Mahesh Posted April 21, 2009 Report Share Posted April 21, 2009 I have reasons to believe that hardware bypass mentioned in this sticky topic has a bad side effect: draining the car battery. I recently installed an AVIC-F900BT in a Volkswagen Passat 2009. I used a Connects2 CTSVW002 canbus adapter to connect the unit to the radio connector of my car. The canbus adapter provides acc power, illumination, speed signal and parking brake wires to ease the install, as well as an interface to the steering wheel control buttons. I opted for doing the hardware bypass as described in this thread. The first couple of weeks after installing the AVIC-F900BT I used the car almost daily. Then, when I tried to unlock the car after it had been parked for about a week, the battery was dead. Bummer! I immediately suspected the car radio to be the source of the problem. In order to find out, I hooked up an amp meter between the negative connector of the car battery and the negative battery cable when the car was in power saving mode. Then, I disconnected the AVIC and did the same measurement. Both AVIC-F900BT and Connects2 canbus adapter disconnected: 5.5 milliamps AVIC-F900BT and Connects2 canbus connected with hardware bypass: approx. 120 milliamps!! I sure found the source of my flat battery! I tried to undo the hardware bypass and -- voila! -- current draw is down to approx 12 milliamps. Has anyone else experienced this? Maybe the hardware bypass is not a smart thing to do after all? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
joegr Posted April 21, 2009 Report Share Posted April 21, 2009 I have reasons to believe that hardware bypass mentioned in this sticky topic has a bad side effect: draining the car battery. I recently installed an AVIC-F900BT in a Volkswagen Passat 2009. I used a Connects2 CTSVW002 canbus adapter to connect the unit to the radio connector of my car. The canbus adapter provides acc power, illumination, speed signal and parking brake wires to ease the install, as well as an interface to the steering wheel control buttons. I opted for doing the hardware bypass as described in this thread. The first couple of weeks after installing the AVIC-F900BT I used the car almost daily. Then, when I tried to unlock the car after it had been parked for about a week, the battery was dead. Bummer! I immediately suspected the car radio to be the source of the problem. In order to find out, I hooked up an amp meter between the negative connector of the car battery and the negative battery cable when the car was in power saving mode. Then, I disconnected the AVIC and did the same measurement. Both AVIC-F900BT and Connects2 canbus adapter disconnected: 5.5 milliamps AVIC-F900BT and Connects2 canbus connected with hardware bypass: approx. 120 milliamps!! I sure found the source of my flat battery! I tried to undo the hardware bypass and -- voila! -- current draw is down to approx 12 milliamps. Has anyone else experienced this? Maybe the hardware bypass is not a smart thing to do after all? I'll bet you didn't disconnect the parking brake wire from the canbus adapter before you grounded it. (You ground the wire from the AVIC, not the wire from the canbus.) Done correctly, the bypass does not cause any excess drain. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Mahesh Posted April 22, 2009 Report Share Posted April 22, 2009 I have reasons to believe that hardware bypass mentioned in this sticky topic has a bad side effect: draining the car battery. (...) Has anyone else experienced this? Maybe the hardware bypass is not a smart thing to do after all? I'll bet you didn't disconnect the parking brake wire from the canbus adapter before you grounded it. (You ground the wire from the AVIC, not the wire from the canbus.) Done correctly, the bypass does not cause any excess drain. I never connected anything to the parking brake wire coming from the canbus adapter. The green parking brake wire coming from the AVIC was connected to the black ground wire in the harness together with the mute wire coming from the bypass position as described in this thread. Any other idea why the bypass might cause current drain? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
joegr Posted April 22, 2009 Report Share Posted April 22, 2009 Mute wire moved to wrong position. (This is probably not it if the bypass was working correctly.) Defective AVIC. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Mahesh Posted April 22, 2009 Report Share Posted April 22, 2009 Mute wire moved to wrong position. (This is probably not it if the bypass was working correctly.)Defective AVIC. The bypass was working correctly. And I also double and triple checked that the mute wire was moved to the correct position in the connector. Is there a difference between European and American AVIC units? I was told by a local install shop here in Norway to just connect the parking brake wire in the AVIC harness to ground (and leave the mute wire unconnected in its original position). This seems to work perfectly without any current drain. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
joegr Posted April 23, 2009 Report Share Posted April 23, 2009 Apparently, there is a difference between the European and American versions. The American version gives a warning about the parking brake being improperly connected if the mute wire is not moved and grounded. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
sanjeev80 Posted May 17, 2009 Report Share Posted May 17, 2009 I just installed and bypassed my f900bt in my RSX. I want to thank everyone who participated in the forum and made it so easy for the rest of us. The only reason i bought the f900bt was because every1 on this forum made it Herez what i did, and it worked like a charm. 1) replaced the mute wire from its original position to the 4th position on the other side. But left it un-connected (just tapped up) 2) Grounded the Parking brake wire to the cars' ground( black wire). 3) Turned on the system. I now had all 4 settings options (navi settings, system settings, av sound settings, av settings) - if you dont ground the parking brake wire you will only have 2 opions enabled (navi settings and system settings are disabled) 4) navigate to system settings and calbirated the screen by using the Stylus. 5) copied the 2 folders in testmode.zip found on the wiki of this forum onto a SDCard. 6) installed the SDcard in the f900bt and restarted the sytem. 5) When the system comes up in test mode, It takes a minute to copy a few files and then a dialog box opens up on the screen that covers the whole screen.Used the stylus to click the 'X' on the right top. 6) using Explorer browsed to MY Flash drive and copied it to my SDCARD. 7) modified the pioneer.ini file in data.zip on my laptop (using WINRAR- i have read people say Winzip is not the same and may corrupt the DATA.zip, so stick to Winrar). put the SD card back in the system and booted the sytem. clicked the 'X' on the dialog box. used explorer to take a backup of the original DATA.zip by renaming it and then copied the altered DATA.zip over. 9) Restarted the system and HELL YA bypass was done. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
fastpakr Posted May 18, 2009 Report Share Posted May 18, 2009 Why didn't you just ground the Mute wire? Moving it without grounding it doesn't do anything. It would have saved you from the software mod entirely. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
johnny88 Posted June 1, 2009 Report Share Posted June 1, 2009 What exactly is the purpose of the Mute wire? by grounding it, it will have no use, so im curious what use does it have before its grounded that im not going to have access to once its grounded? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
SteveInNC Posted June 1, 2009 Report Share Posted June 1, 2009 Before the days of bluetooth, wired car phone adapters used the Mute wire to tell the audio system to quiet down so that you could take a call. Most modern phones connect via bluetooth and use that instead. The hardware mod involves moving what was used as the Mute connection to a different pin on the radio. This pin, in combination with the parking wire, can be grounded to disable the code that keeps you from mucking with GPS settings/viewing video/etc, while the car is moving. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
sanjeev80 Posted June 2, 2009 Report Share Posted June 2, 2009 well i replaced the mute wire while i was preparing the harness. The hack worked even without grounding the mute wire, So i just let it be.. Besides i remembered that someone in the forum said no matter what you have to remove the mute wire from its original position .. so i just followed suite.. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
johnny88 Posted June 2, 2009 Report Share Posted June 2, 2009 what about the annoying error messages? did that get rid of them too? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
jwbrenna Posted June 7, 2009 Report Share Posted June 7, 2009 I quickly saw my oversight after I took out my radio and took another look. ** Bypassing is easy, just follow the guide ** The mute wire is moved FROM the corner location TO THE 4th position-in on the opposite row of the SAME header, correct???? I followed the 2 pics in the instructions but get an error message when I drive too, This mod doesn't work with f90bt v2.0 software maybe. ................................please help? I'll try installing the test mode software next to see if that works, looks like you can only edit the speed settinf using winrar? after extracted the files and looked through the folders, no pi0neer ini file exists. My PC doesn't have an sd card reader either! any help............................. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
dochooman Posted June 12, 2009 Report Share Posted June 12, 2009 Need some help, just got a new f900bt which came installed in my scion, i can't seem to find the parking brake wire (light green), there is no light green wire on the black plug. There is two dark green wires. I know one is for a speaker, i tried the bypass on the other green one, but it didn't work. Does anyone know what position the PB wire is in, or what wires are beside it or above it. Thanks Quote Link to post Share on other sites
SteveInNC Posted June 13, 2009 Report Share Posted June 13, 2009 On the F90, and the F900 should be effectively the same, the light green parking brake wire is on the connector that plugs into the left-most lower connector of the unit when viewed from the rear, what the AVIC manual refers to as the Power Cord. This is the same connector that the speaker wires feed into. Any chance that your installers just cut the wire off, because they didn't think it was needed? This same connector should have the pink speed sensor wire and the violet-white reverse gear wire. The medium green and medium green w/black stripe wires are the + and - feeds for the left rear speaker. You don't want to ground these. By contrast, the light green wire for parking is a very pale green. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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