elite 4 HDI

comes with two cords, one is power side other is transducer. on the power side is plug for back of unit with two cables coming out of it....one cable is red/black/yellow for battery, i get that. the other cable i do not it has orange/yellow/green/blue for "NMEA 0183" wiring. what are these used for? communicating/hooking up to other electronics??? just a guess. what do i do with these? fold and electrical tape??? they give u a mile of transducer cable and only a couple feet of power side.

0183 is to communicate to other lowrance products that may be mounted. I just coated it w/ dielectric grease and zip tied it in the hull.

thanks m, what did u do with the yellow on the power side....red to red black to black yellow to ?

I capped yellow off. Some people do not run a fuse when only using a battery. but I installed the provided inline fuse.

I wrapped end of the "NMEA 0183' wires up good with electrical tape, then folded them up and used a zip tie to fasten them up out of the way inside the hull. 


The yellow wire with the power is just hanging free, the power (red &  black) are zip tied to the sailing mast which I also mounted the battery holder to. Didn't take a picture of mine, but here's some pics of the Hobie battery holder installed the same way.



The transducer cable is quite long, I coiled up the excess and neatly zip tied it to a seat scupper.

How are you liking the HDI so far? It looks my FF took a dump so I am going to need a replacement before GS8 this weekend. Feedback would be awesome!

I like it a lot.  I've only had if on fresh water lakes so far, the base map that it comes with only has basic shoreline, which isn't even close to real life, but not a big deal.  The Navonics charts look good for the salt, but they aren't cheap.  I'd suggest getting the HDI "Gold" version, the come with better charts built in.

I got the gold version with the chip, has alot of the lakes I fish, but boy does it sucksome battery. I now carry 2 blue bricks to make it through a whole day of fishing. All in all great unit and easy install on the predator 13 with the lowrance thru scupper mount, but a very large trasducer.

I've got a small 12 volt 7 amp hour battery; so far I've used the fish finder 14 hours on one charge.  I don't know if it uses more power with a chip?

Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to try and over night it today. I have been using a cordless drill battery to power my current FF. I wonder how long a charge will last with that set up.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to try and over night it today. I have been using a cordless drill battery to power my current FF. I wonder how long a charge will last with that set up.

Oh come on Chris, be a real man and fish without a fishfinder! 

Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to try and over night it today. I have been using a cordless drill battery to power my current FF. I wonder how long a charge will last with that set up.

Chris, I use the same batterys in the pictures at the begging of the thread. I have not got to use the Elite enough to track how long the battery charge lasts. I know on my Outback I have the Cuda 350 and the GPS is always on and I have never had any issues with the battery not lasting. I think I had 3 trips on it once with out charging it or should I say forgetting to charge it. Im sure kayak Shed can get it to you in a hurry.

I don't use one for salmon fishing!

I use a 7Ah battery with mine as well, and on Saturday got 10-11 hours before it crapped out.  Granted I haven't played with any of the FF settings, and am still figuring it out, but 3 full days on that battery seems like a lot.  How many hours total?

Also, does anyone else see random vertical lines at times?  I've read that it may be sonar interference (I was fishing with DWB123 and his Elite 4x), but I'm new to FF's.

I use a 7Ah battery with mine as well, and on Saturday got 10-11 hours before it crapped out.  Granted I haven't played with any of the FF settings, and am still figuring it out, but 3 full days on that battery seems like a lot.  How many hours total?

Also, does anyone else see random vertical lines at times?  I've read that it may be sonar interference (I was fishing with DWB123 and his Elite 4x), but I'm new to FF's.

I would say roughly 6 hours each time out. Although this was with my Cuda 350 that does not nearly draw as much as the Elite from what I have been hearing.