Strange Flirc behaviour

[pete]

Also how specific is the shut down command? I can still do the full shutdown manually at the end of every day,so what I want is for it to be put into standby automatically every time I turn the ignition off rather than a full power down,is this possible with either of these units? This is purely for short stops like 5 minutes or so where I don't want to have to wait for it to do a full reboot every time,but I can just tap play to wake it up again from where it was before being put into standby.

Nothing fancy; just shutdown.

Current configs with regular motherboards; I just shut off the car; the AUX voltage off sends the command to shut down. I know its shutting down because I put in a "shutdown" wave file such that I could hear it shutting down. Now without those motherboard pins on the Joggler; you would shut down the AUX.

Putting the Joggler in suspend mode will not work cuz you cannot wake it up and today with any carpc it is not recommended to do this anyways.

So how about my question earlier,can the intelligent power supply be set to turn it off fully (i.e. power off) or just to put it into standby on ignition off?

Anything you want that you can do. The Joggler cannot be put into suspend mode and woken up. You can only do a system shutdown and startup.

USB Interface: This serves several important purposes.
-The most important purpose is that it gives the SDC an unprecedented level of control over the power state of the PC. 'Regular' SDC's use the PC's power button only and as such have limited control over power states. With the USB interface, the SDC can order the PC into any power state through software(standby, hibernate, shutdown). The most interesting application (IMHO) is that the PC can be placed into standby, and if left alone for too long, booted back up, and then put into hibernate.
-The USB interface also provides interface opportunities - allowing settings to be viewed and changed through a software interface, as well as monitoring voltages/temperatures, perhaps controlling some auxiliary outputs, etc. All my interfacing has been in C# .NET 2.0 and in the end should be compatible with other languages via a DLL or similar.
-The USB interface also allows a bootloader to be used, allowing firmware to be easily updated through software without a programmer or any other hardware required.

Of course, as a failsafe, the SDC is designed to operate just fine as a traditional SDC when the USB interface is not available (cable unplugged, software crashes, etc)

[pete]

From the manual:

Power challenges in a vehicle PC:

One of most difficult tasks of operating a PC in a vehicle is power consumption while the computer is OFF. Even when your computer is OFF or in Suspend, it will still consume about 50-150mA on the 5VSB rail. No matter how big your battery is, you will eventually drain it if proper actions
are not taken. The M4-ATX-HV is addressing these issues by cutting off the 5VSB rail after a pre-defined amount of time (see jumper chart, HARDOFF).
During HARDOFF if the battery level drops below 11.2V for more than one minute, M4-ATX-HV will shut down and re-activate only when the input voltage is above 12V.

[Imagewerx]

I don't want to fully power down or suspend it if that's the same thing,as I said I'll do that manually at the end of the day,my battery is quite capable of leaving it in standby mode for a few hours at a time.I want to do the same as going back to the home screen and pressing the button in the top left corner of the screen,it can then be woken up by touching any where on the screen,or even just pressing the play/pause button on my steering wheel.So I need it to do this automatically when I turn the ignition off and then do the reverse when I turn it back on again.
It says this of the USB interface 'With the USB interface, the SDC can order the PC into any power state through software(standby, hibernate, shutdown).'Is this standby mode what I need it to do?

[pete]

Take the Joggler out of the picture and check the amperage draw of you new power supply with no load on it.

Then look at the Joggler amperage draw without the screen on and with the screen on a workbench. (forget about the suspend stuff for the time being).

can then be woken up by touching any where on the screen

This is just shutting off the LCD backlight / screen. This is not suspending the Joggler.

I do this with my always on SP connected to the Russound zoned audio.

[Imagewerx]

We seem to be going round in circles here.The power draw of my regulator is irrelevant here as it's not powered when the car is garaged of a night time,so it and my DSP and DACs and all the other audio gear are totally 100% isolated from any sort of power source,hence the standby current draw is no more than a standard car,which in this case is about 40 milliamps,or 0.04 amps.
Ok once more I don't want to suspend it any other way than how I already do by manually pushing a button.I know what happens when I touch that button on the home screen,it switches the display off and pauses the music playback,exactly the same as when you switch off a dedicated car head unit that's connected to an ignition live wire.Again it's current draw in this mode is not relevant here as I know the car can safely handle this for the few hours when it's left parked during the day.

So once more,will the intelligent power supply do this for me when set to standby mode and plugged into a USB port? I just want it to replicate what touching the button on the home screen does,I don't want full shutdown or suspend at this time.

[castalla]

Is flirc working? The original focus of this thread!

[Imagewerx]

Is flirc working? The original focus of this thread!

Yes it is at last......

Right,I've solved it at last.Been on a nice long drive today (5 hours ish) and the Joggler and the Flirc have worked flawlessly.

It looks like the original external USB port is only good enough for plugging flash memory into,so once I'd plugged the hub in with a couple of flash drives and the Flirc (which needs power) into it,that poor little surface mount 5 volt regulator couldn't cope any more.

Now it's got a healthy big current supply,it boots up quicker (maybe only about 5 or 10 seconds quicker),it boots up reliably now (before it could be as little as 1 time in 5 that was a successful boot),I don't get the garbled file names any more and the Flirc works exactly as it's meant to.

[castalla]

Excellent. Good luck with the rest of your 'project'!

[Imagewerx]

Excellent. Good luck with the rest of your 'project'!

Thank you and hopefully now it'll spend all of it's time in the car and none on the bench.All I need to know now is whether the intelligent power supply will do what I need it to do and it'll be 100% finished.

[pete]

We seem to be going round in circles here.

Yup; here never used a Joggler in any of the cars and never wanted to. That is me. Others here on the forum will learn from your experience.

That said your questions have gone over and in to basic over time documented carpc standards.

Personally I learned from reading and doing and MP3Car dot com for my car pc's. The interface that I utilize today was conceived by an engineer in Germany just for the BMW interfacing both to the IBus and the HU back in 2001. The software is generic and runs in Linux Ubuntu or Microsoft.

I tapped into the BMW IBus; sniffing the network and matching the commands to the "knobs" on the steering wheel and other buttons; but someone had already written a "book" documenting the language / commands of the bus which simplified stuff.

Today I can open windows, turn on and off lighting, tap into the built in satellite GPS, cellular phone, et al....last of the pieces of the IBus before it was updated.

Read here so you are not caught up chasing your own tail .... it is today a defacto carpc "do all" forum...

http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/

[hawsey]

All sounding good now any chance of a little video of your set up showing it working in the car maybe posted on YouTube or similar.
Cheers

[Imagewerx]

The above big post is all very interesting,but it's bit off topic when this is supposed to be about my Flirc not working properly.I still get emails for this topic and it's nothing to do with the original question I asked.

[hawsey]

I agree with you sometimes that's the way it goes it sounds like you got everything working though so how about a new topic, my car Joggler set up or something like just to share , it might inspire others .

[Imagewerx]

I agree with you sometimes that's the way it goes it sounds like you got everything working though so how about a new topic, my car Joggler set up or something like just to share , it might inspire others .

I was thinking about a build thread anyway,so will get all that lot up as soon as I get time.