I'm mounting my GPS on my bike (TE610), and I am thinking of hooking the power cord to the wires that go to the light bulb that is in the headlamp housing. The bulb is 12 volts, and is turned on and off with the ignition, which would be perfect for my GPS. I'm just nervous that it might cause problems if I add my GPS to the circuit. Does anyone know of any reason I shouldn't tap into that circuit?
There's a connector that looks like a cigarette lighter socket (saw one at George's shop). It should work the same way that it does in your car, if you have a GPS that can use 12 VDC. Anyway, you'd just hook the socket to the battery and then plug in your auto 12 VDC connector for the GPS. TE's have abundant power in their stators, plenty for these GPS so I'd think you could wire it in at a switch also. Headlight doesn't work off battery power but parking light does. IIRC when we talked about it that straight battery connection was good and the least trouble. Looks like this....
What Glangston posted is cool for accessories, but if you're going to be offroad much, the bumps will make you lose connection. On my GPS, that means it'll go into shutdown mode, which is bad. Running on batteries will do the same thing, lose connection. I bought a hardwire kit from cycoactive (link), and it never failed. I bought the first one on the page, because I have a Garmin 60 series, but there are other options there. Even if you don't have a garmin, you can make a connection with a couple of their parts, and by cutting the plug end of your charging cable off. I wouldn't want my GPS to turn off with the key, it creates a bunch of separate tracks when you do that. Just remember to turn it off at the end of a riding day. It won't kill your battery to let the GPS stay on during stops. Even if you want it off at every stop, you can still just turn the GPS off.
I agree with Beedub. I have mine hardwired direct to the battery, so every time I shut my bike off (or kill it) I don't have to restart my GPS and have a bunch of broken tracks. I leave it on until I am done riding for the day, it doesn't use much juice. Ken
On all my bikes I locate a Battery Tender connector near the handle bar clamp. I then use 2 pin rubber automotive connector to power accessories. I have made a 3way and 4way splitter that I can plug in if I need to power more stuff. I also use it to connect the Battery Tender. I just used the Standard Battery Tender cable with some 16ga zip cord spliced on for the extended length. To power my Garmin 60, I purchased a spare external power cable with bare wires, cut it about 6" long and spliced on my 2 pin rubber connector.
I knew someone would ask after I noticed it in the picture. I can't remember; it either powers the heated hand grips or the anti-gravity field.
FWIW, I rigged my cell phone/ whatever other 12v to power from that. I really sort of wish I'd wired them always hot to so I could charge the phone w/o the engine running and w/o the tail light being on. That said, no problems just cutting that stupid light off.
