Question for Infill G4 Owners

twiglet · February 7th, 2008, 11:55 AM

I have recently got my Infill G4 unit fitted to my 2004 Audi A4.

I'm almost completely happy with everything so far.

Only issue is regarding keeping the thing in Standby.

At the moment i have centrafuse put the unit into standby when the ignition goes off. This works fine, and if i return to the car in less than 5 hours it will resume from standby and i'll be enjoying my windows powered goodness in less than 5 seconds.

However if i come back after 5 hours (eg the next day). The unit boots from scratch. It seems that the small amount of power needed to keep the unit in standby is being cut and it's being forced to boot up again.

The car audio people said that this is perfectly normal as it cannot be allowed to constantly drain the battery like that.

So my questions are:

1) Is it normal to cut the power off after so long? will the unit really eventually drain the battery (in such a short period of time)?

2) Does anyone use standby like this without any problems?

3) Is there any way around this? (apart from hibernation)

Thanks

jensemann · February 7th, 2008, 01:54 PM

Hi,

as an infill owner let me answer your questions..

- if you connect your device correctly than it's the power supply of the infill that triggers the standby. try it with cf closed: switch ignition off and the device should go into standby.

- your infill is kept in standby; the duration until it goes into hibernation is defined by the hardware and cannot be changed

- in my case the device keeps standby for 18h

- after 18h the infill goes into hibernation

- the reason for this behavior is to keep your battery alive since standby keeps ram and some other comp. under power.

this happens every sunday so every monday i waste some time ;-)

bye jensemann

twiglet · February 7th, 2008, 02:25 PM

yup it is wired correctly, when i turn the ignition off it triggers standby.

when you say "after 18h the unit goes into hibernation"

do you mean windows hibernation (S4)? so you're saying your unit goes from standby to hibernation after a certain amount of time?

because the power to mine is getting killed after 5 hours in standby, therefore clearing the ram etc and requiring a full boot

marassa · February 7th, 2008, 02:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by twiglet

However if i come back after 5 hours (eg the next day). The unit boots from scratch

Welcome to the club.

The unit shuts itself down when it thinks the car battery voltage has fallen too low. This threshold is set too high, so for many cars it only takes several hours to the automatic shutdown.

If your car battery is old and worn out you might try replacing it. Will not work for me as my battery is brand new (as well as the car) and it takes 8 to 12 hours to shutdown.

But it seems you have not noticed the real funny feature yet! Look at your system clock and date next time this happens - you're in for a surprise...

twiglet · February 7th, 2008, 02:58 PM

Thanks for the info. Didnt know if it was my car or the unit causing the power shutdown.
My battery has been tested and is apparently 95% like new, so i don't think that a new batt would improve things much.

Yeah the time thing is great isn't it. I have actually written a program that correctly (re)sets the time by talking to the GPS receiver and getting the time from the satellites. I'm going to give it a proper test tomorrow.

I think this would be a useful feature to add to centrafuse/destinator.
Something like "Synchronize time by using GPS".

It seems like more of a band aid than a solution though.
I'm curious to see what jensemann meant by the whole standby -> hibernation thing.

jensemann · February 7th, 2008, 07:37 PM

Hi !

sorry i mixed something.. my device shuts down after 18h, not s4 (sorry for the confusion)

WOW ! i thought the time date problem is related to a weak battery inside the infill !?

*please* let me know if your app is working fine, i really hate to re-set the time every monday morning ! many thanks in advance !!

==> "I think this would be a useful feature to add to centrafuse/destinator.
Something like "Synchronize time by using GPS"." <==

this would be another cool feature for cf to be added, an essential for g4 owners.

let me know if i can test something. test report follows every monday

Bye jensemann

jensemann · February 7th, 2008, 07:48 PM

check this: http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/mp3c...-drainage.html

twiglet · February 7th, 2008, 07:52 PM

Ah, that's a shame. It's really not good to let it turn off like that. It's the equivalent of just yanking the power while your pc is on.
I don't think there is a way around it in xp. But vista has a feature called hybrid sleep. Which basically puts the pc into standby immediately, then backs up the contents of ram to disk (aka hibernate). Then if the power goes (or after a period of time) it can resume from hibernation instead of standby without doing a full boot.
It would be very handy in this situation.

Does anyone know what the state of the Infill / Centrafuse is regarding Vista?
Without aero and a bit of tweaking i know the device can handle it, but i'm not sure about the drivers and compatibility. (plus i hate vista).

marassa · February 8th, 2008, 01:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by twiglet

Yeah the time thing is great isn't it. I have actually written a program that correctly (re)sets the time by talking to the GPS receiver and getting the time from the satellites.

I am lazier than you - I found a ready-made one:

http://www.coaa.co.uk/gpstime.htm

Since the clock screwup only happens after the unit shuts down, it seemed logical to me to put this program into Windows autostart menu. You still have to press Start though and the program would not fix the date, only time. If your program does better, I am interested in having it

twiglet · February 8th, 2008, 05:29 AM

haha i called mine gpstime too.
i'll try and post it later