TomTom One

Eric884 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Sep 06, 2007 Posts: 6

I'm thinking about buying the TomTom One, the only problem is its low battery life of two hours. The other problem is that i have a car where the DC adapter is broken, so if i were to drive with that car, i would have to use the TomTom on its battery life. I I'm thinking about using a solar powered USB charger to charge the TomTom while in the car however i thought about it and i came up with some problem scenarios:

1. I know that some electronic appliances ( like my sony ericsson k750i ) can't just charge on any old computer when you plug the USB in, you must install the drivers for it in order to charge. is this also the case with the TomTom's?

2. What is the voltage required? I was thinking about just making my own solar powered USB but I need to know the voltage of the TomTom.

think you guys could help?
Thanks in advance.

mikealder · Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 7:10 am Post subject:

Welcome to the forum, the TomTom requires 5 Volts to power it, the voltage reulator steps down the cars 12 Volts to 5 and most TomTom supplied chargers are capable of outputing 2 Amps.

To be honest by the time you have bought the solar panels and built a Voltage regulator it would be cheaper to get the car ciggy socket fixed properly - Mike

Eric884 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Sep 06, 2007 Posts: 6

I could make the solar panel to be 4.4-4.8 volts for probably at most 15 bux
well, the trouble of making it isnt a problem, it probably takes like an hour to make. But fixing the siggy could be harder

does anyone know about the driver issue?

mikealder · Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2007 6:32 am Post subject:

You don't need anything installed to simply charge the device, just plug it in and it will top up from the socket.
Solar panels must cheap where you are then, for 2A at 5V I can purchase the kit but its over £200 and would cover most of the roof of the car. Also in the UK we don't get much in the way of sunshine so it wouldn't work too well here - Mike

Andy_P · Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2007 1:38 pm Post subject:

As has often been posted before: get an "in-line" cigarette lighter socket on the end of a bit of wire (~£2 from Maplin) and connect it in to any suitably fused 12 feed from the fuse box.
Then plug the normal TomTom charger into that and hide the whole lot behind the dash.

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