live feed to speedo

digital speedo

digital speedometer's consumption is quite low actually (few milliamps) to cause your battery to drain.
if there is a fuse somewhere in the speedometers power supply circuit then i would not worry at all, if not then some possible failure inside this device (maybe a short circuit) would indeed cause your battery to drain or to explode or to get fire :shock:

if i were you i would change the power supply on that thing (for safety reasons only). you can supply it with power from many resources AFTER the key switch. using a multimeter you can quickly locate 12 volts when you turn you switch on, just reroute the speedometers battery supply to the new one and leave the ground connection as it is.

Depending on how they are built inside it may forget some info such as odometer reading if you don't keep it powered all the time. (Ie change power supply to thru the switch.) Current draw as it is now should be negligible. If it is flattening your battery there may be a fault inside.

Badvoc,
My Australian 03 'Berg only has a switched(via ignition switch)
power supply.
If you have the CR2430 internal battery fitted, you do not need any power supply from the bikes battery for it to function, BUT if you require the units internal light to function, you must have a power supply other than the internal battery.
You do not need the internal battery either, as if you have a power supply from the bike, the unit should function perfectly.
With no internal battery and a switched power supply, your unit should display and retain its odometer and hours accumulated.
The internal battery and/or a permanent power supply is a must if you wish to retain all the data these units can display when set up with the tripmaster switch- otherwise when the power supply is cut, they lose their extensive memory.
Even without the internal battery or a permanent power supply, they still keep their wheel dia., hours and overall odometer memory .
I am sure all this is correct, as it has come from trouble shooting these units on my Berg and 2 stroke KTM a while ago. Let me know if my memory has failed me!!!
Hope you find this useful. Cheers !!!

I have the same problem on my -03 Fe501. My battery goes flat. The extra buttons don't work anymore.

My 05 FS650E speedometer unit was acting wacky lately. Strange speed readings and sometimes the speedometer unit would not turn on at all. Almost like the trigger wire from the front wheel was faulty.

After inspecting all of the speedometer related wiring and finding no faults I tried replacing the original speedometer battery with a new CR2430 3v battery.

Bada bing! Not only do the speedometer issues seem to be gone but the LCD display text appears much darker with better contrast. Problem apparently solved, for now. :mrgreen:

Maybe the speedometer micro-battery is more important than we thought and when it runs down/dead the speedometer can begin to malfunction.

Gents, agree with all of the above, however, one of the symptoms there is similar to whayt my speedo did, that is its intermittent working, flattened the main battery and then the internal battery died, right at about the same time my backlight went.

I hope its not the same issue I am trying to work through, because it is a pain in the arse, once I find my multimeter (have seen it once in a year, i know its here somewhere) I will test the speedo unit. I tried to remove the circuit board from the housing, but it appeared to be fitted pretty tightly in there, but I am hoping that there is an internal fuse set up, that would explain my probs.

good luck with getting it sorted.

Azza.