TomTom Rider V5 Hardwiring to BMW Can Bus Port (Aux Port / Sat Nav Port)

BMW very kindly supply you with a Can Bus Supported Auxiliary Port on a range of their bikes that means you can easily wire your Sat Nav into the bike, meaning it will be powered from the battery of the motorcycle, however when you turn the bike off the Can Bus System then shuts down the power to the sat nav a short time later resulting no power going to the sat nav cradle and no battery drain.

Well that is the theory anyway, however some users have experienced battery drain and blame this set up, claiming that the Can Bus System isn’t compatible with their Sat Nav. That may be and BMW won’t say officially if that may be the case, stating only that their ‘Sat Nav’ port is for use solely with their Navigator System, and why not if you want to be 100% sure that everything is going to work beautifully together then you need to hand over £700 for the privilege.

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Show hidden files Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion

I have found that on ocassion you may need to see some of the hidden files and folders in OSX, mainly for troubleshooting. When enabled things can appear very messy and untidy so in my opinion it is best to make things visible, then when you are done, hide them again.

Good luck.

To enable hidden files/folders in finder windows:

– Open Finder

– Open the Utilities folder

– Open a terminal window

– Copy and paste the following line in:
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

– Press return

– Now hold ‘alt’ on the keyboard and right click on the Finder icon

– Click on Relaunch

You will now see all the hidden files and folders. Once you are finished, perform the steps above however, replace the terminal command in step 4 with:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO