I have bought a Tom Tom Rider 410 and am looking to wire in a a power supply. Is it best to wire it in to the ignition or just go straight from the battery? I know going off the ignition will be better but a harder job to do and from the battery it will be a piece of piss to do. I wont be leaving the sat nav on the bike when not in use so no issues with battery drain however there is no inline fuse with the supplied wires.
It drained my battery when I connected it straight to the battery ! Unfortunately you should connect it to the ignition.
I've run mine through a dc plug for years. The dc plug is/was from my Gerbing heated gear. I adapted my Optimate to dc plug so I had the option of charging the bike whilst in the garage, fitted a dc plug to my gps so when I'm touring I've got gps ( last year I changed it to power a powered tank bag ). Get off the bike, disconnect the dc plug. Never had any problems.
I wired mine to the headlights in the fuse box. One wire to the battery, and the other to fuse box - I have done this on other bikes, and learnt the trick from Youtube somewhere along the way. For me it works fine, and no interest in changing to another power source really.
I wired my Garmin to the battery when I got it 2 years ago. Has been totally fine. I always remove it when I am away from the bike as I don't want it stolen. I wired my datatool heated grips straight to the battery and no problems there either.
Surely it cant draw enough power to drain a battery? Was the batterey past its best to start with? I'm only putting a power supply to mine to extend the 6 hr battery life as I will be riding 10 hour days when i go to Italy in June.
Where are you getting the 6hr battery life from? If it's from the sales blurb, beware. I bought a Garmin 2790 a few years back. The blurb said it had a 4hr battery life but when I used out of the cradle it lasted 30 mins max. When I contacted Garmin they said it was tested to the industry specifications, which meant it was switched on, screen on lowest setting, do not move it so the system doesn't have to do anything and it'll last 4hours. Great!
6 Hrs is what they say it will do so was just going off that. I did drive up to Scotland a few weeks back to test how good it was and it did 3.5 hrs no probs without the power lead.
I suggest that you wire it up to the battery like I did - dead easy, no cutting any wires. Lots of peace of mind as you know that your satnav isn't going to die just as you're trying to find your hotel at the end of a long days riding somewhere abroad. That's worth a lot to me!
1. The battery was new. 2. I had the same problem when I installed the Oxford Sports Heated Grips. They drained my battery as well as the TomTom connection. I wired the Heated Grips to the Ignition and had no more problems.
Wired the Sat Nav power supply stright to the battery yesterday and I also put in a USB power supply under the tail unit whilst I was doing it. Not worried about either draining the battery as they will only ever be used when the bike is running and nothing will be left on the bike the the ignition turned off. Both have inline fuses so should be quite safe should somthing go wrong with the units. Now i just need to get out and plan a few routes and see how the Sat Nav compares on the bike to when I tried it in the car.
Use an Optimate USB Power supply wired direct to Batt. They have in-built electronics to switch the connection off if the Batt gets too low. The Garmin on mine has this feature built in to its quick fit cradle
Which Garmin do you have? I've got the zumo 590lm and I'm now having the well documented battery issue with it. I phoned Garmin customer services today and got a very Honda abs like response of " battery issue, what battery issue, it's the first we've heard of it". This despite loads of people having their batteries or complete units replaced.
I also have a 590LM however it's always mounted on the Quickfit cradle so never runs on battery power alone.
