Garmin Nuvi 200 - easy fix

[tom66]

I bought a Garmin Nuvi on eBay for £9.50, including shipping.

Fault description: On battery, doesn't work. On USB power, it turns on and then off, rapidly, displays Garmin logo but this flashes on and off.

I thought it might be easy to fix.

So I plugged it in to my laptop via. USB to power it up. WTH? It works perfectly! Powered up, no problems, found satellites, touchscreen worked... could not fault it. I charged the battery up using USB and it works fine on battery too.

Has a full UK map (2008), plus most of Western Europe and parts of Russia & N. Africa, major roads only. European road trip planned soon! This will help .

My theory --

Original charger broke so user bought one of these off fleabay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T88ej...7&feature=plcp

Charger can put out 5V at 100mA, so maybe enough to get it to fire up, but voltage rapidly collapses, causing it to power cycle. It won't charge using that varying voltage, so with a flat battery it won't start up.

Another victim of crap PSUs.

[cadiman]

Re: Garmin Nuvi 200 - easy fix

The original charger was a switching type and made to work with the l/ion battery.

These are a switching type (no transformer) and are controlled by the battery.

The batteries in these and other devices (tablets) have the charge circuit built into the battery pack (control charge limit and cycle, etc).

The device is looking for the correct charger and when a transformer type is plugged into it there will be issues with charging and the circuit protection kicks in and stops the charging process. (battery will be dead)

Also the car charger may have a had a blown fuse. (very common)