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Thanks Rick. You're a good guy.
I'll look further into all of this this weekend.
I'll look further into all of this this weekend.
I don't know if the dealer put the plug on to keep the battery up or if it came stock with the bike.
That was dealer installed. I had to spend $4 for another battery harness to use my Battery Tender on the NT as I left the old harness on my trade-in. It is a great little accessory point!I don't know if the dealer put the plug on to keep the battery up or if it came stock with the bike.
Looked but did not find. No socket pigtailed off the battery.I'll have to look for this tomorrow.
I saw an $8 gizmo at Walmart today that was male lighter to female USB adapter. USB being 5V and and system power being 12V there must be a resistor in the hot line or people will fry every 5V device on a 12V system. What is Powerlet using as a step down? The only wire going into my TomTom car GPS is a lighter to USB made by TomTom. I suppose if TomTom makes a proprietary cig lighter to USB adapter that there would be a resister in the lighter side. Maybe the resisters or other step downs for any of these devices are in the devices themselves? Dummy proofing?The difficult thing about putting USB outlets on the bike, is that you need additional electronics to step them down to 5v. One of the UK guys posted a link to a kit, but it was eBay UK and they didn't ship internationally. I could put together my own setup, I know where to find everything I would need, but it's just complicated enough that I haven't bothered. Maybe on the next bike I will do it.
For now, well, Belkin makes a single USB on a small cig lighter adaptor that works out to almost like a flush mount - that's what I have. I only use USB to charge my Sansa MP3 players, and it's no hardship to do them one at a time. If I needed two USBs, the truck stops have larger cig lighter lumps with two USBs on them - just FYI.
I tried charging my phone off USB but it didn't work. (Maybe my next phone will charge from USB - I'll find out soon, because my existing phone didn't take kindly to being laundered, sigh) Same with my netbook - I have a car charger but it's a cig lighter lump, not USB. My GPS might charge from USB - I haven't tried that; I probably should.
Someday I could see all these devices charging from USB, and when it does I'll definitely cobble something to provide it, since it's so much smaller and more elegant than these stupid cig lighter lumps. But for now I still need cig lighter outlets for such things. I have two of them - one in the right fairing pocket and one in the left saddlebag.
And for the plain 12V power items like battery tenders, tire pumps and CB radios, I convert them all to powerlet since I think it's the best choice for 12v stuff. I only have one powerlet outlet, the one on the MCL handlebar clamp, but I don't need to use all those things at once, so one is fine.