Sinker’s Ice Fishing House/Shanty – Switch Upgrade

Hi, and welcome back for another Sinker’s Ice House upgrade!

I made some additional improvements to my ice shanty prior to the 2025 ice fishing season and thought I would share them.

My first project this time was to put a master power switch on my radio. It’s a standard automotive radio/CD player unit, but I don’t have the remote for it, so I could never get it to shut off completely resulting in a slow drain on the batteries. Not a huge problem when I would bring my shanty home from the lake at the end of every weekend and plug it in, but I wanted to be able to leave it at the lake and save the gas needed to pull my ice shanty down the road without starting the weekend with low batteries.

Anyway, I decided to go with a TE Connectivity illuminated anti-vandal push-button switch (Figure 1).  Why you ask….because it had the blue illumination I love and I had a sample available!

Figure 1: TE Connectivity anti-vandal push-button switch installed to cut power to the radio when not in use. (Image source: Jerome Bakke, DigiKey Electronics)

Yea….it was overkill, but it looks great! As a bonus, when I leave my radio on for some background noise to sleep by, it makes a great night light! This was a very nice sturdy switch that I would recommend to anyone that has an application where they need a tough and reliable sealed pushbutton switch. This particular one is from the AV22 series from TE. TE Connectivity has several different options and sizes to choose from in their AV family.

Also in the radio panel, there was a charging dock that had a cigarette lighter receptacle and a double USB-A receptacles.   It too was always powered and it had a small LED light that was always on. I had a SPDT MTA Green Series toggle switch handy, so I used that to cut the power to the charge receptacle (Figure 2). Another constant drain on my batteries under control!

Figure 2: The MTA Green Series toggle switch from TE Connectivity under the charging dock is used to disconnect power when it is not in use. (Image source: Jerome Bakke, DigiKey Electronics)

And while I was at it, I had found an old panel mount voltmeter in my stash of goodies, so decided it would be a good way to keep tabs on my battery status. In keeping with minimizing battery drain, I decided another toggle switch would suffice. However, I wanted the option of spot checking the battery voltage and for monitoring it for a length of time to see how much my RV forced air furnace or my inverter was draining the batteries. So I found this Gemini A Series SPDT toggle switch (Figure 3, right) from TE Connectivity with an on-off-momentary action. That way I can spot check my voltage level using the momentary on side of the switch, or toggle it to the on side if I want to keep watch on it without standing there holding the switch.

Figure 3: The Gemini A Series on-off-momentary action switch (right) is used to energize a voltmeter to monitor battery energy usage. (Image source: Jerome Bakke, DigiKey Electronics)

Like my first blog on the LED upgrade, did I have to do this??? No. I could have gotten along with $0.99 cent light switches from Menards or Lowes, but that would have looked pretty bulky and not nearly as cool…..and cool maters! Especially when Grandpa has his special fishing buddy along (Figure 4)!

Figure 4: Grandpa and his fishing buddy showing off a fish caught in the “cool” fishing house. (Image source: Jerome Bakke, DigiKey Electronics)

The next time you need a switch, check out the selection of TE Connectivity switches that are stocked at DigiKey.

Until my next upgrade…..

Sincerely,

Sinker Bakke