TomTom Wired GPS question

jsheldon · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 25, 2004 Posts: 5

Hi guys !

Could someone please advise me re: the following.
I use the wired TomTom GPS receiver in the car, and notice that when I turn the engine off, the cigarette lighter adapter stays on, thus keeping the GPS position alive. This is great as when I then plug my Ipaq back in, I am immediately ready to go. Question is : For how long is this safe to do before my car battery will die !! It is a bit of a pain to keep remembering to pull the power lead out of the lighter socket each time.

Tks

Jonny

Robin2 · Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 1:33 pm Post subject:

The gps receiver will only take a few milliamps from the battery........it would take many months to flatten it!
Robin

The_Pilgrim · Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 2:07 pm Post subject:

yep robin2 is correct a decent car battery is about 80 ampere/hours so if the reciever dragged 0.5 amps it will last 160 hours.

The pilgrim

MrT · Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 2:48 pm Post subject:

Oddly enough I have just been looking at similar power consumption and I measured that the BT+cradle, iPAQ, Active Car Mount, Geodesy plus a re-radiating antenna together draw 700mA which would last for about 4 days assuming the car used no power for anything else such as immobilisers.

Naturally I would not leave all this gear unattended and on in a car for 4 days. However recently whilst permanently wiring this lot in, which took a weekend, I managed to virtually flatten my car battery a lot of which was due to the radio and courtesy lights.

The TomTom cradle draws around 20mA with no BT receiver in it when connected to power.

Morris · Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2004 4:22 pm Post subject: hard wire the power supply to aux

My car is a Peugeot 406, the cigatette lighter is between the handbrake and the gear lever, not good as you can imagine.

Along with the cable to draw power from the cigarette lighter ther was also a cable that could be hard wired (this is in the TomTom car kit).

I just went tyo my local car radio dealer and he wired it into the aux circuit on my car, the power stays on for a few minutes after removing the ignition key then switches off. well worth looking at I think.

Morris

Grzzzzzz Mr. Green

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