Thread: Garmin Rino 650 USB Charging

I have a Garmin Rino 650 that I have been using for a few years. I bought a AA battery pack for it to use on longer trips but quickly became sick of the larger size and inability to transmit at 5 watts using the AA batteries.

Not wanting to buy a spare lithium battery for the Rino I set about trying to find a cable that would enable me to charge the lithium battery on the gps unit.

Nothing... could not find anything off the shelf that would work due to the garmin proprietary power socket. (I understand that the new Rino 750s do enable USB charging.)

So with nothing obviously available I decided to modify my AC charger so I could charge the GPS lithium battery off a portable powerbank.

I used a 5V-9V DC step up (from JayCars) and a couple of male, female power plug sockets. It was a simple matter of cutting the Garmin proprietary plug off the AC charger and soldering on to the respective male / female power connectors.

Plugged the Rino 650 into a USB powerbank and hey presto... it charged the GPS.

Was an easy job costing about $20 and 20min of time.

Beats buying a extra lithium battery.

Roojaz, so I have looked all over for a USB charger and cannot believe on is not made for the 650!!!! I see you have made something yourself that works. Wondering if you could give me a detailed list of the parts you used as I am not very tech savey but would like to get the parts to make a couple of these. I am from US so would need to find parts here somewhere. So nothing internally prevents the 650's from USB charging except for the simple fact that Garmin chose not to make one and their plug isnt able to be reproduced by other companies do to patent rights?!

Just saw this thread, well done nice job !

I went to use one of mine & the dam thing won't charge ?

Any one know if you can replace the batteries inside the Garmin housing/battery shell ?

So it is possible to renew batteries or dreaming ?

Originally Posted by Solo Pilot

Roojaz, so I have looked all over for a USB charger and cannot believe on is not made for the 650!!!! I see you have made something yourself that works. Wondering if you could give me a detailed list of the parts you used as I am not very tech savey but would like to get the parts to make a couple of these. I am from US so would need to find parts here somewhere. So nothing internally prevents the 650's from USB charging except for the simple fact that Garmin chose not to make one and their plug isnt able to be reproduced by other companies do to patent rights?!

Yes, I can do that.

Not sure about patents, but I couldn't find anything in NZ or otherwise that was made to fit.

I’ve been googling a bit lately to try come up with a solution for this issue too. Found this post on the Rokslide forum which has a good solution- basically a car charger, with a step up voltage converter. I looked the converters up on Aliexpress & they’re only a few dollars. Looks like a super simple option without the need for any soldering.

https://www.rokslide.com/forums/thre...off-usb.75825/

Originally Posted by Solo Pilot

Roojaz, so I have looked all over for a USB charger and cannot believe on is not made for the 650!!!! I see you have made something yourself that works. Wondering if you could give me a detailed list of the parts you used as I am not very tech savey but would like to get the parts to make a couple of these. I am from US so would need to find parts here somewhere. So nothing internally prevents the 650's from USB charging except for the simple fact that Garmin chose not to make one and their plug isnt able to be reproduced by other companies do to patent rights?!

The link above pretty much describes whT I used for parts.