Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

Tac, fuel and voltmeter. Even though I have a GPS, I’d never leave the dock w/o a properly calibrated compass.

I would really like a fuel gauge that actually works? My gauge has never worked since I purchased my toon new!

My Depth Sounder/GPS just quit on me the other day and I will say that I miss it terribly not only for the depth sounding but for water temp, battery, speed as well as time and direction. Lots of useful info provided by one simple and relatively cheap gadget...

For me I do have two criteria one for day light operations and one for night time operations. At night the only gauges I put any value to are my smartphone running a mapping program so that I can see the contours of the shoreline and my GPS with its trail tracker so that I know I'm moving in the right direction toward home. Any all all other gauges mean absolutely nothing and I will cover them so as to not waste my night vision on them.

During the day I use the tach to judge my speed and while my fuel gauge is fairly accurate I use my smartphone to track my fuel use via www.interactio.co which is a very accurate fuel meter that links to my phone via Bluetooth.

Truthfully while I use the trim I'm contemplating removing the gauge as I hardly ever reference it and would be better served with an important gauge such as battery voltage...

I was really surprised mine didn't have an hour meter. I miss that.

ksks wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 24, 2019 7:11 pm

I was really surprised mine didn't have an hour meter. I miss that.

When I realized that Yamaha has no user friendly or economical gauges like Mercury does with Smart Craft and/or Vessel View I purchased a replacement Faria Beede tachometer with an hour meter built in.

ksks wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 24, 2019 7:11 pm

I was really surprised mine didn't have an hour meter. I miss that.

My first post... so trying to catch up with everyone..

I’m not sure what Yamaha you have, but my 2015 F150 Yamaha on my South Bay Tritoon has a “Forest River” main display that shows engine hours in small lettering at the lower/left. If an owner has the “theme” (colors) selected as dark colors it may not display easily for older eyes.

The gauges I have and use on that display are Speed, RPM, TILT, FUEL, and VOLTS. I wish and MISS oil pressure and engine temperature (either water OR oil temp or preferably both. I’d also like to see a cylinder head temperature. I feel instrument-starved as a retarded/retired aviator. LOL)

I have a 2019 Mercury 150 on a Harris.

ksks wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 28, 2019 1:27 pm

I have a 2019 Mercury 150 on a Harris.

My 2017 Sun Tracker with a Mercury 150 doesn't either and I was surprised as well. I'm looking at getting vessel view mobile. It is about 175 on ebay from mercury but they ran a special earlier this year for 150. It has an hour gauge and plenty of other information (I'm not really sure I want to know my MPG )


As for me, I find that I use the tach and the depth gauge more than anything. A fuel gauge is nice if you have an internal tank but I've learned from experience not to trust them until they are proven accurate. I plan to add the hour gauge for maintenance reasons (I go off of hours of use more than dates as I boat year round)

SLTKota wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 01, 2019 5:47 am

ksks wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 28, 2019 1:27 pm

I have a 2019 Mercury 150 on a Harris.

My 2017 Sun Tracker with a Mercury 150 doesn't either and I was surprised as well. I'm looking at getting vessel view mobile. It is about 175 on ebay from mercury but they ran a special earlier this year for 150. It has an hour gauge and plenty of other information (I'm not really sure I want to know my MPG )


As for me, I find that I use the tach and the depth gauge more than anything. A fuel gauge is nice if you have an internal tank but I've learned from experience not to trust them until they are proven accurate. I plan to add the hour gauge for maintenance reasons (I go off of hours of use more than dates as I boat year round)

One of the main reasons I've installed SmartCraft gauges on my all of my previous and current Mercury was to watch fuel consumption as it is all but spot on in accurateness; this was before the Vessel View came into play. Both have a reset-able fuel consumption meter like a trip meter in a car, so you can zero it after filling up and unless your loosing fuel for unknowns reasons its going to tell you spot on how much fuel you have burnt since your last reset/fill so all you need to keep in mind is how big your tank is. I pull up to the pumps and know withing the gallon how much the tank will take.

To which its a shame that Yamaha does not come up with a system similar to Vessel View. I'm currently using a Bluetooth Fuel Meter from Interactio for fuel calculations only. Plus I'm working on putting together a NMEA2K Bluetooth Link on my Yamaha motor that should prove to be as useful as Vessel View, hoping to bring online sometime middle of the month.

teecro wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 01, 2019 7:02 am

To which its a shame that Yamaha does not come up with a system similar to Vessel View. I'm currently using a Bluetooth Fuel Meter from Interactio for fuel calculations only. Plus I'm working on putting together a NMEA2K Bluetooth Link on my Yamaha motor that should prove to be as useful as Vessel View, hoping to bring online sometime middle of the month.

You'd think it would if you can integrate it with whatever you use for a trip meter. Haven't looked into Yamaha's Command Link stuff but it has a lot of stuff displayed on the gauges like fuel consumption and other data.

Just finished connecting the SIMRAD unit that came in my G3 to the Yamaha F200 out back. Marine Surplus had the Garmin NMEA2K starter kit for $50 which has everything you need for connecting the outboard to a NMEA2K compatible unit. if you don't mind cutting the Yamaha wires or otherwise tapping into them. They also had a Yamaha pigtail for $25 with the white female connector on each end so I opted to just cut that in half and splice one of the connectors onto the end of the 15ft drop cable the starter kit came with. Since Yamaha sends out the fuel rate, the trip meter can track gallons used. Will see next weekend how accurate it is. Cool thing was the SIMRAD immediately pulled all the parameters from the Yamaha without any setup needed....all the grayed out gauges on the instrumentation screen immediately popped over to filled in with the first key on.

Here's the parameter list the Yamahas send out if anyone wants it:
http://continuouswave.com/whaler/refere ... ection.pdf

Steiner wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 01, 2019 3:03 pm

You'd think it would if you can integrate it with whatever you use for a trip meter. Haven't looked into Yamaha's Command Link stuff but it has a lot of stuff displayed on the gauges like fuel consumption and other data.

The unit I'm currently using is a stand alone inline fuel flow meter that links via Bluetooth with my phone...

The WiFi unit I'm bringing online later links with the Yamaha and I'm expecting to see RPM, Volts, Oil Pres, Water Temp, Fuel Flow and Eng Hours displayed on my phone screen. I'm unsure but MPH may also come up as I'm told that the WiFi module has a GPS ant built in, we shall see. I know I can expand the network and eventually read the fuel tank too...

teecro wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 02, 2019 3:45 am

Steiner wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 01, 2019 3:03 pm

You'd think it would if you can integrate it with whatever you use for a trip meter. Haven't looked into Yamaha's Command Link stuff but it has a lot of stuff displayed on the gauges like fuel consumption and other data.

The unit I'm currently using is a stand alone inline fuel flow meter that links via Bluetooth with my phone...

The WiFi unit I'm bringing online later links with the Yamaha and I'm expecting to see RPM, Volts, Oil Pres, Water Temp, Fuel Flow and Eng Hours displayed on my phone screen. I'm unsure but MPH may also come up as I'm told that the WiFi module has a GPS ant built in, we shall see. I know I can expand the network and eventually read the fuel tank too...

Yeah, my "you think it would" statement was in relation to your upcoming setup being as useful as Vessel View.

One of the most useful gauges I have on my dash is a clock!

You'd be surprised how many times a day somebody wants to know the time and it's a lot easier to look at the dash instead of pulling out the phone. My current boat shows the time on the GPS Charplotter, but on my previous boat a $5 stick-on battery powered clock from Target worked fine.

Some people laugh, but I've gone back to wearing wristwatches, even though my phone is always with me.

A wrist-watch is a sign of modern decadence.... a quality pocket watch/chronograph is the real ticket. Heh-heh... (wink)

I bought a $5 stick-on gizmo from Pep-boys .... a combination temperature gauge/clock-calendar/compass. It sits atop my windscreen and provides all that useful info. The clock blinks back/and/forth between time and mo/day... while the ambient temp is constantly displayed... and the compass keeps one generally oriented while navigating on the twisted-river named Lake Travis.