Electronics guru’s required

[Champs]

I have been recently fitting out the bike with an autocom and radio along with a few others.

The autocom has been successfully connected and is getting power from the supply to rear light.

Onto the technical bit…

My issue is that I am using a Midland G7 as the radio. Which runs off 4x AA batteries. Which is crap.
I want to run the radio off a similar switched power supply to the autocom.
In my theory, 4 AA’s give you roughly 6volts but everything on the bike is 12volts.
I am thinking of soldering onto the battery terminals in the radio, but do I need to install something in the middle to regulate the power supply down from 12vdc to 6vdc??

[imperialdata]

Hi Champs

I’d stick a couple of equal resistors in as a voltage divider and then drop a smoothing/noise filtering capacitor in for good measure. I’d probably stick in an IN4001 diode (from memory – it has been a while) to catch any stray return volts too.

[Champs]

I’ll dig my soldering iron out

But will resistors reduce the output wattage on the radio?

[imperialdata]

They will drop the current that you are able to pull, but ultimately the radio’s output should be the same if the circuit is designed OK. You are only substituting your pencil batteries with another much higher amperage battery so it should be fine.

[Champs]

Thanks for the advice. I’ll give it a go over the weekend.

[Radar]

How did you get on??

[Champs]

pretty good, I don’t think I quite have the supply right yet due to the radio getting a bit warm, but its working well.
I will try and get a pic of my handy work.

[Author]

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