Making My 'Big' GPS Portable

[JoLin]

I bought a Lowrance HDS-7 about a year ago, and I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't really know how to use it. The instructions are dorky, and I hate having to sit at the helm of the boat to play with it. It occurred to me that if I can get a signal inside my house (the Lowrance has an internal antenna, and the Magellan I use in my car works fine indoors), I should be able to bring it home with me and learn it there.

Lowrance doesn't offer an adapter to do that, so I decided to make my own. I bought a second wiring harness from Lowrance, a universal cigarette lighter 'plug', and a AC to DC wall plug/adapter so I can plug the GPS into the wall at home. Terminating the GPS wiring in a cigarette lighter plug also means I can bring it on any other boat that has a 12V outlet.

Reading the original installation instructions for the GPS made it clear that the only critical connections are the red/black (+ / -) wires, so I just secured all the rest. I used solder joints and heat shrink tube on all the connections. When it was done I took it out to my car, where it fired up and showed me my position in the driveway. So far, so good.

Problem came when I plugged it into the wall using the $2.00 adapter I bought from Amazon. The GPS wouldn't power up. After some head scratching (and with a red face), I realized that I hadn't accounted for the current draw of the GPS. It draws nearly an amp, while the wall adapter was rated at 500 MA (0.5 Amp). Obviously, that thing is made for little stuff like cell phones.

I just ordered a Wagan AC/DC converter. It's another 20 bucks but designed for things like car seat warmers, video CD players and such... 5 amps capacity.

Here's hoping. Anybody else done this?

 

[ssobol]

Re: Making My 'Big' GPS Portable

I have a 12 volt power supply that is designed to replace a car battery for operating some electrical items. It is a Pyramid Regulated power supply. It puts out 12 vdc at 5 amps (7 amps surge). This runs my Garmin 421 nicely. My Garmin has a 3 amp fuse in the cable so it doesn't draw a vast amount of power. I think this power supply runs about 30 bucks.

Lowrance also provides emulators for a lot of their products. This lets you play around with it using a PC as a simulator. The emulators are available for free from their website. For a lot of their products the system operation is pretty much the same for all the units. Even if there is not an emulator for your exact model, an emulator for a similar one will cover most of the features. For instance the HDS-5 works pretty much like the HDS-7 so the HDS-5 emulator will pretty much cover the HDS-7. I found that the basics of the operation of a iFinder H2O is quite similar to the HDS-5.

Lowrance tends to have nested menus. Using the emulator helped me get used to where things are. The compares well to the actual device.

You'll probably have to download the sample maps to go with the emulator.

 

[Alumarine]

Re: Making My 'Big' GPS Portable

I use a portable battery booster pack.
It has a cigarette lighter socket.

 

[JoLin]

Re: Making My 'Big' GPS Portable

ssobol, I'll look around the Lowrance site for the emulators. Thanks for the tip.

My power supply solution should work fine based on what you and marc have said. I also have a 3-amp fuse wired into the power harness. Lowrance supplied it with the harness.

Thanks, guys.