Hardwiring a GPS

I am planning to hardwire my GPS to the bike. The harness I will be using has a small regulator that I plan to hide in the headlight bucket so that Is where I will be pulling my power from. My preference would be that I would not have power until the key was turned on.

My question is what would be the best circuit in the headlight bucket to pull the power from?

Thanks

Rob

 

On older yamahas (ours at least) Brown wires are ignition key switched power wires. Find one tap it Electronics take negligible power so no overloads issues to worry about.

 

I kind of like the idea of a tomtom or similar type GPS with bluetooth. Wear a bluetooth ear piece and keep my eyes on the road.

 

I have the Garmin 265T which has Bluetooth. I am curious about paring it with a BT earpiece as as well.

The way I understand it is that the Garmin appears as an earpiece to your phone so I doubt the Garmin would work as a "source" that could be picked up by another earpiece.....

Does anyone know for sure?

 

Is this the ONLY device you will have on the bike?

If not - then I highly recommend using an automotive relay. I like to use a non-essential circuit like the licence plate light for the relay's trigger.

Using a relay you can power what ever you want, straight from the battery, and it is key switched. I've got a nice fuse box under the seat of my F4.

So with a 12 volt aux line you can put a cigar lighter socket on the bike which you can plug in anything you need to charge. I also have heated grips, heated vest, autocom, FRS charger, GPS, MP3 player... stuff like that.

 

You may be interested in my thread over on Ninja 250 as well...

http://forums.ninja250.org/viewtopic.ph ... 413#749413

 

Don't "Hard Wire" the GPS Unit to the Bike.

There's a +12 V Switched Source inside the Headlight Bucket.
Test any Red Wire with a White Tracer.

Get an auxiliary 12V Extension Cable.
Cut the Cigarette Lighter Plug-in off and Splice it into the Wiring within the Bucket.
Secure the end for Strain Relief and run the Aux wire down and out of the Bucket following the Wiring Harness.

Bring the Plug-in up to where its convenient and anchor it.
Bicycle Stores have an assortment of Clamp-on's to hold things.
Epoxy the Plug-in to a Clamp-on and you get a No-Hassle Power Supply that you can Un-Plug and not need to Wire the device directly to the Bike.
That way ... its portable.
Nobody will steal it.

 

Since you're using a "small regulator" I'm assuming the GPS isn't operated on 12V and you're aware of that.

Just want to point out for anyone reading this thread that most NAV systems don't run on 12V, it's 5.5 or whatever a USB port delivers. The cigarette lighter plug on the cord regulates the voltage down to what the device uses. You can't just cut the plug off and hook up the wires.

 

Yep, the transformer takes the place of the lighter plug. This is the one I plan to buy. http://cgi.ebay.com/12V-Bare-Wire-Cable ... 7C294%3A50

 

Looks interesting but you might want to fuse it, in case of a fault in the cable or adapter. An inline fuse is pretty cheap and would mount in the headlight shell