johnk

One of the promoted features of the G4 with StreetDeck is that it after being in standby for a certain amount of time (depending on your car battery; for me it's about 16 hours), the G4 should automatically go to hibernate.

For me that doesn't work; if I leave my car sitting for a day it just shuts off completely without hibernating.

Does anyone know if this actually works with CF, or if you CF at least allows you to control the standby time so I can always have it wait at least 36 hours before shutting off? I'm interested in trying a demo version of CF2 to test this out, if one is made available.

Thanks,
John

JWise1203

I know that this feature is apart of Windows Vista's power management. I have tested it before and it does work well. The problem for me is that after I plugged in my Xenarc screen, it brings the computer out of standby

I am not sure about, or have seen SD do this however. CF does not have this feature that I know of. My guess is that an application like CF or SD would depend on the power management features of the OS to preform this function.

johnk

Oh well... page 9 of the G4 manual had previously stated:

"If the vehicle is not started within 72 hours, the G4 will automatically go into hibernate mode to conserve battery power. This time frame is not user selectable or adjustable."

But it looks like after I was emailing with the MP3Car folks asking why it wasn't working, they recently updated the online manual to remove that statement (of course they didn't bother to let me know).

So maybe I can find some expensive car battery that will last for the weekend.

midiwall

Hmm, that would require the G4 to be hardwired to the battery - bypassing the ignition. Then, given that application code doesn't run in Standby, this would have to be an OS thing - XP or Vista. So, SD or CF themselves don't have any bearing here.



So... you're talking about wanting to run your system for 48 hours without the car ever having been started? That kinda' leads me to ask "why"? Camping?

If you really wanna do this, then you should look at rigging a pair of batteries in parallel and dedicate them to the G4 (and the amps since you'll need those as well). I'd recommend the Optima Yellow or Blue tops - NOT the Red Top. The Red Top can be damaged if it drains to 0.

__________________
:: Mark

johnk

I often don't drive my car on either Saturday or Sunday. Since the standby period is only around 16 hours, it is virtually guaranteed that at least once a week (Sunday or Monday, or even Saturday if I don't go out until late in the afternoon), the system will be booting from scratch. I could fix that by making it always hibernate, but I didn't spend thousands of dollars to have to wait a minute or longer to get audio every time I start my car.

Thanks for the battery advice. I don't think my car has room for 2 batteries, but I'll talk to my mechanic when I go in for an oil change soon.

John

midiwall

Ahh, ok... So the issue is basically with the G4, in that it's shutting down to hibernate at some pre-determined non-user-modifiable time. I think most folks that did the CarPC thing on their own end up just hibernating, or have hacked that time threshold.

Like I kinda' implied above, that's not a RR/SD/CF/frontend thing, that's Windows core. You might wanna approach David (Mr. CF) to add in an option to redefine that threshold, it's gotta be in the registry somewhere.

__________________
:: Mark

johnk

Well, I wish it would go to hibernate after a certain amount of time. The problem is that it shuts down completely (big difference). I guess you just need the new Sleep feature in Vista for that (option to save hibernation data when it goes to standby, so that if the power is cut it can resume from the hibernation file).

The MP3Car guys tell me that the G4 shuts down when the battery reaches a certain voltage minimum, so I don't think a registry change will help.

I guess on the weekends I just need to try to remember to hit Suspend from the menu instead of just shutting off the car. Just very frustrating that a much cheaper head unit doesn't have this limitation... I would have gone with something else if they supported FLAC.

midiwall

Man, I'm sorry.. I keep forgetting that we're talking about the G4 so I forget the solutions that the CarPC people use/take for granted.

We use one of these:
http://store.mp3car.com/category_s/22.htm

Those are power supplies that have a hook into the car battery full-time, and another into the ignition. The board is setup such that IT controls the power to the motherboard, the ignition line is just a monitor tap. When the ignition goes off, it pulses the power button on the motherboard, which we generally configure to be "hibernate". It then waits a programmable amount of time before it actually cuts the power. You set this timeout to be long enough to allow the CarPC to make it all the way to hibernate. The board can also be configured to be smart and actually watch for the MB to power down.

fwiw, I'm using the the M1-ATX 90. Works like a champ. I dunno what the external inputs look like on the G4, or how much you can get to the motherboard. To use this controller, I think you'd only have to hack into the "power" switch on the G4, or whichever electrical point you can to set it into hibernate.

The "Micro Shutdown Controller" works the same way, and may be a better option since you don't really need a full power supply:
http://store.mp3car.com/category_s/80.htm

__________________
:: Mark

johnk

I got a new more powerful battery, and it didn't make any real difference (possibly a couple of extra hours - I wasn't able to test the exact limit - but not even close to 24 hours.