USB charging

oldyellr

I have a Magellan Maestro 3210 I want to add a trip to when not plugged into my car. The battery needs charging, When I plug it into a USB adapter it thinks it's connected to a computer and I can't bring up the menu screen. The only way I can do it is with the car 12v adapter and hooking it up to a 12v power supply. Is there any other way I can do it other than in the car or connecting the 12v car adapter to a power supply?

I just tried to add a trip after the GPS had been plugged into the USB charger for a while to get some charge into the battery, but not enough and it died juat as I was saving the trip. I looked at it again after charging some more and found the trip had not been saved and all my other trips were gone. Very frustrating!

Boyd

This kind of issue is usually related to the USB cable. There are two kinds of cables - data and power. The data cable has an extra wire, and that can confuse the device into thinking it's connected to a computer. So you could look for a power cable - I have some inexpensive USB chargers that included the correct type of cable.

Or another solution would be to just get an adapter that would let you plug your car adapter into line power, they are usually inexpensive.



BTW, I think the Maestro 3210 is a pretty old model, isn't it? I had a Maestro 5210 and that was many years ago. Anyway, what you describe sounds a bit like a battery that is starting to die, which is common for an old device. It should get fully charged when driving in the car, and that should be enough to run it on battery for awhile.

oldyellr

I've got several USB cables with the correct Mini B plug. I'll just have to find them all and try to see if I have one that's for power only, not data. Even when purchasing cables, this is not really specified.