Making Center Console USB Switched

[sharpsicle]

If I missed this elsewhere, I apologize. Most I've seen talk about issues maintaining connection, I want to mess it up a bit (so it seems).

I've got a wireless AA dongle connected to the USB inside the center console armrest. I want to keep it there so it's out of the way and not visible. Only issue is that this port retains power after the truck is off, meaning it keeps pinging my phone for the AA connection while I'm in the house.

Short of modifying the wire harness to the USB port, does anyone know of a way to make this port switched so it shuts off with the ignition, rather than staying on? Or any other solution for this?

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[ricky0018]

I wish I kept the link but when I first started researching Gladiators I came across a video on Youtube that showed something similar. Young kid, might've had the keywords "Jeep Hacks" in the title. I think all he did was move a fuse around.

 

[ricky0018]

This guy does the same thing but not sure if its for the USB. . . worth a try.

 

[sharpsicle]

This guy does the same thing but not sure if its for the USB. . . worth a try.

Unfortunately that doesn't look like a thing on Gladiators.

However, I did notice that F102 is a 15A fuse for the "Dual USB Ports". By pulling this fuse it killed power to the USB connections on the center console, both the one inside and the ones in the back. I might be able to use that and find a way to interrupt that fuse connection with some kind of relay to do what I want.

 

[sharpsicle]

Ended up hacking together a solution. Credit to @ricky0018 for making me think about the fuse box!

Fuse F102 is the fuse for the center console USB ports. EDIT: Newer models may have USB on Fuse 11. Check your diagram to confirm. As we know, the fuse connects from a hot line to a fused line. Therefore, I needed to supply power to the fused line only when the ACC/IGN was on. To do this, I tested other fuses in the box for this property. Eventually I found fuse F96, "Power Mirror", was supplied power only when the truck was in the ACC/IGN condition. This looked like a good candidate to me as it's not a critical circuit that I use frequently.

I made a buddy wire that I placed with the F96 fuse's "hot" side. I then routed that to one blade of the 15A USB fuse. The other blade I attached a wire that went to just the fused line side of the USB circuit. Pretty? No, not really. But it leaves all the lines protected. And now the USB circuit is powered from ACC source rather than always-on. I sealed up the blades of the 15A fuse and put it into an empty "spare" location to keep it all in place.

I will probably clean this up a bit with fuse taps (rather than my shove-the-wire-in method) now that I've proven the concept. What you see above works but if either of the fuses go, it's not the easiest to deal with them. With the fuse taps, I wouldn't need the "spare" location as the tap would hold that fuse. I could go straight from one location to the other.

Hopefully this helps out someone in the future.

 

[sharpsicle]

As mentioned, I cleaned it up. I used a fuse tap and what's marketed as an "ECU Repair Fuse Holder" and soldered them together. Here's the result:

This is much more stable and easier to service.

The fuse taps:
https://www.amazon.com/Gebildet-Circuit-Micro2-Holder-Harness/dp/B07ZV4LY54/

The "ECU" fuse adapter:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09G7YRG9Q

 

[NachoRuby]

Ended up hacking together a solution. Credit to @ricky0018 for making me think about the fuse box!

Fuse F102 is the fuse for the center console USB ports. As we know, the fuse connects from a hot line to a fused line. Therefore, I needed to supply power to the fused line only when the ACC/IGN was on. To do this, I tested other fuses in the box for this property. Eventually I found fuse F96, "Power Mirror", was supplied power only when the truck was in the ACC/IGN condition. This looked like a good candidate to me as it's not a critical circuit that I use frequently.

I made a buddy wire that I placed with the F96 fuse's "hot" side. I then routed that to one blade of the 15A USB fuse. The other blade I attached a wire that went to just the fused line side of the USB circuit. Pretty? No, not really. But it leaves all the lines protected. And now the USB circuit is powered from ACC source rather than always-on. I sealed up the blades of the 15A fuse and put it into an empty "spare" location to keep it all in place.

I will probably clean this up a bit with fuse taps (rather than my shove-the-wire-in method) now that I've proven the concept. What you see above works but if either of the fuses go, it's not the easiest to deal with them. With the fuse taps, I wouldn't need the "spare" location as the tap would hold that fuse. I could go straight from one location to the other.

Hopefully this helps out someone in the future.

That's what I used to wire the DRLs for my wife's JKU.

 

[Aberk]

I'm glad you figured this out. As a temp solution, I wrapped my AA Wireless device in foil to reduce some of the wireless range. Plenty of signal strength in the truck, but I basically lose signal when I go in the house.

 

[amoyer_01]

do you have any other pictures of this?

 

[sharpsicle]

do you have any other pictures of this?

I can certainly snap some. What are you looking for?

 

[OHJeeper]

Thanks, @sharpsicle! Honestly, I thought the center console was ACC switched and never even looked in there to notice the AA adapter was always on. This makes perfect sense why my Android phone's battery was depleting faster than normal: because it's constantly searching for AA and it's just in-range from the driveway to my home office.

 

[OHJeeper]

Almost forgot: when you have the AA adapter switched with ACC, how long does it take to boot up and get AA on-screen?

 

[sharpsicle]

Almost forgot: when you have the AA adapter switched with ACC, how long does it take to boot up and get AA on-screen?

For mine it's in the neighborhood of 20 seconds. I'm using the Motorola MA1 AA adapter.

 

[OHJeeper]

For mine it's in the neighborhood of 20 seconds. I'm using the Motorola MA1 AA adapter.

That's what I have as well. I REALLY like it... nice being able to jump in the JT and keep my phone in my pocket and still get AA.

 

[amoyer_01]

I can certainly snap some. What are you looking for?

I was not fully understanding your description of how you wired it. If you could post pictures of which wires are connected and go to which fuse slots.

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