Ipaq charging options on long motorcycle trip?

[2002CBR600F4i]

Hey gang,

I'm planning a trip down to Daytona for the AMA Superbike 200 during bike week in early March. I'm planning to ride my CBR600 down there (about a 7.5 hour ride from Atlanta) and was going to use my 5450 as my MP3 player (I have speakers in my helmet and a boostaroo) and GPS for the trip.

(See my sig for my setup). What I'm wondering is, what sort of options do I have for charging while on the road? What I've been able to come with are the following:

1) Some sort of solar cell recharging unit, plugged into the dual PC Card sleeve. Question is, can I find cells with enough capacity that can also fit on the bike? Like say magnetically attached to the side of my tank?

2) some sort of battery based charger (like a C cell 4 pack)? What sort of power requirements do I need for both the IPAQ + the dual PC Card sleeve in order to charge? And can I just leave the battery pack plugged in, or does it only really work in a "charge it and then remove it" configuration?

3) What about some sort of cigarette lighter-style charger (but to the sleeve instead of the IPAQ itself since that port will be used up with the GPS cable) ? I should be able to hook such a socket up to the battery terminals on the bike and provide a constant stream of power (just like in the car).

Are there any other options????

What power levels would I need to maintain to charge both the sleeve and the IPAQ?

If I could get away without the sleeve I would, but unfortunately I only have a 64 MB SD card, and that's not enough for music, GPS maps, and evertyhing else, and I can't afford one of those big 512 MB ones right now...

What are my options???

--Mike

Ipaq 5450
Dual PC Card Sleeve
Toshiba 5GB pc card drive
PNY 64 MB SD card
DigiTraveler GPS

[vincentsiaw]

the most economical way to charge your ipaq while on motorcycle is off course using one of those battery based one, they selling the battery extender at ebay, if you get lucky for as low as 7 bucks !!! and it's does work fine!!

and then you can save your money and buy yourself abigged capacity sd card! 140 bucks for 256 mb then, instead of the 512 mb

[2002CBR600F4i]

Yeah, I started doing more research on the battery pack solution and that looks to be the way to go.

Not going to bother with a bigger SD card. Honestly... Until the SD cards come in insane sizes like 2-3 GB, it won't do what I want... 512MB isn't enough for 14 hours of MP3's and GPS maps and software... I'll keep the toshiba. It DOES slow down the system, it makes things big and bulky, but man, it's NICE having 5 GB of storage :D

[tregnier]

I have two accessory outlet (lighter receptacles) on my BMW R1100RT. You may want to consider adding an accessory outlet to your CBR (Yeah, I know it doesn't go with the sportbike image, but you can tuck it inside the fairing where no one will know it's there). Best option of all.