schaferc Posted August 16, 2008 Report Share Posted August 16, 2008 Ah well.. I guess it's back to hoping Pioneer will come up with a 'fix'. The lethargic boot-time is not a 'deal breaker' for me anyhow, there's enough things I like about it that a 60 or 90 second delay at startup isn't going to make me want to return it. I do hope, however, that Pioneer does take this as a serious fault in an otherwise nice product. have you tried cutting the power down going to the unit. say giving it only 10v instead of 12, maybe CE will recognize teh loss of power and think its going to battery power and go into sleep? just a thought? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Stephanie Posted August 17, 2008 Report Share Posted August 17, 2008 I have not tried varying the voltage. To be honest, after poking around in the testmode and reading the results here of other people's poking around, I think the whole idea of doing anything with 'battery power' and 'sleep' is a red herring. I suspect that through either hardware or software, the red ACC/Ignition wire is being handled like a power switch. When there's power on the ACC line, the device acts like it has been turned on (a cold boot) and the delays are due to the software starting up in some particular order and not presenting the operational UI until everything is 'ready'. Then when the ACC/Ignition line is returned to 0v, the device acts like the power switch has been turned off. Upthread, the analogy was made to a cellphone, that most people do not turn it off due to the slow startup time. I believe this is an accurate analogy, and I believe the problem is that the HU is indeed treating the ACC/Ignition voltage as a 'hard shutdown' and 'cold start', much like turning a cellphone completely off. In the case of the cellphone, it's irrelevant that it has a battery with 8days of standby, the phone is turned off. And with these nav units, it's irrelevant that we have a 12v 60Ah battery under the hood; the device is completely shutting down cold when the car turns off. Please note, this is all speculation. It is based on my observations and what I've read on this forum, along with many years experience dealing with computers and embedded devices. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
dericn Posted August 17, 2008 Report Share Posted August 17, 2008 Most of you probably already discovered this, but one thing I've noticed is that, if you kill power to the ACC wire (IOW, turn the key off) while in the preliminary stage of booting, the AVIC will remain on for a few seconds. I assume this is so it can perform an orderly shutdown. This means that the unit is fully capable of remaining on without accessory power. Turning off the key simply 'triggers' the unit to shutdown. I don't see why Pioneer can't use this 'trigger' to enter suspend, hibernate etc. instead of just shutting down completely... At least they could have given us that choice, much like the 'power options' in Windows... -Eric Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Stephanie Posted August 17, 2008 Report Share Posted August 17, 2008 Most of you probably already discovered this, but one thing I've noticed is that, if you kill power to the ACC wire (IOW, turn the key off) while in the preliminary stage of booting, the AVIC will remain on for a few seconds. I assume this is so it can perform an orderly shutdown. This means that the unit is fully capable of remaining on without accessory power. Turning off the key simply 'triggers' the unit to shutdown. I don't see why Pioneer can't use this 'trigger' to enter suspend, hibernate etc. instead of just shutting down completely... At least they could have given us that choice, much like the 'power options' in Windows... -Eric Its the same thing in Testmode / WinCE mode. When you cut power to the ACC line, the screen remains on for a few seconds as it does its shutdown routine. I'm pretty certain that the lion's share of the current is coming through the yellow 'battery' wire; the ACC line is used only for signalling the device whether to power up or down. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
offroaderf150 Posted August 17, 2008 Report Share Posted August 17, 2008 i did something similar to what Stephanie did, but a little different. i wired up a DEI 520T back up battery in with an output channel on my alarm (could also use a switch if no alarm). basically the back up battery has a wire that connects to 12 volt constant that charges the battery, and another wire (grey) that goes to the alarm, or in this case, the acc lead to the avic. i also used a 6A diode to isolate the accessory circuit, so the back up batt doesnt get drained. so i wired it up this way... as soon as i trigger the alarm, it activates a relay which breaks the power to the red wire going into the back up battery module. this activates the battery's power since the hardwired source has been interrupted. but in order to keep the back up battery from constantly supplying power to the acc circuit, i also wired in a 2nd relay to join and interrupt the acc circuit from the back up battery circuit. so, alarm channel is activated, relay 1 cuts the power to the b/u batt, triggering it to start sending out power from the battery. relay 2 connects the avic acc wire to the back up batt power. sorry if i sound redundant, i just wanna make sure its clear to understand. so the back up battery solves the issue with the accessory cutting out during crank, and i love that im able to kick on the radio from my alarm while my car is in the garage. since i park in a garage, i came up with this so i dont kill everyone with c02 from my exhaust. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
terron Posted August 17, 2008 Report Share Posted August 17, 2008 in case anyone hasnt pointed it out, hibernation needs the amount of non-volatile memory equal to what is currently in-use in the system. Hibernate (or sleep) works by pausing the OS to save anything loaded in resident memory to the harddrive. When it unhibernates, all this is read, put back into memory and then unpaused. This means that the AVICs would need to come out with another flash or some other non-volatile storage device to keep the hibernation image. I doubt they have enough flash storage available to do something like this. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
schaferc Posted August 17, 2008 Report Share Posted August 17, 2008 in case anyone hasnt pointed it out, hibernation needs the amount of non-volatile memory equal to what is currently in-use in the system. Hibernate (or sleep) works by pausing the OS to save anything loaded in resident memory to the harddrive. When it unhibernates, all this is read, put back into memory and then unpaused. This means that the AVICs would need to come out with another flash or some other non-volatile storage device to keep the hibernation image. I doubt they have enough flash storage available to do something like this. you think they are going to need over a gig for this? i doubt it... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
djphat2000 Posted August 18, 2008 Report Share Posted August 18, 2008 They could just let you use an SD card for that. OR even enable it via external storage. Say if you want to use a USB hub and a spare Flash stick to store that with. Just hide it away and there you go. you can hibernate with the SD stick, and or USB flash stick. Or even make it work with an iPod (which has tons of storage). I am sure there is a way to make it work, just need to have them do it. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Stephanie Posted August 18, 2008 Report Share Posted August 18, 2008 They could also skip 'hibernation' entirely and just use 'sleep' mode instead. Then you don't need to find nonvolatile storage space to save a RAM image, and you don't need the time it takes to write or read the RAM image. Just don't power-off the RAM. It probably only uses 1.5v and you can keep the CPU powered too but throttled down to 0MHz, cut power only to the peripherals (display, touch panel, audio circuits, RF tuners, BT, etc). My laptop uses sleep mode (for that matter, so does my desktop) and it takes less than a second to 'shut down' into sleep, and less than a second to wake up from sleep. Granted, it will use some battery power while sleeping, but it's negligible. Unless you were going to park your vehicle for a few weeks/months. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
djphat2000 Posted August 18, 2008 Report Share Posted August 18, 2008 which in that event after lets say 2 days, it could just shut down. Even if it just asked you "SLEEP" or "SHUT DOWN" as you turn your car off would be perfect. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Stephanie Posted August 18, 2008 Report Share Posted August 18, 2008 which in that event after lets say 2 days, it could just shut down. Even if it just asked you "SLEEP" or "SHUT DOWN" as you turn your car off would be perfect. That would be perfect. They could even make it a system preference, so rather than ask every time you shut off, you could just set it in preferences and then not worry about it. 'Shutdown or Sleep'. Default it to shutdown if they want to play safe. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
CatchMeIfYouCan631 Posted August 18, 2008 Report Share Posted August 18, 2008 Just don't power-off the RAM. It probably only uses 1.5v and you can keep the CPU powered too but throttled down to 0MHz, cut power only to the peripherals (display, touch panel, audio circuits, RF tuners, BT, etc). wouldnt this require a hardware modification? like getting a wire from the constant to the RAM with a resistor on it? or im a noob and its strictly software Quote Link to post Share on other sites
bitman Posted August 18, 2008 Report Share Posted August 18, 2008 i bet that this box has lots of unused space inside so may be a hardware hack and install a small battery in the box for only keeping the ram alive? and then the possibly of shutdown or sleep in the software? so when in sleep mode that build in battery is used. i think it has only 64mb ram on 1.5v so that isn't much... ideas ideas not sure but if any one can get his hands on the electrical schema of the f series i have done lots of electronic mods in the past and my solder kit is always standby Quote Link to post Share on other sites
bitman Posted August 18, 2008 Report Share Posted August 18, 2008 which in that event after lets say 2 days, it could just shut down. Even if it just asked you "SLEEP" or "SHUT DOWN" as you turn your car off would be perfect. that should be wonderful, but when in wince mode i didn't see any shutdown possibility at the start menu. but i have to admit that i'm not very familiar with wince. i`m more a linux guy but knows microsoft products from the beginning... (ms-dos with no directories ) Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Bman69 Posted August 18, 2008 Report Share Posted August 18, 2008 the wince on the headunit doesnt have the shutdown.exe :/ i guess pioneer didnt care about shutting it down Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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