Pioneer AVIC N1 weekend experience

[Mrchips]

This is to follow up from earlier questions to give closure. I spent most of the weekend working on this unit in my coach. The two issues I had were

(1) That the system would not turn off when the ignition was turned off, as a matter of fact the system would not turn off at all unless the batteries were turned off.

(2) I could not get my camera to show on the screen unless I was in reverse and I didn't have a nav disk to be able to plit screen it as the manual says.

What I learned: There are two power leads going to the Pioneer, one is a fused yellow lead marked as power, the second is a red lead with a resistor marked ACC. Somehow apparently the red ACC lead is also tied in with the Onstar system. My intent was to simply cut the red lead and put in a switch. I cut the lead and the radio did shut off, I installed the switch and was able to turn the radio off and on ONCE and then it didn't work. After much research I realized the Onstar had also stopped working (no big deal, I didn't/Won't use it anyway). I tried chasing the red lead, but it is a nightmare under the dash and it became apparent very quickly that I was not going to be able to follow it. SO without knowing why, how, or where it all stopped working when all I did was install a switch I had to back up and punt. After thinking about it awhile and cursing a bit I thought well what I need is power. So I ran a power lead from the 12V outlet in the dash through the new switch and to the Pioneer and bypassed the blown fuse or whatever happened in the Onstar system....WALA, put it back together and it works great. Now I can completely shut the Pioneer down without turning the batteries off.

According to the book the camera wire going to the reversing switch ws supposed to be violet/white. My intent was to switch this lead also and take it to a different 12v outlet (always hot) so that I could fool the camera into thinking it was in reverse whenever I wanted to. HOWEVER, there was not violet/white lead. There was a violet/black and a violet, so I got my test meter thinking I could start and place in reverse, then find which lead had power and I would know. That didn't work, as when I went to reverse, three seperate leads had power, both violets and one other. So I started playing and figured out something I didn't know.

If I went to the setting on the Pioneer that had three tabs, camera on/off, Polarity and something else. If I hit the Polarity button I had two choices, battery and ground. If I had it on battery the camera would only come on when shifting to reverse, if I had polarity set on ground the camera would come on and stay on regardless of D, N, R, brake set, brake released...none made a difference. So instead of trying to figure out how to wire a switch in it appears I can simpley change polarity from battery to ground on the touch screen and be able to see the camera full screen anytime. The only thing is if the polarity is set to ground you cannot turn the camera screen off except to go back to menu. You can still hear whatever music source you were listening to, but you see full screen camera.

Sorry this was so long, I didn't know how else to write it. I know there were a couple looking at doing the reverse switch as i was, try doing the polarity thing and see if you get the same result. I don't know how or why it does it, but it does...at least on mine.

[harleyman134]

Thaks for the update. This will help me when I tackle my radio problem.