I woke up at 4 am this morning and heard a bass beat that seemed to be playing outside in the distance somewhere. I thought it was one of the neighbor kids blasting their stereo with no respect to sleeping neighbors. I just ignored it and went back to sleep. But this morning when I tried to start my car it wouldn't even try to start. The battery was completely dead. So I'm pretty sure the empeg switched itself on sometime in the middle of the night and started playing. Has this ever happened to anyone? I've had it for almost a year now and this is the first time this happened. I usually park in my garage so I usually don't bother taking out the empeg when at home, but I guess I'll be doing that from now on.

There have been a couple of other reports of this type of thing. Nothing has really been determined, though.

Is it possible that you went out to the car at some point and switched the ignition on and quickly back off? That would make the empeg start up but not see the switch off, which could cause this if, for some reason, you didn't hear it as you were leaving (remember that it takes a while for the empeg to boot up and it's possible that it was on a quiet song right then).

Your car doesn't have any electrical problems, does it? I wouldn't expect the empeg to randomly decide to come on unless something else was going on that triggered it (or that it never turned off but I'd have guessed you'd have noticed that)

By any chance did this problem occur after you had done a synchronization?

There is a seldom-seen bug where the empeg doesn't turn off when you shut your car off. This only happens when something (nobody seems to know just what) goes wrong with a synchronization, and doing a re-synch will fix the problem.

tanstaafl.

In all the time I have had my empeg, (Mark I, II and IIa all grouped togther), it has happened once. I know for sure the empeg went into standby when it happened, and based on the position in the playlist, it started playing again before my standby timeout ot 15 minutes expired.

I never figured out the cause, and haven't seen it happen again. Lowering the standby of my player would probably greatly decrease the chances of it happening again.

It was in the middle of a song when I turned off the ignition, so I know it went into standyby. That was at about 5:30 pm or so. I didn't return at all to the car that night so no one was messing with the ignition. There aren't any electrical problems in my car that I know of, but this might suggest otherwise. I haven't done any syncronization for a couple weeks. I'm not sure when it started playing but it I heard it at 4am when I woke up. I got the battery recharged for free at autozone and now everything is working fine again. At the very least, if I don't pull out the player from now on, I'll shut it off before turning off the ignition.

The whole time the player is in standby there is the risk of it randomly receiving a valid IR code to turn back on, just from random noise. This is VERY unlikely to happen. Then again, I've only heard of a couple of instances of this ever happening so it could be an explaination.

Rob

DON'T leave it in the car under ANY circumstances. There is no way you can replace this unit now, and it's highly unlikely you'll see it's like again. Break ins (to order) through garages, static locks, and into cars, are not unknown, especially if it's observed you regularly leave it in the car.

There is currently a slow, but definite rise in the number of thefts of empegs/Riocars - don't get added to the list

I once had this happen when the stereo cover was closed, so it's unlikely to have received stray IR. But it was only once, and I didn't flatten my battery, so I didn't mention it here. And normally I remove the player from the car.

I have had it come on at night in the house several times, but stray IR is a (small) possibility there.

I now park outside at my current residence (renting top floor in a nice area) but there's no way I'll leave the empeg in at night. I do at work, but that's in an underground garage with badge access, security cameras and security patrols. Plus a few more hundred cars with goodies to steal. In the old office building I used to carry it in all the time. I'll likely start doing this again anyway, even though no thefts have ever been reported in our parking garage.

Last night when out at a dance club, my girlfriend's car was openned and contents stolen. I feel so bad because I was the one who suggested she park in the particular garage. We're not sure if the doors were openned with a slim-jim or if they were accidentally left unlocked (the battery in her remote key-fob hs been acting up). She's pretty sure it was locked when we left however.

Last night we thought the thieves grabbed only her CD folder (containing about 100-120 CDs). This afternoon she realized they also took a bag that had a new Palm Pilot m505, her paper-based agenda for work and much work-related contact information). This was in the back seat somewhere with the CDs. And fron the trunk they took a laptop bag with its contents: a laptop. Work's machine but still a pain in the ass. They left her large gym bag in the trunk and left her car stereo (she had even left the shiny alu face in place that night - not normal for her).

Aside from morals learned, it's all a big pain in the ass because of some opportunists. Looks like now I'll be buying a shiny new Yamaha burner and will be making backups of any of my CDs she wants and backups of the ones she has left and anything else she buys. Glad I hadn't set up my extra empeg in her car. Maybe I can set her up with one of the new Rio portables hen they're released.

Death is too good for thieves. (I don't want to hear any jokes about me backing up my own CDs for her - we won't bot be listening to the same selections at the same time )

Bruno