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.