car charger cable + radio antenna

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Hi everybody!

I would like to use my TOPAZ with GPS and TMC in my car, but without charging, the batterylifetime will be very short.

Does anyone know if its possible to get an charging cable witch integrated antenna for cars, or something similar I can modify to do this job.

Maybe I can combine a normal Headset with a charging cable.

thx

I am using this one. Very good to fix and give a good position to view the GPS maps. Besides, recharges battery and has a speaker/mic system so that you don't need to enable the speaker on the phone to receive or make calls.

http://mobile.brando.com.hk/car-hand...c0867d060.html

Haven't found any one with a antenna for either GPS or Cell radio, yet. It seems TD2 won't support external antennas.

Regards,

Roberto.

yeah, i'm looking for such a cable too. but havent found any yet.
cant be so hard to integrate some wire for radio in a charging cable.
i bet a lot of people would like to have it.

update: now i found two accessories which might help.


http://www.amazon.com/HTC-Audio-Char...14224&sr=1-217

http://www.amazon.de/Diamond-Y-Adapt...514463&sr=1-28

i think i will check out the first one and hope it works for the antenna too.

Home made cable

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It's very simple to make the cable yourself. I have done it and it works perfectly...

What I did is the following:

1) I took the headset from my old Tytn II (or use the new one if you can lose it), and cut it just before the volume control (seen from the phone).

2) I cut open the usb connector, took off all plastic insulation (is some work) and disconnected all cables except for attachment number 7 (see figure), which is the antenna cable (this is the strand of small copper cables without further insulation around it).

3) I took a car charger and cut off the usb connector and soldered the two wires to attachment numbers 1 (red wire) and 5 (black wire).

Be very careful to solder very well, because you don't want any shortcuts...

Voila it's working.

Even better is the following (which I'm going to do now, now I know it's working):

1) Buy the following connector:
http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/cata...roducts_id=266

2) Solder a simple cable of about 0.7 mm^2 and 75 cm long to port 7 and solder the car charger to ports 1 and 5.

That's it...

Combine this with the following software:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=512630

And you will have TMC available in IGO or other navigation software.
Hope to hear if it works (for me it does). I have TMC now and charging when using my IGO, and besides I can use my bluetooth carkit, because it doesn't think there is a headset connected to the usb!!!

@amraam12: Wich rom and radio rom version you are using? I tried the same, but no luck: when putting +5v on the charing line, the radio gives no signal. (http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...=535358&page=3)

rom

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rom: 1.39.114.2 (47382) nld
radio: 3.43.25.19

Antenna only

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amraam, in case I just want a better reception provided by an external antenna and don't need to recharge while connected, if I solder an antenna connector to pin 7 (and 5 = GND) in a extUSB connector I'll be able to have much better reception, right?

How about using an antenna like this (http://www.wpsantennas.com/301103-wi...l-antenna.aspx) for that? Do you think that may work to improve reception on low signal places?

From your tests, how better is using the external antenna?

Thanks.

http://www.4allclients.nl/?action=4&...gn=kelkooclick

This is a navigon usb charger with tmc antenna, will this also work on the HTC rhodium?? Does anybody know if the antenna is conntected to pin 7 ?

Originally Posted by bmhvanbenthum

http://www.4allclients.nl/?action=4&...gn=kelkooclick

This is a navigon usb charger with tmc antenna, will this also work on the HTC rhodium?? Does anybody know if the antenna is conntected to pin 7 ?

That is a TMC (Traffic Message Channel) antenna. It is used to receive info about traffic from a specific FM channel so that GPS can calculate better routes. I don't know exactly if it is connected to pin 7, but probably is. To use that service, it should be available in the place you are driving. I am just guessing, but Pin 7 seems to be only a connection to an antenna for FM frequencies (around +80 ~ 108MHz).
I haven't found anything stating it can also be used to received external GPS or Cell Phone radio external antenna signals. These are all very different frequencies, btw.

Regards.