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Cables in the Car can get Messy

This is what I used:

A cable from the Garmin GPS to a rj6 telephone jack (wiring 2 (ground),3 (plus 12 volts),4(data in),5(data out).
A cable from a male RS232 (for the serial cable) to RJ6 telephone  (wiring 1 (plus 6 volts), 2(ground), 4(data in),5(data out)
A wire from the Cigarette Lighter to my dispatch box.

This is what the cables look like:

cable_overview.jpg (73539 bytes)

The two cables can be connected directly, without power supply:

cable_phone.JPG (16333 bytes)

or through the box

Now both the Garmin and the Psion 5 receive proper voltages

The Garmin +12 straight from the Car battery (with a fuse) and the Psion 5 through a 6V voltage regulator.

cable_box.jpg (14670 bytes)

The Box look like this:

box_grass.JPG (18666 bytes)

It has two RJ6 phone jacks and a twelve volt input plug. I can also use it using a standard wall transformer for 12 Volt.

Internally it looks like this:

box_grass_open_low.jpg (16104 bytes)

The voltage regulator is a straight forward chip with only two capacitors added:

voltage.jpg (10276 bytes)

 

The connector to the Garmin is tricky to obtain. You can obtain one (Share HardWare) through Larry Berg's Purple Computing page at The Pfranc guys.


Angus Pinkerton is the UK distributor of the connector and his homepage is at http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/angus.pinkerton/