For a while now, my empeg has been behaving oddly in the car. The main problem is that very often when I start the car, the empeg will boot up properly, but then go to "sleep" mode (screen off plus blinking LED) as soon as it's done initializing. Pressing a button always wakes it up. It does not always do this, but it does very often. It's hard to reproduce. If I have it playing, turn off the car, and wait for the empeg to turn off completely, the vast majority of the time it comes back on properly, without going to "sleep". But I have seen it do the wrong thing at least once during this sort of testing. Oddly, if I leave it in the car and go do my errand (I know -- let's not go off on that tangent), 99% of the time, it does do the wrong thing.

Initially, I was assuming that it was turning on in the car when it shouldn't and that was putting it in "sleep" mode so that when it came back on properly, it started in "sleep" mode. This makes a lot of sense, really, since I have an IR Translate power-on macro that turns the player off when booted up in AC mode, and if the AC socket was twitchy, it could easily do this. However, I've watched it start up in sleep mode when the last mode it was in was definitely "awake". It's also not thinking that it's in AC mode, as I've checked to make sure the DC-only options are there, plus the power-on macro takes about half a second to activate, during which I can see the player app running, and I do not ever see the player app when it does the "sleep"-on-start thing in-car.

Also, I've swapped my empeg out with my backup, and it does the same thing, so I don't think that it's an internal empeg problem. It started happening when I upgraded Hijack at some point (which version I don't remember), but I think that was coincidence, although I haven't actually tried revving down. I'm inclined to say that it's a wiring problem in the dash, especially since I was unhappy with the job of the person that installed it to begin with, but I'm not sure what that problem could be. I'd say that maybe the accessory line isn't connected well, so that when I start the car, it turns the empeg on, but then seems to be off by the time it gets started, but I've never seen the empeg fail to turn on at all, and a line that's intemittent in only one way seems unlikely.

I have also, on rare occaasion, seen the empeg start up without turning the car on, though this definitely isn't the cause of the problem I just described, as, again, I've definitely seen that problem without the empeg starting up on its own. I've not had the backup in place long enough to determine if it also does this. So this problem could be related or not.

So, anyone have any ideas?

In the last few weeks I've noticed a couple misses shutdown events. Two of them were yesterday one right after the other, so things may be getting more reproducible. I turn off the car, and my empeg just keeps play. Turning the key to accessory and back always turns it off. I don't know what's causing it, but it seems to be a similar problem.

Matthew

Hmm. Mine never does that. It always shuts down when I tell it to, and always starts up when I tell it to.

Does it have a tuner module? Investigate the possibility of stray stalk commands. Use the hijack command in config.ini to disable the stalk and see if you can reproduce the bug. Also investigate the possibility of twitchy IR sensor (the missed interrupts thing).

I do have a tuner module. I'll check that out. GIven that it happens on two different units, I don't think it's a bad IR sensor, tho.

Nope. It was already set to "Don't have a stalk".

Anyone else have any notions? Or any debugging technique suggestions?

I see this happen a lot but I always assume that I put the player into Standby before leaving the car and forgot that I did.

I virtually never put the player into standby in the car, so that's not it.

You're right. I forgot about that. I'll give it a shot.

Mine also does this quite regularly and I never put it in standby. I do have a tuner also. I believe it started happening around the time v3a5 came out.

Currently using v3a8 it happens about 1 in 4 times for me.

Nope. "stalk_enabled=0" didn't solve it. I kinda thought it wouldn't, as I never saw any other weird behavior. The only thing that goes wrong is that sometimes the player is asleep on startup. Occasionally, it'll reawaken at a later ignition time (never just driving around, though) even if I didn't awaken it by hand before. This indicates to me that it's not remembering a state, but that there's something wrong at each individual boot.

Is it possible that too-low voltage somewhere could cause the player to sleep on boot? Like maybe there's enough power to turn the player on, but by the time it gets the player app running it's too low? Could someone out there (whose player works properly) try turning their ignition on, wait for the empeg to start booting, then cut it off again before the player app starts and see what happens? If it goes to sleep, I'll check the voltage on my ignition line.

I've seen this happen occasionally. Not enough to be sure when it started though.

Running v3a8 on hijack v401.

Yip,

I have exactly the same "feature", there doesn't seem to be an exact pattern except it does happen 75% of the time. One thing I find is that the volume is always reset to zero, ie i just turn up volume to activate the empeg.

Ger.

Yeah, I've seen this a few times too, and volume being at 0 is what has been throwing me off.

OT, gmaguire is another member of the WRX/empeg club! My friend Nate finally installed his Rio in his WRX this weekend as well..

If the volume is reset to 0, then odds are it's losing the flash memory setting. Does it also reset its position in the playlist and forget things like the balance and dimmer settings?

While I have no problem with helping someone else in this thread, I'll just point out that my volume does not reset, nor do any other settings.

Yay - welcome gmaguire! I'm doing my best to persuade 2 others (I got them both to buy Scoobies, now just working on the empeg half of the deal )

Oh, and mine never does this. And believe me, I do test its G-rating extensively!

I noticed this recently also. I'm using Hijack 411, version 2.0final,Tuner.Volume also rest to 0,and different playlist position. Emphatic is installed but not running at bootup.Will have to check balance and dimmer settings.

You know...my mind is starting to drift around some theories about this. Nothing but speculation at this point...

Every time the empeg starts up, it selects a new area of flash to save it's settings in. This is done to prevent the flash from wearing out. This is done by the kernel.

When the empeg notices a power fail, it goes through several events, one of which is that the data is saved to the pre-selected flash area, hopefully before the capacitor drains and the power fails totally. All of this is also done by the kernel. What is interesting is that in early hardware (pre- 'issue9' ) the kernel used to shut down the display first to conserve power, but in later evolutions the display uses a PIC which requires a relatively slow command to shut it down - hence the display is not shut off until after the flash has been saved. Presumably a screen with a lot of lit pixels requires more energy than a screen with few lit pixels.

I'm theorizing that this problem, and the occasional playlist forgetfulness problem, may both be symptoms of the same issue - the player running out of power before the whole flash area is written. I'm not honestly sure what happens at the next boot if that happens. I presume it reverts to the previously used block.

Now, IIRC, there is a kernel (compile time) debug option that will print "The quick brown fox..." on the serial port as soon as powerfail is detected, so that you can see how long the power lasts. I wonder whether it is worth enabling this and testing to see if this a problem.

Assuming that I am on the right track, why are we seeing this now? Perhaps a recent kernel change has exacerbated the issue. I can't recollect anything that would do that but it can't be ruled out yet. Another thought is that maybe the capacitors (in the PSU section) have degraded such that their capacitance is not as high as when the empeg guys tested it. The temperatues involved aren't considered particularly high though (high temperatures accelerate electrolyte loss.)

I'm not sure you're on the right track there genixia.

The playlist forgetfulness seems to be solved with v3a8 for me - it never forgets now. Occasionally it does seem to forget it's position in the song and just goes back to 0:00 though. I believe I remember this happening very occasionally back with v2.

I'm 99% certain it's v3 thing and possibly v3a7 or v3a8 to be specific.

Occasionally I have been noticing my tuner disappear too. I don't use it much so I'm not sure how often if happens. If I simply reboot via Hijack (i.e. not removing and reinserting which would suggest faulty contacts) the tuner usually comes back. I'm not sure the two are related, but I'll check from now on.

If it was a time to shutdown thing, why would it happen in the car? Surely when the ACC line goes low, it could still save things in time since it can run of the BATT line indefinitely. It's only after the shutdown delay that the unit itself decides to completely turn off.

Not a v3 thing. I haven't even installed a v3 yet, much less have it actively running.

The playlists not being saved I only had with v3. The player thinking it's in standby, unsure.

I'd like to point out that I've tried a friend's empeg and his does the same thing in my car (but not in his own). It's got to be a in-dash-wiring issue. I'd just like to figure out what it could be before I start tearing things apart. Of course, it'd make sense to just go ahead and rewire, since I don't trust the installer that did it anyway.

What about your empeg in his car to cover all bases?

I trust my installer (it was me of course). I only have one empeg and don't really know anyone to try theirs so I can't verify that it's my install at fault.

My idea is probably flawed. The only way that I think this could really be the problem is if at the penultimate shutdown the player was in standby. I guess this is feasible, especially if the player is used at home a lot too:

1) On AC power. Player put into standby because it's bedtime. Screen turns off.
2) Player pulled from dock whilst still in standby. Flash saves correctly.
3) Player inserted into car, gets correct settings (including expected standby).
4) Player brought out of standyby and used. Then pulled, whilst screen is busy and disks spun up. Flash not written correctly.
5) Player inserted - settings are obtained from the AC save again.

Of course, low voltage in the car would probably exacerbate this problem - the power during shutdown is coming from the empeg's power supply stage capacitors. I haven't checked, but presumably there are two capacitors, one at the car '12V' input (which will probably be higher than 12V), and one after the regulator which will be a constant voltage regardless of car. The amount of energy stored in the first capacitor will be proportional to the car's voltage squared, and presumably the power dies when the voltage here drops below that needed to sustain the regulators.

Again - still only speculation. It does need a specific sequence of events, which should make it easy to disprove.

I don't think that your scenario fits what I'm seeing, as I can start the car and have the player start up asleep and then leave it asleep for whatever reason (usually the wife being in the car at the same time). Then park, turn off the car, leave the empeg in the dash, shop, come back, crank the car, and have the player start up awake. This doesn't happen very often, but it definitely does happen.

If it's the case that the player is just falling back on an old sleep setting, why would it get changed without intervention?

Hmm...I'm not even sure how long the entire save sequence takes anyway. Blanking the screen is going to take on average 12.5ms, worst case 25ms. I wouldn't have thought that would be fast enough. I haven't checked the flash specs, but I don't believe it would take that long to write 128 bytes... (2.5M CPU cycles)

Blanking the screen by writing all zeros to the display buffer should be much much faster than milliseconds.. more likely a couple hundred microseconds -- could be a reasonable alternative to actually handshaking with the PIC to turn off the display entirely.

Cheers

Isn't the refresh rate of the display locked down somewhere by hardware? Can we beat up on the 1/40s rate from within hijack?

I've come to discover that if I turn on the accessory power in the car, but don't crank it, everything goes fine. But if I crank it immediately from off, it sleeps when the boot sequence is finished. In addition, if I let it boot up under accessory power, then crank it, the display blanks, which I'd expect, then comes back on with a battery icon, but does not sleep.

So it sounds like a voltage issue. Is it likely to be the main power (as opposed to ignition voltage), and, if so, how should I correct that? A better run for the power than coming through the stereo plug where I assume it's coming from now?

Hmm. Sounds plausible. The question is whether it is the player or the kernel that is responsible.

Yeah, I've never not seen the battery icon -- I was just being complete in my description.

The issue is, though, that if there's not enough power available to the empeg at boot/crank time, how do I resolve that?

My empeg battery line is wired direct to the battery (yes, via a fuse) and has been for a long time. The battery itself is only about 18 months old and is a good quality Bosch Gold unit.

If anything my accessories line might be a bit suss since the ignition switch in my car is pretty old and loose. Perhaps it's going low at a particular time during the boot sequence that's causing the problem? Would match Bitt's tests.

As for putting the empeg in every time, that's going to be damn annoying. 1) I park in a locked garage at night and 2) my car sits about 10 meters away at work, so normally the empeg stays in the car. That will just put extra wear on the sled and connector.

The thing is though this has only started to happen for me in the past few months and I haven't changed anything. So something must have changed either in the empeg or the wiring. I believe my wiring is pretty good though and should last longer than this.

Hmm. Maybe a dirty contact?