Hi,

I just installed the leds behind the buttons, my suplier had no resistor array, but that's covered :-)

But when I put the player in my car the lights behind the buttons don't work for most of the time. If I readjust the "button illimunation level" they go on and work well as long as I don't shut down the player. If I start the riocar again then it starts from the beginning...

Strange thin is that when I use the player at home with external power cord I have no problems...

An other strange thing is that the "button illumination level" is not working for 100% anymore. I can readjust it what I want but it only shows '6' or 'MAX'

Has anybody any idea what's going on and what I can do to make it work well again?

tnx! greetings, Robert

Does your car's headlight-illumination-sense wire use pulse width modulation to control the dimming?

Just for the heck of it, try disconnecting that pin from the sled docking connector and see if the button illumination on the player works properly again.

how did you set up the resistors?

An other strange thing is that the "button illumination level" is not working for 100% anymore. I can readjust it what I want but it only shows '6' or 'MAX'


Can you clarify what you mean by this? MAX=100% when the headlights are off, and one step less when they are on. (Unless your car inverts it's dimmer line, in which case, reverse the above statement!)

The problem with the buttons in car mode is due ( I believe) to a race hazard between the player changing the display brightness, and the button LED code changing the button brightness. Both the button and display brightness are handled by the same PIC, and this PIC takes about 0.1 seconds to process a command...it's something I'm trying to find time to look into..I don't understand why it doesn't happen in AC mode though.

Can you try turning your headlights on and off, and see what happens?

http://empeg.comms.net/files/98167-resistors.jpg

For now that is...
In the weekend I'll replace this mess with some SMD resistors...

I've got no idea what my car (audi A3 model 2002) useses...
In the weekend I'll go and "play" with it some more, I'll post the outcome here...

Can you clarify what you mean by this?
If I want to reajust the 'button illumination level' in the hijack menu I can only choose between [MAX] and [6]
No matter how long I turn the knob...

Ahhh.

Try turning the knob one click at a time, and waiting for the display to change. There's possibly 2 things going on here:

1) The logic for the knob encoder can mistreat fast turns in one direction to mean a slow turn in the other direction. I have no idea why this is - I haven't ever looked at/touched this code.

2) The button LEDs implementation in the PIC doesn't (unfortunately) include a way to decrease the brightness, only to switch the LEDS on, off or increase the brightness in 5% steps. So when you try to decrease the brightness, what actually happens is the LEDs get turned off, and then brightened to the new (less bright) level. I've already mentioned that the timing of the PIC is slow, so this chain of commands takes time to execute. Be patient with it, and it should work.

There is another workaround for this. The top button should reset the button LEDs to 'Off'. Then use the knob to increase the level. (ie, doing the same thing manually).

The whole button LED code is due a re-work, as soon as I can find time to do it.

I still think it's PWM on the headlight sense line confusing the code.

I've got no idea what my car (audi A3 model 2002) useses..


Actually, he may not even have a dimmer line connected to the empeg. I've heard that 2002 VWs apparantly don't and communicate via CAN bus. Audi is also part of the VAG group, and there's a lot of common ideas & parts between the 2 manufactureres.

But if hes has the CAN bus connected to the empeg's dimmer line, that could certainly cause some interesting effects

Try turning the knob one click at a time
done that

The top button should reset the button LEDs to 'Off'. Then use the knob to increase the level.

When I press the top button the lights go [OFF]
Then I slowly turn the knob one click at a time, the level increases by one with each click until it's at [6] then it jumps to [MAX]

But if hes has the CAN bus connected to the empeg's dimmer line

That's 100% sure *NOT* the problem

I've tested some more:
When the riocar is off and then switched on the button lights stay off (the level in the menu shows [MAX] )
If I put the riocar in standby (press top button 2sec) and then back on the button lights work well....
This all with the dimmer line connected to ground, +12V or nothing

Looks like my button lights don't like cold starts...

It's not just you...all of us seem to suffer from slightly different symptoms when booting. My LEDs don't come on often if I boot with my headlights off, but a quick flick of my headlights will make them come on...the recovery from standby is not something I've explicitly tried..anyway, as soon as I get some time I'm intending to rework the button LED code to try and get the boot-up to be more robust.

The jump from 6 to max is by design. There's only 8 states, 0-6 and max. This limitation is because there is very little flash memory available for storing the level at shutdown. (Again, an issue to be looked at - at the moment there is no distinction between home and car modes for button LEDs.)

Actually, more states than the seven we have would probably not be very useful, either.. The darned thing is almost always too bright.

Cheers

Yeah, I'm contemplating removing the flash-based levels in favor of config.ini based levels anyway...it'll give more flexability to be able to specify AC/DC/home/work settings which some people have wanted. But that is going to wait until after I've worked out how to make the button LED/ display brightness interactions race-free. Semaphores don't seem to do it. Command byte queuing maybe?

BTW, I'm having trouble downloading the latest .patch file. The binaries are fine, but I don't seem to get a response from the request for the .patch.

[edit: scratch that...it eventually responded. I have no idea why it took so long when the binary was instant.]

The darned thing is almost always too bright.


Just thought - what resistor pack are you using? Brian changed it at some point. IIRC, it used to be 330R, but he changed it to 1k.

I like the flash-based level. One less reason to require a PC just to make a simple adjustment on the road.

Cheers

Yeah, I have the smaller value pack.

But even the many boards I've done soldering on (with 1K packs) seem very bright as well.

Cheers

Ok....I'll keep that in mind

Incidentally, I've noticed that on v278, reboot always garbles the screen. I'm not talking about the quick garble followed by correct behaviour, but totally garbled, requiring a power down. I've also noticed that if init_temperature is commented out in hijack_init() that this problem goes away. Any ideas?

i think you all are on the right track. there seems to be some oddities with the current implementation

- do the LED flicker on any button press for everyone? is this related to the race condition?

- my LEDs stay on after power down. and eventually shut off. perhaps their power source is the same that powers the blinking LED after power-down

- when turning lights on and off, i am experiencing all sorts of weird behavior: sometimes the LEDs shut off, sometimes they go to full brightness, and sometimes the display goes dim. I installed the .01 uF cap per the fix, but am still experiencing the problems.

- i would like to set the illumination level for when the headlights are on, and when they are off. personally, i would prefer them off (or dim) during the daytime, and bright at night (opposite of the display).

regards
-ted

I installed my button kit yesterday (4-LED knob board - way cool!) and am experiencing these problems.

1. It is very difficult to select the illumination level, because the button control PIC also controls the LED's, and there is a conflict condition. The fix would probably be for Hijack to wait until the knob is no longer being turned before sending an updated brightness command to the display board.

2. The illumination flickers when the knob is rotated or buttons pressed - fact of life (see 1).

3. The headlight sense completely confuses the illumination code - I usually lose the LED's after switching my headlights on, until I pull the player and reboot. The empeg headlight sense code works fine.

4. My LED's also stay lit after power down, until the shutdown timeout when everything switches off. I thought that might have been a feature.

Rob

Yeah, the same PIC handles button input, button LEDS and display, and conflicts are hard to avoid. The LEDs stay on in standby at the moment, by design - if there is power, the LEDS are on. When I rework this code then the addition of being able to specify standby_button_led in config.ini is likely (someone else already requested it). That will automatically allow for different standby levels depending on AC/DC/home/work locations.

Rob, what version of HJ are you using? I made a change to the dimmer detection logic in v263, that should have improved detection for most people, although I know it made it worse for Fusto.

I'm gonna bump a "Button LED feedback wanted" thread in General...

Hijack 278.

Rob

Hi Rob,

>4. My LED's also stay lit after power down

That's a feature, which you can control in config.ini using the buttonled_off=n option in the [hijack] section.

I agree that the headlight sense is all futzed up at this point. For example, if your lights are already on when starting the car, the buttons come on at the "power down level". Most noticeable when using "buttonled_off=0" in config.ini.

Perhaps I'll fix that soon, I really haven't touched it since the initial implementation.

Cheers

Okay, I got disgusted with the current buttonLED illumination code, and reworked a bit of it today. The result is now out as part of Hijack v280.

The Headlight sense code is completely rewritten -- let me know if it causes trouble, and if so, what kind of vehicle.

I added a 1/2 second delay in the control panel, so that it has a better chance of adjusting the illumination without interference from the user cranking the old knob at the same time. Cannot guarantee success here of course, humans being the random minded creatures we are.

Finally, I added a flag to arbitrate access between the player software and the Hijack illumination adjustment code, though I doubt the two ever really were in much conflict before.

Cheers

a bit late :-(

I'm now running v291 and the buttons work 100%
thanks!

Greetings, Robert