So I got a lot of help coming up with this DYI from the forum here so i'd though i'd put together a clear and concise walkthrough for anyone looking to hardwire a GPS, Phone charger etc...
I myself have the erisin and wanted to install my new ROKU 2 XS and use my phones hot stot to have pandora, netflix, hulu, and every other morcelf of goodness run through my system. I can tell you its been a wonderful success
What you'll need:
- Add a circuit:
These nifty little things allow you to tap into your fuse block under your hood or in your drivers side passenger foot well. Advantage to this is if you choose the right fuse recepticle you can have power only when you would have power to your radio and have it shut with everything else.
-Car charger with correct voltage and current output:
This took forever because roku aren't supposed to be in cars... yet lol, and so what i did is i looked at my ac to dc plug they sent with the roku and they almost always have an "input" and "output" rating. You'll find the output, in my case it was 5v (volts) 2a(amps). So i bought the cheepest car charger with that output. note... if you can find a car charger with the right "tip" for your device all the better, but i couldn't for mine so i bought a second wall charger and just spliced it on the car charger
alright, lets begin!
1. In the following pic we have our modified car charger. I cracked it open and soldered the leads to it, but you can just tape em to it if you want so long as your confident with the connection. The positive goes to the tip that springs in and out, the negative will go to the little metal railes on the side. it doesn't have to look nice it'll be tucked away.
I consulted with my electrical engineer father over this, and the reason you can't just connect your device strait to fuse box is you need a stepdown in both voltage and current. Your car default output is 12v my roku needs 5. same with ampherage. I considered a voltage divider using resistors, but a cars electrical system spikes and falls with things like ignition and breaking(lights), so the car charger in line provides a regulated flat 5v, keeps your device safe.
2. So take your positive lead you just made from your car charger, and connect it to this "add a circuit" guy and plug em in. I followed the little cover that tells you what all the fuses go to and took out the 7.5 amp radio fuse and used that one. So now you have a power source, but your negative lead from your car charger now needs to be grounded
3. My back was hurting at this point so i opted out of making this nice, but basically you need to connect the negative lead to anything metal and big thats stationary (ie there is a lot of metal moving parts down by your feet so be careful). The idea is to connect to your chassi, so if you take a undo a bolt and slip the wire under it you'll be safe.
4. And like i said this is my tip for my roku spliced onto the wire out of the car charger that i cut the tip off of. Just make sure of polarity. positive to positive negative to negative. Usually on black wires the negative wire has markings of some sort, be it writing, a white line.
5. Take your time passing the wire out of site, push the break, e break, and gas to make sure its not gonna get caught.
And here we have my roku in action, providing me angry birds and endless pandora
Merry christmas to ya'all, i'm sure come the 25th there will be a few of you who want a cleaner, more automatic install of your new whatever you get, and don't want to waste a car outlet and have wires all over.
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