I am posting this as a heads up to all with the DCI who use SCV (Speed Controlled Volume)

I frequently toggle back and forth between the 2 settings the DCI-2 allows programming for. One of my settings has SCV disabled, and one of them has it set at level 8.

I store my car during the winter months without the battery installed, and this past winter was my first with the stereo and DCI. Upon removal from storage I noticed something funny going on with the DCI. When I put it in storage the SCV was disabled. During my first ride I toggled the DCI to enable my SCV. What I noticed was that the volume would increase and keep going! It did not increment during the scheduled intervals, as soon as the car started rolling the volume went up through the roof. I had to continually turn the dial on the HU down to keep it from blowing my speakers!

So I tried toggling the DCI to my other SCV setting (off) and noticed that now the DCI was sending commands for constant volume DOWN. I keep it on this option to keep my speakers alive until I have a chance to reprogram the unit.

Thankfully, upon reprogramming the unit I now have my SCV how it was previously set and all is well. I was worried that it somehow got damaged but thankfully it was not.

Anyone have some similar experience, does the DCI use battery power to store settings? Just trying to get to the root cause here.

Cheers,

-Mike

 

The SCV settings are stored in EEPROM and in theory do not rely on battery power to keep them intact.

But considering your symptoms my best guess is that somehow the gremlins got in there and changed a bit or two to some invalid value (similar to a divide by zero issue), causing the DCI to interpret any speed signal as infinite mph. Once you swapped to the other setting the DCI calculated the speed correctly and started lowering the volume.

There were a few revisions of DCI software that would allow invalid SCV settings to be stored and I'm betting you may have one of those versions. As long as it continues to work OK I would just keep using it but if it acts up again let me know and we'll see about updating the software.

Also, if it ever does it again you should try hitting the MUTE button - the DCI suspends auto-volume commands if the MUTE is active, so that might be a faster way to get it under control.

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Bah! What do you know about electronics

 

Thanks for the words Bob. I just wanted to throw it out as an FYI. I was glad when it went back to working. Should it ever act up again I'll try the mute trick.


-Mike

 

Installed my DCI a few days ago, and it's working flawlessly. I can't explain how happy I am to have the controls restored with my Alpine deck! I keep accidentally reaching with my right hand to adjust open and adjust on the deck, but am learning to catch myself.

 

Another thing about the scv is that if you're scrolling through the ipod menu( if you have an ipod hooked up ) and you speed up or slow down you'll have to start all over again so I just disconnected mine, I think modifry should let people know about that.

 

If the HU is muted will it let you do the same scrolling/searching?

If so, maybe you can leave SCV connected and just hit MUTE (which disables SCV) when you want to do a search?

Or, set one of your 2 programmable SCV levels to 0 (OFF) and hit MODE + CH prior to searching. That way your music will continue to play but SCV will be disabled and won't interrupt your search. If you have an older DCI and don't have programmable SCV levels you still have the MODE + CH function to turn SCV off.

.

 

I'm having this issue as well. I'm not sure if i have the dip switches right, mine are set(from left to right) down, down, up, up. I only have 4 for my wired one... the manunal says 6 so I'm not sure whats going on there. How do I go about reprogramming this again?

 

SCV programming procedure is in the manual. IIRC it does not involve the switches at all.

FWIW, Bob replaced my DCI at WTD 08 because we could not get it to fix at the software level.

 

^ Thanks, I went and tried re-setting the VSC and it functions flawlessly now.