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Guest a_moxie

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Guest a_moxie

Howdy all, been quite some time since a post, not sure if even going about it the right way...

My bike is wired with a 4 pin round plug for a Garmin Zumo. Came with the bike and I'm too cheap to drop that kind of cash for a GPS unit. My question to the electrical gods is this: Can I hack apart one of my numerous phone chargers and cut/splice a mini usb into that line for cell phone power? GPS works fine on the phone but chows battery. The extent of my electrical expertise is finding 12 volts come to that line, cell phone charger output is 4.8V -5.1V.

What would I need to do to knock that power down and finish off my home rig. Is it even possible (worth it)? Am i just crazy?

Thoughts are appreciated.

Oh, and "my bike" is an 05 Ducati ST3. It replaced my 04 VFR that was stolen (and never recovered) just before the Rogue Brewery meet in 2006....if anyone remembers that event.

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  • Member Contributer

the plug for the zumo most likely wont be right and will fry or under fry your phone. doing it the right way would be best as VFR wiring aint the best. an easy solution is to buy this http://www.amazon.com/RoadPro-RP-203EC-Extension-Cigarette-Lighter/dp/B000Z0HVHA/ref=pd_sim_auto_1 . Cut off the male end split and wrap the + and - wires. route it where you want it and secure the extra wire. Then using a fused car plug like the one posted above . FYI a fuse block off the battery would be better but this will work. Make sure you identify + from - or you could have problems. if you take the male end apart the fused side is the +SIDE. THIS AGAIN IS NOT THE BEST METHOD JUST ONE THAT IS CHEAP AND RELIABLE. The phone style usb charger has a fuse in it that will work just fine.

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  • Member Contributer

LEt me tell you about my experience with this issue.

Firstly, most of the USB power supplies you can easily get are rated at about 500 mA, (1/2 an Amp). If you look a bit harder you can find ones rated at 1 amp (1,000 mA)

I found a site in the USA that supplied a nice little USB socket about a quarter the size of a matchbox, That just had two wires you connected to the Battery. Unfortunately I Lost all my links so I cannot paste it for you .

Through bitter experience, I have learnt that when using the GPS and Mapping on my Mobile phone, While plugged into the car adapter, The charging current is not enough to meet the demands of the phone while it is doing it's phone thing as well as the mapping downloads and the GPS reception, so eventually the phone would completely discharge. This is no major problem but it is an annoyance thing.

I tried making the screen stay active for shorter and shorter times, but in the end I just gave up. My phone is a HTC Desire, but if you have another phone it may behave differently.

I eventually Purchased a Strike Genius, and initially connected it via my nice little USB power supplies, however it suffered with the same affliction as the phone, It would eventually discharge and stop working, even while plugged in and charging .

I took a look at the power supplied provided with the GPS and saw it was rated at 1.5 Amps. (1,500 mA).

Once I hard wired in the Supplied power supply to a wire that is energised when the bike is running, all my problems went away and the GPS worked fine,

I suppose the moral of the story is that GPS and mapping software is a power intensive thing , so for it to be successful, you need to get a decent power supply that is rated high enough to

keep it happy.

Not sure f that helps or not but it will give you some things to keep in mind

Tom

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I have this set up on all my bikes: first of all they all have "Battery Tender" leads wired to the battery.

then I made something similar to the picture below, but as I found out few retailers sell this including Twisted Throttle. I just plug in phone or GPS charger in it, no need for the ignition to be on, I left the wires extra long so when I'm camping the socket reaches in my tent and I can charge the phone overnight when it rains.

My latest phone HTC G2 can actually sustain the GPS navigation for many hours while streaming Pandora at the same time, only issue is the phone gets really hot in the tank bag and heat kills battery, it stays fully charged while plugged in but then it discharged quickly to the point that I had to replace couple till I figured out what the problem was. Same arrangement, sealed in the clear window of the tank bag, killed my Garmin right at the end of 5 hour trip, it smelled like it was on fire

powerlrt.jpg

Also I use the the lighter adapter with 2 usb ports so I can charge phone and Scala at the same time, when I got new phone instead of spending $29.95 on new car adapter I just use new mini USB cable that came with a phone

IMG_20110501_174435.jpg

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Guest a_moxie

insights appreciated, thanks! Good options provided for future hard-wiring if I decided to go that route.

I've since last night discovered phone screen doesn't need to be on for route tracking (tested theory today). All this time I thought the screen had to be on for Google Tracks to operate, therefore drastically reducing lifespan of battery. Not so.

I just wanted to make sure I could still track my route for review/sending to friends/family later.

Phone is LG Vortex if anyone was curious.

Thanks again for the help.

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