down into Kentucky with some people, or I may go alone on the Iron
Butt Saddle Sore 1000. I haven't decided yet. That will probably
happen Friday night around 8pm.
My Tomtom use on the scooter has been restricted to the battery life
of the unit. This is 1-3 hours, and so I needed to get the problem
with my 12 volt auxillary power plug solved so I can use the Tomtom.
Last weekend, I re-wired the plug (something now I doubt I needed to
do). Yesterday I turned the Tomtom on until it was completely dead.
This morning, I got it out and tried to turn it on, and this confirmed
it was completely out of juice. I turned on the switch located under
my seat, I plugged the 12 volt cigarette lighter outlete in, and then
into that I plugged in the charger. This is not a standard Tomtom
charger made by them. It is a universal USB charger that will power
and charge anything that can be charged or powered by USB. Not only
will this allow me to charge my phone (if needed) but also my MP3
Player or anything else that works on USB. The other good thing is I
don't have to rely on Tomtom to have them in stock. You can get these
in Walmart for like $6 or less.
Rewind: The other thing was the cable. I had a USB cable...like ten
of them lying around. They are the standard USB on the PC end, and
the mini USB on the device end. The only problem is that my Aqua-Box
from Ram Mount (which keeps the Tomtom waterproof) can only accomodate
the L-shaped Tomtom cable! I tried snipping away some of the
insulating rubber on the standard USB cable and ended up destroying
the cable. Since I had this dead-mini-end USB and also two dead
Tomtom chargers, I decided to explore and see what they looked like.
Well the standard USB cable had 4 wires, which makes sense because it
is used to transfer data between the device and the PC, but the Tomtom
power cable only had 3 wires. There was an extra green wire. I cut
it short, stripped all the wires of same color and wired them
together. I plugged it into my PC, and the Tomtom and the green
charging/power light came on. This did NOT trip the device
recognition feature on my PC. I thought this should work ok. I
soldered the ends, insulated with liquid tape to prevent them from
touching, and then I wrapped the whole thing in standard black
electrical tape. I tested using the outlet in my car, it it seemed to
light up, charge, and work. So far so good!
Back to this morning: I plugged in the Tomtom XL*S and push the power
button. IT'S ALIVE!!!!! I rode to work with it on, and it stayed
active the whole time. It also showed about a 1/4 charge when I got
to work. Hopefully this solves my problem, but I might carry a spare
USB universal charger...
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