The Microsoft GPS locator has a neon light and it is on when system is turned off. Does anyone use this locator? I think the light could drain the motherboard battery. Or does opus actually feeds the motherboard when it is powered off. It that case, it could drain the car battery if the car is stored.
i think it is usb connected, right?
well if you have a via m10000 motherboard, then it always supplies power to usb devices....and i dont think it drains the battery, my antenna is always on
It depends on which Opus power supply you are talking about. The 90W version has a jumper which can be set to supply or not supply standby power to the 5v rail. The 150W version always supplies standby power to the 5v rail, per the ATX PSU spec. There is a mod posted by Rando somewhere that outlines how the 150w Opus can be modified to kill the 5v rail so that the devices attached to the mother board will not draw from the battery while the car is off. The battery on the mother board does nothing for the USB devices.
The Microsft GPS antenna is like any other USB device in that it will recieve that 5v power as long as it is plugged into the USB port of a motherboard that is also recieving such power. That's why on your home PC those peripherals usually have their LEDs on even when your comp is off.
As for the question of draining your battery, that depends on a lot of other factors. How many USB devices do you have drawing power while the car is off and not charging the battery? How good is your battery at tolerating that draw? How's the cold weather going to affect your battery's performance? How often do you drive that car? Enough to keep the battery fully juced?
If you read through the forums you'll see that a lot of people are getting by just fine and not having their batteries drained all the time. Then again, everybody's setup and car are different. You'll have to experiment with your particula read. Time to bust out the meter and see what kind of draw each of your devices creates and figure out from there if your battery can take it.
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