Is it at all possible to connect to constant 12v not the accessory ignition and use a manual switch to power off the unit?

So you leave the unit powered while you run in and do something quick and it stays on and no boot up time when you leave. Just got to remember to switch it off.

I've seen carpc's that do this with no issue...possible for the F-series?

Yeah, that would be really easy, just connect the red ACC wire from the stereo harness to your switch, and the switch to a 12V constant source (same place the yellow wire is hooked up to).

Yeah, that would be really easy, just connect the red ACC wire from the stereo harness to your switch, and the switch to a 12V constant source (same place the yellow wire is hooked up to).

Then as a safety feature in case you forget ....one of those sensing devices on your battery that disconnects it if the voltage drops to critical level to be able to start ....like this:

http://www.colehersee.com/pdf/hot_feed/ ... onnect.pdf

Warren C.

I agree with a lot of posters in here about the remote start. Just engage the remote start while the key is in the ignition, so you can take your keys out and set the alarm while you run into the convenient store. Eliminates having to start the engine again and waiting for the navi to boot.

Then as a safety feature in case you forget ....one of those sensing devices on your battery that disconnects it if the voltage drops to critical level to be able to start ....like this:

 

http://www.colehersee.com/pdf/hot_feed/ ... onnect.pdf

 

 

 

Warren C.

thx for that info! will have a look at this.

You could also pick up a Retained Accessory Power module. The ones from 90's GM F-bodies (early 4th gen I think) are apparently standalone modules. Just don't hook up the door trigger circuit to anything, and anytime you shut off the car, the stereo will stay on for 10-minutes.

... or pioneer could just fix the boot issue...

that would be the easy way... but yes, i know it almost can't be done. never shoulda been like this to begin with.

A simple fix for this would be for Pioneer to just enable hibernation on the OS. OR at the very least, enable it with a feature that it asks you when you turn off the car. "Do you want to hibernate or shut down?" "YES to Hibernate, NO to shut down" And that's it. would take maybe what 10 seconds to get it back to full functionality. I mean if they are going to use the Windows OS, they could make that work.

I am an installer for a very reputable company and as other people have said before remote start is the way to go. The reason is not only can you remote start it but when its running you can do a remote start sequence with the key in the ingition and pull the key out and it stays running. I do it all the time so my screen and IPOD stays booted.

I like the idea of the remote alarm/starter, but I have a manual 6-speed. I would need to remember to leave the car in neutral and hack the clutch pedal requirement.

There are new units designed for manual transmissions made by Directed Electronics, known as the the Responder LE series by Viper, Python, and Clifford. However it's finding a professional such as myself that is willing to install it because even though it's made for manual transmissions some companys won't allow it to be installed.

There are new units designed for manual transmissions made by Directed Electronics, known as the the Responder LE series by Viper, Python, and Clifford. However it's finding a professional such as myself that is willing to install it because even though it's made for manual transmissions some companys won't allow it to be installed.

The Python 872P looks like a decent unit. Looks like they can be had for $240ish. Now, to find someone that will do the install. What's an alarm install going to cost? 04 Cobra+AVID-F700BT+Responder LE =

Heres a little more info I looked into.. Windows Automotive aka CE 5 (whats on our junk) has suspend modes and even battery state modes. Heres the problem, we have no internal battery, ie no way for the system to detect a loss of main power and therefor use the bat to go into hibernation/Suspend mode.

I dont forsee us getting around this unless someone is willing to see if they can hardware a battery on it and detect a voltage drop to the batterys level to initiate suspend mode.

also any registry changes do not hold water after reboot, however anything changed in control panel does hold. strange i though but true.

I have used Windows Pocket PC devices and Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6.0 for a few years. I just dumped my HTC WM6.0 phone for other reasons, but I was surprised to see what Pioneer has done with the O/S on these units. If these units were not setup for hybernation then the system was doomed to fail from the design phase. I don't think Pioneer would intentionally taken that step during the design. Just to give you an idea, my HTC phone took about 30 seconds to hard boot and it included modules/software for the Phone, Contacts, Mail, Tasks, Bluetooth, GPS, WiFi, Windows Media among other things. The boot time is why people don't regularly turned their phones completely off, so the phone relies on an internal battery for standby mode.

Now these units may not have an internal battery, but what the heck do you call the 12V 60AMP power you got under hood? Come on, I think forcing the unit to hybernation is a no-brainer. I don't think there is a head unit out there that does not rely on continious power for simple things as keeping the internal clock running to more complex tasks as to speed up boot times.

I think this unit's standby mode might have been so buggy that Pioneer decided to excluded out of the ROM hopefully as a temporary measure. Maybe to avoid law suits on people's batteries getting drained or having too many hiccups after waking up. Essentially, if you think about it, the unit is doing a soft reset everytime you turnoff the ignition which allows for buggy software to start from scratch.

Anyway, I hope Pioneer get their act together. Every car stereo shop that I go to pretty much avoids talking about and selling pioneer units.

I have used Windows Pocket PC devices and Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6.0 for a few years. I just dumped my HTC WM6.0 phone for other reasons, but I was surprised to see what Pioneer has done with the O/S on these units. If these units were not setup for hybernation then the system was doomed to fail from the design phase. I don't think Pioneer would intentionally taken that step during the design. Just to give you an idea, my HTC phone took about 30 seconds to hard boot and it included modules/software for the Phone, Contacts, Mail, Tasks, Bluetooth, GPS, WiFi, Windows Media among other things. The boot time is why people don't regularly turned their phones completely off, so the phone relies on an internal battery for standby mode.

Now these units may not have an internal battery, but what the heck do you call the 12V 60AMP power you got under hood? Come on, I think forcing the unit to hybernation is a no-brainer. I don't think there is a head unit out there that does not rely on continious power for simple things as keeping the internal clock running to more complex tasks as to speed up boot times.

I think this unit's standby mode might have been so buggy that Pioneer decided to excluded out of the ROM hopefully as a temporary measure. Maybe to avoid law suits on people's batteries getting drained or having too many hiccups after waking up. Essentially, if you think about it, the unit is doing a soft reset everytime you turnoff the ignition which allows for buggy software to start from scratch.

Anyway, I hope Pioneer get their act together. Every car stereo shop that I go to pretty much avoids talking about and selling pioneer units.

Thats true there is 12v constant there but maybe they figure the power consumption in hibernation isnt worth it. Or they just fawked up.. Either way I really wish it would have some option for hibernation or sleep, as boot times do suck.. I have owned pioneer for many years and this is the first unit im not 100% pleased with... Go figure.

I thought I had come up with a super-simple way to defeat this for short stops (like pumping gas etc). I put a diode in series on the Red (acc/ignition) wire and a toggle switch between the red wire and the yellow (battery / constant power) line. The idea was, if I was just going to be out of the car for a minute or two, I flip on the toggle, then take the keys out. The nav unit stays powered and on. When I am back in the car, I turn the car back on, then turn off the toggle switch and continue on my way.

This way, when the switch is 'off' the unit works like normal, turning on and off with the car. But when the switch is 'on' the unit runs regardless of the car.

I wired it up and sure enough it seemed to work! Until I started the car... seems mine (2001 Rav4) draws too much power while cranking; the voltage to the HU dips and it resets itself... Guess I should have tested that before I did the wiring. Ah well... at least now I can turn it on and off and play around with test mode, without wearing out the key and the ignition.

In case anyone else is interested, I've attached the wiring diagram that I used. The switch is an automotive toggle, designed for 12v and 10 or 15 amps. The diode I used is a big rectifier, I didn't take note of the part number but it's good for over 6A which I think is more than enough in this case.

I thought I had come up with a super-simple way to defeat this for short stops (like pumping gas etc). I put a diode in series on the Red (acc/ignition) wire and a toggle switch between the red wire and the yellow (battery / constant power) line. The idea was, if I was just going to be out of the car for a minute or two, I flip on the toggle, then take the keys out. The nav unit stays powered and on. When I am back in the car, I turn the car back on, then turn off the toggle switch and continue on my way.

 

This way, when the switch is 'off' the unit works like normal, turning on and off with the car. But when the switch is 'on' the unit runs regardless of the car.

 

I wired it up and sure enough it seemed to work! Until I started the car... seems mine (2001 Rav4) draws too much power while cranking; the voltage to the HU dips and it resets itself... Guess I should have tested that before I did the wiring. Ah well... at least now I can turn it on and off and play around with test mode, without wearing out the key and the ignition.

 

In case anyone else is interested, I've attached the wiring diagram that I used. The switch is an automotive toggle, designed for 12v and 10 or 15 amps. The diode I used is a big rectifier, I didn't take note of the part number but it's good for over 6A which I think is more than enough in this case.

You might try replacing your battery cable since the car is 7 almost 8 yrs. old.That corrosion will cause more resistance and more voltage draw.It definately won't hurt and also change the starter cable.

both my rav4 (2001 / 2003) are doing the same. the moment i start the engine all radioheads (includiing the originals hu) i had are rebooting and starting again.

In most vehicles the action of turning the key into the crank position will turn off all electronics, this allows all power to be sent to the ignition system (in case you have electronics in the system that produce a significant current draw). This is pretty standard on most late model cars and can only be bypassed by connecting the constant 12v wire into the ACC wire on the back of the head unit and wiring a switch to turn the head unit on and off.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.