I noticed this in the rev. 10 docs:

>>If powerfail is disabled due to low battery voltage or too many false
alarms a battery is displayed on the screen as a warning. <<

What exactly is "powerfail? " Thanks!





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What exactly is "powerfail? " Thanks!

Because the empeg-car is not permanently wired to power in the car (in most installations) and people expect to just unplug it at home without performing an orderly shutdown the unit needs a mechanism for saving the current playback position.

When the input voltage drops below around 11 volts a "powerfail interrupt" is raised and the unit has a few milliseconds to save its state before the power completely disappears.

If your battery voltage is low or intermittent, or when the battery voltage dips when starting the car this powerfail interrupt can be called. Once the powerfail is triggered it is automatically disabled. To differentiate between real power failure and dips in the power the empeg-car notices that after two seconds the power still hasn't really gone away (since it is still running) and there haven't been any more interrupts so it reenables things, turns the display back on and returns to normal.

However, if the unit continues to receive power fail interrupts then it cannot reenable them since the display would keep going on and off. In this situation it does the best it can by leaving them disabled and putting an indicator on the screen. If this happens then pulling the power will not save the state of the unit.

HTH

--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)

Thanks Mike, that is a nice feature.



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Can't the act of saving state, and the act of turning off display etc be seperated? This way, when it is receiving false powerfails, it can disable the screen and amp turnoff, but still save the current song position.

My empeg is way too sensitive to powerfail. For instance if the engine is off and the wipers are on intermittant, then everytime the wiper wipes the empeg turns off and on and displays the battery icon.

Not sure if it is the empeg or the car. I've got a few other issues with power. For instance under AC power if i unplug it and then plug it back in (eg to reboot it when schronising fails) then 2 out of three times it wont boot, and i have to keep power cycling it a few times to get it to boot.

I noticed something wierd in regards to the powerfail, although i'm willing to bet it was the adapter I was using.. I'm using a supposed 12V/2Amp radioshack adapter, which has worked fine in the past.. The adapter actually registers 15V when tested... Lately, I've noticed that the empeg likes to shut off and display the battery sign when using this adapter... It's probably just a bum adapter; i'll have to try it with the empeg adapter and see if the same thing happens..
-mark

...proud to have one of the first Mark I units

You need to check the voltage when it's under load - ie, attached to the empeg. My bet is that during peak current times like drive spinup, the voltage will sag to below 10v, hence the powerfail indicator.

Hugo

...I'll have to try that; I noticed when the adapter was charging the battery and powering the empeg, the empeg played fine (battery was probably giving it the extra boost it needed when it needed it..) - just when it's plugged in directly into that adapter, it keeps rebooting...
-mark
(piece of SH(*#% radioshack adapter..)

...proud to have one of the first Mark I units