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- - Fitting a USB charger ( https://www.xt660.com/showthread.php?t=24206)

Fitting a USB charger

Hi All

I've ordered a USB charger off eBay and was thinking of mounting it over the weekend. It's the kind you can mount on the handle bar.

As I didn't want it to be on all the time I planned to attach the red wire directly to the battery and attach the black one to the tail light black wire. This way the charger would only work if the ignition was on. In theory anyway.

This did not work as the circuit is closed even when there is no key in the ignition.

Any advise on how or where to hook up the cables to achieve this? I tried to look on the forum but haven't really found an answer.

Thanks
Sis

Someone correct me if this isn't right but...

My bike came with a 12v socket already wired in, and its wired into the headlight circuit. Since the headlight is only on when ignition is on, connecting both +ve and -ve wires into this circuit would acheive what you want. And it shouldn't draw too much power to affect light output.

Alternatively you could wire it up as you already did, and just add a switch to turn power on/off manually

Quote:

Originally Posted by SiskoWarrior (Post 211855)

You need to connect the black (earth) from the USB charger to the battery negative and the red (12V feed) to the supply to the tail light (blue with a red trace). The way you have connected it will be live all the time because the supply to the USB charger is direct off the battery and you have just "shared" the earth with the tail light.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paul5088 (Post 211856)

Someone correct me if this isn't right but...

My bike came with a 12v socket already wired in, and its wired into the headlight circuit. Since the headlight is only on when ignition is on, connecting both +ve and -ve wires into this circuit would achieve what you want. And it shouldn't draw too much power to affect light output.

Alternatively you could wire it up as you already did, and just add a switch to turn power on/off manually

In theory yes, but unless you tap into the feed to the headlight switch, your USB charger will only be live when one or other of dip or main beam is on, but not both if you tap into the headlight wires themselves.

Thanks Pleiades. I'll give it a go and report back. This shouldn't affect the tail light brightness too negatively I assume?