Hi Guys, Well, I've been using the a815 that I decided on for about a week now. I have a couple questions (this post and the other about USB ). First, I have this in a 96 vehicle(older), and do not have the illumination wire connected b/c I don't think my car supports that in the radio harness as per installdr.com pdfs. How are the day/night modes changed? Is it when you turn on your head lights or have them off? A lot of times I drive with headlights on in the day so it wouldn't work very well. I know this isn't how it works, but it would be awesome if it went by the clock! Would it be possible to rig a switch to the illumination wire to toggle between day/night modes? Thanks! EDIT: I was thinking more about this... could I wire a switch between the orange/white wire and say the ignition wire or the battery wire? Does anyone know the voltage that's supposed to go to the orange/white and if supplying current, then breaking it (with the switch) would toggle the day/night schemes?
Im sure there is. Just check to see if that wire is triggered by a positive or negative. Which ever it is, just wire a switch to 12v or ground to the wire that is used for this daylight/nighttime on the HU
I'm thinking that the night mode is triggered by turning on the headlights since when I set the day color, that seems to be what's selected. I believe this would mean that since there is no voltage to the wire and it's in day mode, when the lights would switch on, it would send the voltage to the wire and it would switch to night mode. ? Ideally, you would have a photoresistor (light sensor) connected with a diode and resistor in some kind of simple circuit. This would make the most sense since it would actually switch based on the ambient light. This would eliminate the night mode kicking on when you are driving in rain with headlights on or highway driving with headlights on. I actually drive more with my headlights on than not during daylight. I'm thinking though what I'll ultimately do is just put in a switch to manually control it. I'm a little skeptical of the photoresistor since I'm not sure of the trigger voltage or current for the mode change and I can picture it flipping wildly between both modes in twilight or similar situations. I could probably put a capacitor in the circuit though to eliminate this, but that's a lot of BS when I could just go the switch route. I'm just hoping that the top voltage is 12v for the illumination wire, I hope that's not a dangerous assumption.
OMG.... talk about a "RTFM" moment........ page 35... setting the dimmer........you can actually set the times when the night/day colors are displayed! This is just what I was looking for! I can't believe I was overthinking this so much that I overlooked the obvious in the manual. I have a way of doing that though...overcomplicating the simple or obvious sometimes EDIT: a switch would still be nice for overcast days/winter so I might still go with that anyway. For now though, I'll go with the timer option since I don't have to tear the dash apart again!
