wyatterp777

The deal is, the "hibernate" or "suspend" mode worked perfectly for me in 2.0. I rarely ever had the unit go through a full power cycle. Occasionally I would have to reboot because some functions quit working, like the bluetooth, or perhaps voice control stopped activating. Now I get full power cycles on every car ignition. In fact, this really outweighs any benefit I get from the update in my book. I like the accurate maps and faster screen/tap response, but now I am waiting forever for the boot, and it also kills the GPS signal acquisition. For a city driver, I do lots of start/

Hmmmm...ok, so maybe this isn't an "isolated" problem for the F500BT after the update. Any other F500BT owners want to chime in? Has anyone called Pioneer about this? It's really annoying because it makes the upate not even close to worth it, no matter how "responsive" the buttons now are.

Roger this here in DC

Me too in Wash DC here. "Input Device Number is not correct" BOOOOO

Invalid Device Number for me as well. I have the CMH mod installed before applying SD card #1. Not sure if that may be a common thread here. Maybe we have to have registered our devices with Pioneer first? I never did that. ANNOYED

I went under system settings...I didn't even see a setting to pick TTS voices in Nav Settings. I have three choices, Jason, Spanish Dude, and French Person.

I succesfully updated sys.txt with the right device, and now I get spoken nav guidance again, but the only option is for Jason (not TTS). I did a full reinstall of the allinone mod with the udpated sys.txt; still no go on the new Sam TTS voice. I even loaded the standalone TTS zip and went into the "language" menu on the Avic and tried to load Samantha manually of an SD card, and while appearing to load I never get the choice of Sam in the language menu once done loading. Any ideas?

For those interested in F500 install results. I installed the allinone noob image (includes MSN) and the only problem i can see is that TTS does not work, and Samantha is actually not even an option in the language menu anymore. I have Jason, and two other countries. Actually, even picking Jason doesn't work as I don't get spoken directions at all right now. I am going to load of the most recent mod'd Samantha TTS and try to load it manually in the settings menu, as opposed to using Testmode install (copy and paste). Hopefully this will restore the spoken commands! Anyone with the

OEM factory radio installs are becoming so customized, not everyone can cleanly integrate a normal Double-DIN unit where their factory radios are. I would have preferred the F900BT as a complete system overall, but did not want to lose the nice factory look of my dash in my Mazda 3. I've seen people do it, don't get me wrong, I know it's possible, but I do not like the look replacing the factory dash/radio. Secondly, the F500BT has one advantage none of the other units have. A BATTERY. Near instant start up! Take that F900BT! You can find my Mazda 3 install pics in this forum.

I'm interested as well since I own the F500BT, but the F500BT also was released several months after the other models (non "portable") hit mainstream markets, so it makes sense an update would be a little further out. I guess the F500BT is different enough from the others to demand it's own unique software update coded. I will wait patiently. I don't have to worry about tremendously slow boot times like others due to the built in battery.

I got the dash kit from japanparts.com, which sells OEM parts for japanese made/designed vehicles. I doubt they have Saturn parts considering GM is american (GM owns Saturn right?). Whoever made my kit actually makes the dash parts for stock Mazda, so it's pretty high quality, but also VERY expensive (custom parts). It costs me like $350 bucks shipped from Japan. I love the integration, and still the F500BT + custom dash kit costs less than the $1800 Nav option on a Mazda 3 from the factory. The nice motorized mount on the stock option is nice, but the feature set of the F500BT is better!

I own the F500BT check out my short review: http://avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=119718#119718

Ok, so this was a much aniticipated buy for me. When I read/saw/heard about the AVIC F series units, things looked very exciting. At first, I was gunning for a full replacement of my Mazda 3 stock unit with a F900BT model, but after research, I found out that replacing the OEM in a 3 isn't exactly an enticing proposition. To make this story short, I found a nice dash kit and bought the "stand alone" F500BT model instead. This could be a long review considering the complexity of the unit, so I'll try to keep it short. I know some horror stories have been spread about the F series, howev

Not true. A few of us have figured it out. Ground p-brake wire and upload mod'd data.zip See hacks section!

Just wanted to post pictures of my installation. I think it's pretty nice. Considering how much cash I dumped for the custom dash kit, well, it better be nice! I also hacked my unit with Vorian's new DATA.ZIP plus parking brake mod (with grounded p-brake wire). Works fantastic! As for the F500BT, well, a review is forthcoming. Feel free to ask any questions you want. I've had the unit for a few weeks, and have used both on short trips, and a road trip. I think one advantage to call out on the F500BT is that is has a battery, so it doesn't shut-down all the way when you shut the e

Well, i just grounded the p-brake wire, and uploaded a slightly mod'd "Vorian DATA.ZIP" file. And............. BAM...everything works! Complete bypass complete. This makes me super happy! Fully installed AVIC-F500BT. Looking good. Oh yeah, Vorian's ZIP file is such a better way to display info on the nav screen. Love the new default view when you aren't actually using the turn-by-turn, and I love the stop/cancel route button straight on the home screen. I also like being able to tap the street address to go to the route functions. Thanks for the hard work Vorian (and others

Ah, the ground wire is in the cigarette adapter. They don't honestly expect people to plug that thing in to their 12v power port, right? Surely you're going to hardwire it to make the install as clean as possible? Actually they do, but you can make it looks as clean as possible by using a female cig adapter. Just splice it into the car cig adapter. Thats what I did and I place it inside the center console to hide it. Worked out great! Pancho is right, they expect you to use the cig-lighter for power. I think the +12V is just a trigger for something else. I am not using it. It's

I too, expected a ground wire, but the F500BT does not have a ground wire in the wire harness! You have p-brake wire, amp wire, reverse wire (for rear view camera), +12V wire, and then stereo output and the cig lighter power input. I think I am missing a wire here, but I know I specifically looked for a ground wire and didn't find it.

Wow, I just re-read my "last question" in that post. You are right, it didn't make any sense. I think I was in a rush when I posted. Reading your later posts, it seems you figured it out! So exciting! I was getting nervous that I would be pulling my dashboard apart to no avail tomorrow. I plan to ground the p-brake wire to a nice bare metal screw bolted hopefully to some bare-metal on the chassis. I also plan to load up the mod'd data.zip file I have already prep'd. I may up the value to a higher number as well (instead of 128). I have a nice fully integrated install in my M

What was your process to edit the zip file? You didn't do any sort of uncompressing and recompressing did you? Which line did you actually edit? You said you succesfully have grounded your parking wire, or that you actually have connecting the parking sense wire to the parking break indicator wire in your vehicle? -e PS - we may be getting a little off topic for this thread, if so, I apologize.

Well, i just used winrar and edited the proper line in Vorian's zip. It took about 3 seconds. I haven't succesfully loaded the zip into my F500BT yet, but it shouldn't take long. I just need to actually tear my dash apart to ground that stupid parking break wire. My educated guess is that grounding the parking break wire allows you to operate all the grayed out functions when the GPS unit is not telling "itself" that you are moving. The software mod simply ups the unit from a 16KPH threshhold to a higher value that trips the threshold for deactivating certain GPS and system functions

Hey Vorian, Have you made any attempts at utilizing the supposed all software bypass for the parking brake? If so, is it already in your data.zip file? Thanks, Eric