solar powered battery charger
 

I have a 12v solar battery charger that's wired to be plugged in to a cig lighter, can it be configured to run power to a GPS unit? A Garmin Nuvi 200? any other ideas for this sort of setup would be helpful, thanks.

If its portable its probably a battery maintainer not a charger. Even if its big enough to charge a battery you should have a storage battery between the charger and the GPS as you don't want the gos to shut down every time a cloud passes over.

That charger might have a rough voltage output with spikes and such. OK for charging batteries but dicey for use directly to a GPS unit. Get an EE to advise you but I would not even link the charger to a battery while the battery is powering the GPS unit.

The GPS being designed to be powered from automotive electronics has to be able to handle a lot of spikes and noisy power. Automotive electrical systems are quite noisy, fuel pump, injectors, spark plugs are all introducing noise. Lights, signals, wiper motors, etc all add spikes and surges and drops.

Shouldn't be a problem to run your GPS from it if it's made to run from a car DC voltage of 12-16 volts and the solar charger has enough current output at that voltage to supply what the GPS requires. So you need to answer those questions first from the specs or measure them. A solar charger won't have voltage spikes so don't worry about that. And any GPS worth it's salt made to work in a car will have protection built in. I'd have no worries hooking it up to a GPS. The hardest problem is likely to be getting a suitable connector but the mfg's usually have them available at a premium. Maybe you could get a GPS with a cig lighter socket on it. My new GPS uses a USB cable for power and data transfer to PC so that's convienent. enine has a good point that you will likely need a battery along with the solar panel to keep the GPS live when not enough output from the solar to run GPS.