too!! Thanks for watching!

I often do exactly that…make one of the switches power on the backlights, volt meter and accessory plugs

Great! We've got lots of other how-to electrical videos on our channel, so surf around and you'll find more like this. The issue is that the boat manufacturers have made boats with certain railings and designs for only a year or two before changing things. Sometimes they only make a small number of boats with certain railings/seats, so finding a replacement part is impossible. I get asked all the time if I have "a back port corner railing section off a 1998 Manitou"....and unfortunately I have to explain that they're best chance would be to find a fully intact boat for that one part. They're just not out there! We usually sell used railing kits cheap and fast locally, or scrap them if they're in rough shape.

Everyone has their favorite battery switch configurations. I love having the switch panel set up so that when all the switches are off and unlighted then we know there’s not draw from accessories. Quick and easy way to keep from leaving anything turned on.

Even factory switch panels are typically protected at the battery on the positive with a 20 amp breaker or fuse. The better option out there has breakers for each switch to help with that, but you’d still usually see a breaker at the battery for the main power.

100% agree! They usually have a little LED that’s lit up too from the factory. I switch the wiring over on all of them to be powered by a switch!!

I use the last switch in this video to power the chargers and volt meter. I would be hesitant to use one of these switches to carry the load for powering the rest of the switches/accessories, as that could be a lot of power forced to run through one switch if all other accessories were being used simultaneously.

WELL DONE!! You took a simple and cost effective switch panel and made it work far beyond what it was even designed to do. I'm very impressed! And yes, I do usually recommend running this with inline fuses or to a fuse panel. Definitely can't hurt to do so!

Either a bad switch, or you hooked up your lights to the wrong male spade post. I'm assuming you're talking about the accessory lights you hooked to a switch, and not the switch indicator light itself.

Correct, I have some other switch panel videos showing tying in an in-line fuse to each accessory. This was aimed at being a super simple starting point for getting going with these switch panels.

@@tomspontoons wonderful, thank you!

@@lelandglisson3392 happy to help!

I wouldn’t recommend that as the switches aren’t designed to carry that much load individually. I try to keep items that are up to 10 amps draw on each switch with a fuse running out to each accessory.

Just wanted to show it as simple as possible, expecially for folks who might be reusing their boats old electrical harness where there may not be a plug. It can absolutely be wired into the quick plug too.

@@tomspontoons Nice. I'm gonna be using one of these switches in my Silverado for all of the accessory lighting and my amp for the subwoofer, but the hardest part is keeping everything in a way that if I go to trade the truck in or sell it I can return EVERYTHING back to completely stock with no cuts in my factory harness what so ever. I even have my REM hooked up to a toggle so that I didn't have to splice into an accessory wire.

@@averagejoe6150 I haven't tackled something like that on a vehicle before, but I would think that if you supply power to those accessories independent from the truck's harness it should be possible...just like you're creating a completely separate electrical wiring system that shares the single battery for charging/powering purposes.

@tomspontoons That's basically how I'm gonna be running it. I'm installing a second battery here soon with a battery isolation switch and running all accessories off of the second battery, gonna run a bus bar inside an encapsulated mount inside the cab to run everything directly from it, only thing I'm gonna do to the stock system is upgrade to 0 gauge wiring, doing the big 3 as people like to call it. I may end up needing a high output alternator though, we'll see how the stock one handles everything for now.

@@averagejoe6150 Yep, that's what my biggest fear would be...getting enough charging to keep up with that much output. Best of luck with getting it set up and installed!

Yes. On this panel you'd need to either run a ground buss bar connecting your accessory grounds to the buss bar, or piggy back the accessory grounds onto the grounds on each switch. A ground buss bar is probably easier and cleaner.

I haven't attempted to tackle that yet. I would probably run the power through a larger capacity on/off switch with a breaker or fuse and heavier gauge wire (10awg) to the switch panel. I'd also make sure the switches on the panel can handle 26 amps (that must be a serious light bar!). I know they're not super heavy duty switches and a lot of similar panels run a 15 amp breaker at the most. If it's more than one light bar I'd break them into multiple switches to get that amp draw more manageable for each switch.

Every switch panel I've gotten from Amazon has had the power and ground leads off the switch to hook to. You may have received one missing parts. It seems like every time I order a panel from Amazon if there's a good amount of time between orders I end up getting something quite different from the same manufacturer, and even if I use the "order again" option.

I’d usually recommend a fuse for each accessory, and it’s not a bad idea to have a larger (20amp) resettable fuse at the batter too!

@@tomspontoons _ok thanks_

Not sure if this is the EXACT same one as there are a ton of different brands on Amazon, but this is very similar: www.amazon.com/FXC-Waterproof-Aluminum-Vehicles-KG0149-5B/dp/B081KZKGP5/ref=sr_1_4?crid=HUZQFJJHW39P&keywords=marine%2Bswitch%2Bpanel&qid=1693321620&sprefix=marine%2Bswitch%2Bpanel%2Caps%2C127&sr=8-4&th=1

No, this switch panel would need a fuse/breaker panel or inline fuses coming off of each switch.

I run a fuse on each accessory out wire. Usually 5amp. One of these days I’ll do a video tying it into a fuse block too.

@@tomspontoons Fuse should be before not after the switch. These cheap Amazon/eBay/Chinese switch panels are everywhere now and the way they have the wires jumped together on the back is a recipe for disaster, especially when you get up into the larger multi-switch panels (5+ switches). If you have 6x switches pulling up tp 5amp ea and they're all turned on at the same time you are right on the edge of the capability of the wire used ex-factory. Make 2x of those circuits 10amp and you have just taken yourself into the danger zone of melted insulation and fire behind the switch panel.

@@15uzu I can definitely see the reasoning behind that. Luckily Pontoon Stuff has their switch panels back in stock so I can go back to ordering those which are plug and pay and a better all around design!

There should be at least one fuse or breaker with any panel. A fuse block is super easy to use here too. We will show that method in the near future too!

Totally see where you’re coming from!! I’ll always advocate for a higher end fuse panel with fuses built in, but this video is for those folks out there who opt for the less expensive route. There is a resettable fuse near the battery to prevent system issues.

@@tomspontoons do you have a video showing how to wire in circuit protection to the individual switches? I want to use this style panel and rocker panels and wire in the circuit protection. I can’t order any of the rocker panels with circuit protection built in due to space unless I want to spend 200-300 bucks so I need to make my own. Hope that made sense any help appreciated.

@@battlemasterszone1750 Check out this other switch panel video I did. I run inline fuses to each accessory. I will be doing one where we run a fuse block in the near future too so that folks can see the different options! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-bycK-FVW1g8.html

If you use the same thickness wire on your branch circuits, a single inline blade fuse would do it. The downside being that if your radio blew a fuse, you lose running lights and bilge pump - which might not be so great :D

If you go back to 3:55 it shows those posts had a power wire run to them from the factory that I unhooked. They were what lights the bottom of the switches all the time (on or off).

That's a good question, I didn't try that. If I do another of these panels on a boat I'll report back.

Damn. That's a good idea, can't see how that wouldn't work

Heavens no! This is just a quick install video for people to see how the panel works. We have others where we add fuses to each accessory item, etc.

I swear I could do a new video covering these switch panels monthly because of how many times they change the dang things! I'm guessing those yellow and blue wires are just feeding the obnoxious lights that stay on all the time on the bottoms of the switches...which in that case I would just not hook them up at all, or I'd wire them to a main on/off switch to only have on when I want them on. Yes, you can plug the PS harness into the rest as those fuses or breakers will provide a disconnect to the accessories/switches to prevent damage.

@@tomspontoons lol..I know eh! It’s like every vid I watch of you doing up a panel, they all look similar but there’s always a little change they’ve made that throws me for a loop. So that brings me to a couple of questions. You mention the main on/off switch…would that be like your nav light switch? Which would make sense to me as you only have the nav lights on when it’s dark out, but just want to be sure first. And secondly, looking at the back of that panel, those three in-line fuses which are directly behind the usb and 12V chargers and the battery voltage meter, do look as though they’re piggy backed to the rest of the switches . And yes, I did think, like you mentioned, that they protect the appliances wired to those switches, but, and correct me if I’m wrong, those fuses are all 15 amp fuses, which in my way of thinking maybe too large of an amperage for some of the items they control, or am I out to lunch on this? And thirdly and lastly…I hope! I’m running a separate fuse panel inside the console, just below the switch panel, so I can tie in the small (18, 20) gauge wires. I’m piggy backing, from the main pos and neg on the back of the Amazon switch panel, and feeding out to this separate fuse panel. So just wanted to run this by you to make sure I’m on the right track. Been doing a lot of thinking over this and in my mind it makes sense, then again, a lot of stupid things made sense at the time!! 😳😬🙄 Anyways Tom, cheers pal and thanks once again. You’ve been, as always, a wealth of knowledge and I’ld even go as far as to say an inspiration! And I am prolly safe in saying, speaking on behalf of the thousands of us out there who have always wanted to tackle an electrical birds nest or an even bigger undertaking such as overhauling a pontoon, but were gobsmacked as to where to even start, that without your quick responses, your feed back and your great videos, would never have even thought all of this could’ve been possible!! Cheers my friend….

@@davidcobb4527 The Nav Light switch would be the perfect one to tie into as the on/off switch for those bottom lights on the switches. Typically they piggy back (aka daisy chain) power across all of the breakers, then jump power from the breaker to the switch. Another goofy thing about those minor changes to the panels is that some have different amp breakers while some are all 15 amp. I've seen them where they are labeled as 5, 10, and 15 amps. Yes, 15 amps would be high for a couple LEDs, so you could add in a fuse block to offer a lighter amp fuse/breaker for protection. If your panel is all 15 amp breakers then you're going to be best off using a fuse block in between the panel and accessories out. Be careful running 20 gauge to anything that's a significant length of wire. I would stick to 18 and 16 for running power out to lights and accessories. Glad to help! We'll keep trying to make more and more helpful and fun videos. Hoping that the channel continues to grow over the next few years so we can dedicate more time to more in-depth and educational stuff as well as some fun big projects where viewers get to follow along with the details. Right now we just don't have time working on customers' boats to pay the bills to video EVERY detail like I wish we could!

👍🏼 yeah every wire I run is minimum 16G. But some coming out the back of gauges are super small so assume they’re 18 or 20. Great! Thanks again Tom. Take care…prolly be chatting again, I’m sure! 😄👍🏼

Definitely should add a fuse between the switch and the accessories!! This is just the basics of getting the panel to work for most boating applications!

I imagine this panel would work with any 12v DC electrical accessories!!

Haven’t done one of those yet, but should follow similar steps. If I get the chance I’ll definitely show how to wire one in!!

Forgot I made this video a while back: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KJxsb4H5I_0.html&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE

Yellow wire coming from the stereo?

Not trying to let anyone down over here!! I record my videos while working on boats for my customers so I’m showing stuff the way I install it. If it needs mods out of the box I have to make them.

@@tomspontoons ok, fair enough, I understand... I guess I'm the A Hole!

@@johnnhoj15 haha! I appreciate all sorts of constructive criticism…except for name calling!! 🤣