<edit> Confirmed to be a head unit problem, see here for details.

I've been beating my head against a wall for several weeks trying to figure out why I've got a customer using an iDA-X001 head unit that's having trouble with his DCI. He claimed the DCI quit working when he activated the "Display Dimmer" feature on the HU, but said it would work again as soon as the headlights were turned off or he de-activated the dimmer. I couldn't find any logical reason for why it would do that but I sent him a new wire harness and DCI anyway. No change.

After checking with some other iDA-X001 owners I confirmed they had no trouble using the DCI with the HU dimmed. Then, just when I was about to decide it had to be something wrong with this customer's installation I got ANOTHER customer with the same problem. I then spend HOURS de-bugging the DCI and all I can come up with is one little software setting that might make a difference, so I real quick build 2 more DCI's and ship them to these 2 customers.

In the meantime I order an iDA-X001 head unit and start playing with it. There is NOTHING I can do to make the DCI mess up. I try every dimmer setting there is and it works perfect every time. To make things worse I hear from one of my "problem" customers and he tells me he got the "fixed" DCI and it makes no difference - it still misses at least 3 out of every 4 commands when the HU is dimmed. Crap!

Then a miracle happens - this same customer emails me again, saying that he found something - if you change the HU button color to BLUE it works! But if the buttons are RED, the DCI doesn't work. Cool! A new feature! Thanks Alpine!

Seriously, I can't believe this is the problem, so I check it out on my HU. While I can't get the DCI to completely quit, it DOES have "missed" commands when using the RED button lighting (and dimming turned on). I get 100% of the commands if the HU color is BLUE but see errors if it's RED. Weird.

So I email the other iDA-X001 customer and guess what? He confirms that the DCI works with BLUE buttons but not with RED!

So here's the real question - What do you think Alpine will say when we report this?

.

 

Thanks Bob for work so hard on this. I was thinking I was
Calling Alpine Monday to see what they think, hopefully they will be willing to work this BUG out

to Bob for everything

 

A buddy of mine is an alpine rep and s2k owner ^_^ PM me if you want his info. He said he doubts he can help you directly but he could put you in touch with the right people.

 

Wow.. that's an interesting "bug". Good luck Bob.

 

Duplicated this on my setup too, pretty weird. I like the HU blue with no dimmer anyway

 

On the phone wil Alpine. They have no explantion on why my HU is not working and why 50-100 others in S2000 are working.

I asked several times why does it work with blue and NOT red - NO answer

then they try to send me off to the other Co. swi

 

ive never really had problems with the red color...i have it on red all the time maybe im lucky

 

I just spoke with a different Tech person at Alpine

They want to see a Modifry and bench test
one of his retailers is willin to swap out and
see if it acts the same with other HU

Tomorrow at 3PM

 

Bob....just ran outside to test this....and Im glad to say, everything you said above, at least in my car, is wrong. My DCi works with my XDA dimmed, not dimmed, blue, red, and any combination of it all.

Edit....I didnt try ALL commands....Ill try everything, and report back.

 

I'm finishing up the wiring on my ida-x001 and I would like to chime in on this strange dimmer problem but I need a quick tip first.

Do I want to use the Alpine pink and white cell phone wire with the blue mute DCI2 wire?

And I don't see an orange and white dimmer wire on the alpine harness, do I wire into the orange illumination wire or do I tape it off?