I have an SWI-PS steering wheel control box hooked up to my AVIC-Z1. Sometimes my controls on thesteering wheel don't do anything when I use it. My installer says that thisis normal and it happens. I asked him to re program the SWI-PS to the steering wheel and he said it won't matter and that it will probably stillwork sometimes and sometimes it won't. Is anyone else finding the same issue with this or is my installer just plain too lazy to re-program it.

No that is not normal. Mine is rock solid. It takes a longer press than it did with the stock radio. The old radio took 1/10 second press to register a press and the SWI-PS takes about 1/2 second maybe a little more to register a press of the button.

Seems to be the SWI-PS takes samples over and over looking for the resistaces in the steering wheel controls and when it sees one it need to take multiple readings before "seeing" the button press, then it relays the press to the Z1.

So there is a delay of maybe 1 second at most.

Also there are many "modes" the SWI-PS can be in depending on the type of car. I don't know how they differ. But you can go to their web site and contact them. The guy who does the tech support there (or at least the guy I talked to) was VERY helpful and very knowledgable.

http://www.pac-audio.com/contact/contact.asp

Just email at (and they hid this on their page to reduce spam so I will hide it as well out of respect):

techsupport *AT* pac-audio.com

If you are just tapping the button and not giving it a real solid press, then your installer is right, it takes longer of a press to register than the stock stereo did. But if sometimes you press it and hold it and nothing ever happens, then it sounds to me it's either not programmed right or you have a defective SWI-PS.

Thanks DucatiBoy....I will contact him regading this...I didn't think that sounded normal. He said that it was a real pain to program it, so maybe he didn't do it right. Thanks again.

It can be a pain but only because it can be confusing how to program what switch to what function on the SWI-PS. You can't just arbitrarily punch a button on the steering wheel and expect the module to know what you want done. There is a specific order in the module that has to be followed. If, for example, you want to program the mute function in the module, you have to skip (through programming techniques) to that function in the module. Otherwise, you get "lost" and you end up with switches that don't work or perform the wrong function.

By the way, if you skip a function, then want to go back and add it because you were following the order of the switches on the wheel instead of the order in the module, you can't. You have to start over and you lose everything you previously programmed.