Are you still running emphatic?

I think the question of whether Paul is running emphatic is more relevant to figuring this out. Just so we're all clear, I have no idea how anything in emphatic could cause this. But it's certainly within the realm of possibility.

Aight, you can throw the emphatic theory out the window too.

Over my lunch break in the car it played fine, as well as most of the day on my desk. As soon as i put it in for the car ride home though... same thing. Standy standy standy... this time with more frequency... every few seconds. I finally got to the emphatic menu, turned it off, and was good for 5 minutes... but *blip*... out of nowhere it went back into standby and kept doing it. Every time i did get to turn emphatic off, it would go way longer, 5-10 minutes before going into standby again. But, it looks like emphatic wasn't it. I'm going to run some diagnostics right now, then remove emphatic from the config.ini and see if that does anything. I can't seem to reproduce it while on AC power though... it works fine.

brb...

k... RAM check and boot up messages are all normal. I removed emphatic from the config.ini... so i guess i'll have to wait til tomorrow morning to see if it has any effect.

do all of you that this happens to have a Tuner??

I still have that battery icon on everytime i start my player in the car. Even if the car has been running for hours. It only started happening w. a certain HiJack version and few other people noted the same thing. But everyone thinks I'm nuts so I've gotten used to it. Maybe the Subby doesn't put out much juice and that hijack version was the first to point it out.

I dont have a tuner installed.
MK2A with emphatic, empacman, and emptris installed.
Hijack v320

Have you tried the obvious and relfashed a standard kernel? It does seem like an odd problem, so perhaps it's a hardware problem. What do you mean by "every time you start your car"? Does it just come on for a seccond and then go away? It's fairly standard for the starter to trip the battery icon if it's booted to that point already.

Matthew

Greetings!

Followup from the previous post:

I only run hijack with the illumination and volume adjust running. I do not have any third party software running while in the car (games, emphatic, etc.). I reserve a little extra memory for applications with the reservecache command. I do not have a tuner module connected - when I get source bouncing, it goes from mp3 to aux.

It is a very rare event for me, but it does not appear to be tied to the file playing at the time. I have also (again, very rarely) seen the player bounce OUT of standby when connected to AC at the desk.

I am guessing that the player was somehow receiving command signals either from serial or through the IR. That signal might have been from something in the background, a bad connection / ground, or just some kind of "jitter" on the lines. I was going to turn on the IR monitoring functions of hijack to test, but since it is so infrequent, never bothered.

In reply to:

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What do you mean by "every time you start your car"?

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He said every time he starts the player - even if the car has been running for ages. I see the same thing - even on AC power - more often than not. I get it nearly every time I bring it out of standby.

okay, it did it again on the way to work after uninstalling emptris.
this time however i only had to press the top button to bring it out of stanby 5 times before it decided to play the rest of the drive to work. I'm stumped and this is getting REALLY annoying.

Is it safe to say we can rule out a power issue since i'm not getting the battery icon? What are all the things that COULD make it go into standby. I've ruled out random IR, all the Hijack countown functions, and i think power issues. What else could it be? Ignition sense maybe?

Ignition sense maybe?

Hmmm. What happens (on an unaffected player) if you turn off the ignition, turn the player back on, turn the ignition back on, and turn the ignition off again? Does it stay awake that time or does it turn ``off''?

If it turns off, I can see that it might well be the ignition line. Do you have a multimeter to check it? But, I forget, didn't someone say they saw this on AC power, too?

Yeah, i have a multimeter i can check with. THe thing is this has never happened before just the other day... seemingly randomly and out of nowhere. I guess a wire might be giggling loose somewhere. I'll have to run that check later.

i've never seen this on AC power though... which sorta narrows it down to the car.

i'm gonna uninstall everything within' the next week or so anyhow... so i might not even bother ripping it all up to test it.

I forgot to do the test Bitt suggested... but here's some new observations.

as soon as i put it in the car, it goes into standby in a matter of seconds. I press the top button to wake it, and back into standby again after a few seconds. Rinse and repeat 5 times or so... and it will work for a long time. The length of time is pretty random, anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. But, every time i reseat it... same thing... it goes into standby after a few seconds etc... This is reproduceable.

the other thing is that every once and a while it will go into Tuner mode before it goes into standby, then when i wake it up it's in AUX mode! WTF is that?! Makes me not think it's a power issue ... since i don't know of anyway that a power issue would affect which audio mode it's in.

Hugo/Rob/Patrick/Roger??? Any of you empeg boys have a clue on this one? It's driving me nuts!

You're sure the ignition-sense wire isn't getting random voltage fluctuations for some reason?

Also, is there anyone else physically in your area, so you can try the player in their dock / their player in your dock?

You're sure the ignition-sense wire isn't getting random voltage fluctuations for some reason?

Not sure... as i said before i'm not gonna rip the dash open yet since i'm taking it all out soon anyhow. But the fact that it switches to Tuner/Aux sometimes during the whole mess makes me think it's not ignition sense related... unless someone can say how that would cause the switch to happen.

so you can try the player in their dock / their player in your dock?

why didn't i think of it before... duh. I'm going to bring along my spare empeg to work today and see if it exhibits the same thing. The everyday empeg is a MkII and the spare a MkIIa..... that shouldn't matter though.

Greetings!

It shouldn't matter. If it is the sled / wiring, you should see the same behavior. Does your spare have the same software configuration on it, or is it stock?

okedokee... as was predicted... same behavior with the backup empeg. A little different, but we'll chalk it up to randomness.

SO... i guess i'll have to do some dashboard rippin' to figure this one out. the whole "switch to AUX or Tuner" thing is what's confusing the hell out of me.

Could it be something with Patrick's Tuner kit? And when i say that, i mean something I did to screw up Patricks Tuner kit?

Greetings!

I wouldn't think it was the tuner kit. However, if the kit was a recent installation, perhaps one of the wires on the sled pulled out of the harness, is loose or otherwise causing problems. You might also want to check your serial cable.

Could it be something with Patrick's Tuner kit? And when i say that, i mean something I did to screw up Patricks Tuner kit?

Hm. Did you say that you had a steering wheel remote? Is it one of the wired remotes, sony-style, plugged into the tuner module? If so, those things work on resistance. And random resistance values might do exactly what you're describing.

Question... Were you one of the folks who'd accidentally installed one of the tuner kit's components upside-down at first? If so, which component? Perhaps that did something to make the tuner kit get random fluctuations from the steering-wheel-remote electronics and is causing the behavior you're seeing.

For what it's worth, my player with the tuner kit exhibits none of the symptoms you're describing. But then again, my kit worked the first time.

perhaps one of the wires on the sled pulled out of the harness, is loose or otherwise causing problems

that's what i'm thinking at the moment. It's either that or the tuner...

Is it one of the wired remotes, sony-style, plugged into the tuner module?

nope. it's a Pioneer IR one.

Were you one of the folks who'd accidentally installed one of the tuner kit's components upside-down at first?

nope.

But then again, my kit worked the first time.

mine did too... sorta. i was only seeing problems with reception due to a bad grounding on my part.

I guess the next logical step would be to remove the tuner from the equation. Then if it's still happening check the sled wiring etc...

nope. it's a Pioneer IR one.

Okay, well, diagnostic step still stands: Remove that, or take its battery out, and see if the same problem still happens. Maybe the thing is malfunctioning. That's an easy step since it doesn't involve tearing up the dash.

That's a good question, Tony - I once had a (factory) tuner that exhibited symptoms of random stalk presses (even if the stalk was unplugged from the tuner module). The only cure was to unplug the tuner from the sled. I don't think we ever did find out what was wrong with that tuner. I've not heard of anyone else having the same problem, but I guess we can't rule it out.

okay Tony... don't make me flog you with the RTFT stick... I mentioned twice that i removed the remote from the equation. =] Besides... the spare empeg doesn't have the button translations in it's config, so it wouldn't even see it.

okay Tony... don't make me flog you with the RTFT stick... I mentioned twice that i removed the remote from the equation.

Sorry. Flog away.

That's a good question, Tony - I once had a (factory) tuner that exhibited symptoms of random stalk presses (even if the stalk was unplugged from the tuner module).

Hmm, sounds very similar, doesn't it? Would be interesting to get to the bottom of this one.

Yeah... that would explain it. i'm guessin' once i remove the tuner, it'll go away. I guess i'll do it over lunch and see...

I had similar problems which was solved by one of two things. (It happened with an original tuner module)

1. Was using a tuner extension cable
2. I tapped power from the tuner extension cable for my cellphone handsfree kit.

When I got rid of the extension cable and tapped power somewhere else for the handsfree kit the problems went away. Did both at the same time so I don't know which was the cause. Anyway you might want to check your tuner to empeg connections to make sure they are correct.

Oh...wait a moment.

Check you tuner's wiring connections. I saw something incredibly similar yesterday, but with the normal serial port. I was configuring a linux laptop to listen on the serial port (for kernel debug purposes) and when I toggled the Hardware Flow Control setting with the empeg connected, the empeg promptly went into shutdown mode, and also switched modes on me...I couldn't reproduce it at will though.

Since both the regular serial port's and the tuner connection's UARTs are built into the ARM processor, it is possible that they would have a common effect if something unexpected happened.

I'm not sure which of the standard RS232 lines the tuner port uses (aside from TxD/RxD)...but if one of them is badly or misconnected such that it is seeing a transient when it shouldn't then possibly this is the culprit.

The other thing that I should mention is that when I have my empeg connected to the laptop and connected to my workstations line-in at the same time, I can hear a ground loop. Annoying, but I can live with it for the occasions I need to debug serial output. But - it might be that the serial ground on the laptop is far enough from the empeg's logic ground to cause transient glitches that could possibly trigger such behaviour.

I wonder if somehow there is a groundloop from your antenna that could be having a similar effect.

A lot of 'ifs', I know. But it's too much of a coincidence for my liking.

1. Was using a tuner extension cable
2. I tapped power from the tuner extension cable for my cellphone handsfree kit.

not using the extension and not tapping the power....

)...but if one of them is badly or misconnected such that it is seeing a transient when it shouldn't then possibly this is the culprit.

hmmm... now you're talkin... that would make sense. I didn't get time to take the tuner how at lunch, but i'll have to check it. If it IS the tuner, which i'm betting, it could be a crappy connection somewhere... possibly even on the board connections, though i checked them all for shorts and good joints before... but i'll check it all again once i get it out. Could be something with the molex too. hm. Hahah... i bet if i just wiggle some wires around it'll go away. It didn't happen at all over lunch on my way to the skate park. =]

Not relevant, but this...

when I toggled the Hardware Flow Control setting with the empeg connected, the empeg promptly went into shutdown mode

...reminded me of something.

I was playing with the Windows Media SDK yesterday. One of MS' sample applications reproducibly rebooted my car player. If I disconnected the serial cable, all was well.

The sample application was supposed to be enumerating sound card devices, so I don't know what it was doing playing with my serial port...