First time poster and am wondering what is the signal that the D3 needs to activate its night mode. My vehicle has a messed up wiring harness that has no illumination wire and I am wondering if a simple +12V or a ground signal to that wire on a switch will activate the darker background. Thanks for any answers.
yes, 12v. if you dont have illumination at the radio you can use your parking lights. what kind of car?
Turn on your lights. It should go into night mode if its set to nighttime in the settings. Of course your illumination wire must be hooked up.
Thanks for the replies. I will run a switch from a 12v source, and its a pontiac sunfire with the weird wire harness that requires me to keep the stock head unit in the car for various functions.
The only function you need the stock radio for is the door chimes. Regardless of what anyone else tells you. even that can be taken caare of by use of an interface.
yep an interface will do (pac-audio.com should do the trick) and if you dont have an illumination (i have a pontiac g6) and I tapped into the HVAC control for my illumination function.
all you need to do is use a multimeter (a simple light up one should do) ground the top end, and poke around in the wires and see which one dims the light (or if you have a digital multimeter, watch the voltage fluxuate according to the dimmer)
what I did in my car is start by testing the wires behind the actual dimmer knob (cause there are fewer wires) found the wire (light gray for me) and it was the same exact color in the hvac controls so it was easy to locate.
I hope this helps to some extent. I know not having the illumination wire can be a pain. if it is constantly on 12v, it may be too dim in the day and if not hooked up will be way too bright at night. And its a pain to keep adjusting it or flipping a switch to change it.
I appoligize, not pac-audio.com but in order to keep your chimes, you may need the harness at this site
http://www.scosche.com/scosche_caraudio ... goryID=228
I was assuming you have an 04 or 05 sunfire. if you have a different year, you can just go to http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/New-Scos ... otohosting
hopes this helps a little more
can someone explain the automatic night mode switch again. I did not understand from reading this thread. i have the "illumination" wire not hooked up to anything. I have a 03 tiburon. what do i need to do to get it to switch automatically to night/daytime mode. thanks!!!
Radio Illumination pink/black + radio harness
this will automatically dim the screen. you have to turn nite mode on to automatic in your menu for that to work too
thanks for the quick reply. i have no pink cable in the harness... just found this color code for my car though:
EIA color code
Wire color - Wire function
Black - Vechile Ground (12V-)
Blue - Power Antenna
Blue/White - Remote Turn On (12V+)
Gray - Right Front Speaker Positive (RF+)
Gray/Black - Right Front Speaker Negative (RF-)
Green - Left Rear Speaker Positive (LR+)
Green/Black - Left Rear Speaker Negative (LR-)
Orange - Illumination/Dimmer
Red - Ignition/ Switched (12V+)
Violet - Right Rear Speaker Positive (RR+)
Violet/Black - Right Rear Speaker Negative (RR-)
White - Left Front Speaker Positive (LF+)
White/Black - Left Front Speaker Negative (LF-)
Yellow - Battery/ Constant (12V+)
do i assume correctly to connect "ill" to "orange"? thanks.
those arent your car colors, those are your metra harness colors
oh, ok. which color should i connect "ill" to then? or is it none of these?
the orange wire on that harness goes to the orange/white on your avic. that should line up with the pink/black in your radio harness
got it. it's too dark to do it now. will do it tomorrow evening and let you know if successful. thanks a bunch for the help!!!
cable plugged in, setting set to "illu" instead of "auto" - now works like a charm. thanks again.
i hav to try this out
cuz i cant seem to get nightmode to work
If you have two wires (one is illumination on/off and the other is illumination dimmer) will the avic d3 adjust the brightness based on the input voltage or will it just keep a single setting?
No, The illumination (nightmode) is either on or off. If you hook the ill wire of the d3 to the dimmer wire in the veicle, there is a possibility that the avic won't switch to nightmode if the dimmer setting is too low.
how do i change my illumination to auto?
i am sure my ill wire is hooked up to my 2000 honda accord
but i dont know where to change the setting to auto
please help me
A little off topic. I sometimes like driving in the daytime with my lights on and that automatically dims the. Is there anyway to disable that feature in the settings?
argh~
gotta pull out the HU again to reconnect the ILL wire...it's connected to the harness, i donno why it's not switching to nightmode...argh~ 