Oy, have any of you wonderful folks used an Amplink? (
Rowe - Amplink) I just got around to putting mine back on and love it. Denali has a similar product you can use with a CANBUS system but on the RNine you can't use them. When I first brought Bean home I had grand plans for all sorts of thingy-ma-bobs to hang on my poor ride. However, she turned out so wonderful all I ended up with were my buck converter to power my phone and my Baja running lights. So why you axe did I say that I just put the Amplink '
back' on, welp it goes like this...
Way back when, I kind of put the cart before the horse, or in my case the Amplink before the lights. And not being the sharpest knife in the drawer it took me a bit to figure out how to make the Alink work so I just threw it in to see how it would work and what I could ultimately do with it. It was a bit of a dry run so to speak, I wired it in, and since mine is a Bluetooth model I programmed it to test out the functionality of the unit. I left the stock BMW wires alone and all the leads from the Alink long. Then used spade lugs so as not to compromise any of the stock wiring and at the time I couldn't figure out where or what I would use for the trigger. Later I found an empty socket back in the tail light section and discovered that my local dealer could set me up with a blank stock lead that would plug into the socket. BMW motorcycles seem to have loads of plugs that are just capped off which makes them nice and neat to pull from. No need to cut and splice into stock harnesses which can lead to disasters down the road. So once everything was working with no problems and no dashboard warnings I pulled it out so as not to have a snake bed of wires.
Fast forward a year, Baja lights have been on for a while now, the buck converter for my phone is in and why do you axe am I putting the Alink back on? Welp in my infinite wisdom I felt at the time I wanted my running lights on a hot lead so that I could run them while I was, say, setting up camp in the dark without leaving the Bean idling or the ignition on. Being LED lights they can run for a bit without too much drain on a new battery so why not? The same goes for the buck converter, charge the phone with Bean sleeping sure let's do that. That worked like a charm and I was very happy with the setup in general. All went as planned lights, phone, all good... but here's the thing. Not only do I run my lights for a bit setting up camp, I run them going down the road as my 'get the heck out of the way here I come' lights. They are very bright and getting attention from surrounding traffic is always a good thing. The problem was that during the day when I would use them, I would forget to turn them off. Remember they were wired hot so I didn't have to keep Bean running to use them. When I would leave them on and come back in an hour or two guess what, yup dead battery. Bummer. You would think I should learn, but alas I guess I am a bit thick-skulled and had a dead battery more than once.
I decided to put in my Shorai Lithium battery today and since I was at it I may as well reinstall my Amplink. Since I had a factory socket to pull from I used one wire from it as the trigger and then set up my lights on one circuit of the Alink, and my buck converter on another separate circuit. I set up the buck to power on in 5 seconds and then turn on the power for the lights in about 10 seconds thereby giving full battery to start the Bean. The lights power off in 20 seconds to give me light if I need to see where I'm going when I get off. Mind you I can through the magic of Bluetooth and my phone, I can make the delay to shut off the lights much longer if needed than the 20 seconds or so however, 20 seems to work just fine.
In the picture below you can see the Amplink belly side up with the green LED on and my service block that I ran all my shortened wires in resting on top of it. The stock BMW socket is that white plug with the yellow wires just beside the service block. Everything fits nicely together and is quite neat considering how dirty things get under my seat. Believe it or not, it is all waterproof to maybe around IP 65 or so and rugged enough that I don't worry about rattling it loose on one of my rides.
So there you have it. Later when I get inspired I may wire and program the running lights to flash back and forth. Or maybe add a bunch of random LEDs to put on a light show like the Times Square Ball, (I was a part of the team that built it), but we shall just see about that.
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Kind regards,
The screw in the bottom left of the picture is recessed and the ring tongue terminal would not fit in the recess. Possibly a longer screw and certainly a washer would also be required. The raised terminal is for jump starting/affixing a croc clip. I didn’t want to raise it any higher than it already is and I wanted the insulated cover to fit securely. Having checked initially that the screw where the negative terminal is currently fitted with an ohmmeter was a good earth/ground I could see no reasoning to investigate another position further away from the live than was necessary.
