Indicator Light Panel for AT 34

I’ve always admired those ‘custom’ electrical panels on the high-end Oriental trawlers (Selene etc), so I decided to make one.

I ‘ripped-off’ one of the line-drawings from the Tomco website. (er….is that exactly legal ??), and resized it on a photocopier.

I got a local trophy-shop to reproduce it in engraved black plastic. I think it cost around $35 for the scan/artwork setup, and around $18 for the plate.

If you want to make one of these, the shop is Contra Costa Awards & Embroidery in Concord CA (925-687-9171), and the design is already stored under my name.

I had them drill the holes for the LED light indicators.  We have 4 Red LEDs - one for each of our bilge pumps (I added one in the engine room, but that’s a story for another day), a white LED for the anchor light, and a segmented Red/Green LED for the navigation lights. The red LEDs are by made by Blue Seas (purchased from West Marine), and the other 2 were purchased from:

www.navlightindicators.com

I specified the panel as 6 ½ X 4 ¼ inches, with 11/64 in holes drilled.

The LEDs are wired to a terminal strip behind the panel, with a common negative wire, then wired via CAT-5 8-strand computer cable down to the dashboard. The wires are then connected to the terminal strip behind the engine instrument panel.

The anchor light and nav light wires go to terminals marked accordingly, The bilge pump wires go to the ‘manual’ terminal for each of the pumps, which will light-up the LED whenever that pump runs (either manually or if the float switch activates).

And that’s it: total cost probably less than $50 (now the artwork is done) and about 4 hrs work.

Looks cool, reminds me to turn-off the darn anchor light in the morning, and tells me if a bilge pump runs.

Jeremy Bell.   AT34- 48 “Tardis”