XTL1500 standby current,radio not powered-up

[cbroseinak]

I got a complaint from Customs about an install I did on one of their vehicles. They complain about battery drain, and when I do "parasite draw" test with the radio hooked-up and NOT powered on, I get 0.78amp current drain. With the radio un-hooked at radio or just by pulling the fuse under the hood, the current drain is 0.02amp reading.
100watt unit. put a PM1500 its place and its about the same, 0.67amp reading.

I am waiting about a half hour between test for the car to stabilize and any sensors or other realated components to go to sleep mode. vehicle is a 2011 Ford 4dr Explorer with all the factory option the Feds just cant seem to live with-out.

[Wowbagger]

Could this be something silly like the ignition sense and battery lines being mixed up - the battery line is supposed to be always hot, ignition sense is supposed to be hot only when the key is on. If they are swapped you might see the behavior you describe.

[cbroseinak]

Thanks, but my ign sence (yellow wire) is actually un-hooked at this time, and I mistakenly put "XTL1500" its a XTL5000 100watt unit. With control head, ign sence wire and receive only wires un-hooked, and only the big cable going to the batterty, I still get 0.78amp.

I called Motorola and they told me to jumper pins 14 and 15 together to disable emergency foot switch, which the tech person said might be the issue.?, dont know.....yet, i'm letting the car drain down now as I type this.

[GlennD]

Both red wires must go to the same source. Unswitched 12V or unswitched through a timer. If you turn off just the control head the radio stays awake trying to talk to the head. We had a contractor switch both wires on the head while leaving power on the radio. We had to rework a bunch of fire engines.

[Jim202]

Both red wires must go to the same source. Unswitched 12V or unswitched through a timer. If you turn off just the control head the radio stays awake trying to talk to the head. We had a contractor switch both wires on the head while leaving power on the radio. We had to rework a bunch of fire engines.

Some place I believe that there is a service note on this. Bottom line is the red wire from the control head must have a hot +12 volts on it all the time. You can switch the yellow wire to be able to turn the radio on or off. If the red wire is switched with the yellow wire, you will see about a 700 ma drain. This will kill a car battery over the weekend if your not careful.

Jim

[cbroseinak]

[quote="Jim202
Some place I believe that there is a service note on this. Bottom line is the red wire from the control head must have a hot +12 volts on it all the time. You can switch the yellow wire to be able to turn the radio on or off. If the red wire is switched with the yellow wire, you will see about a 700 ma drain. This will kill a car battery over the weekend if your not careful.

Jim[/quote]

I figured it out. And you are correct. Once I ran the control head RED lead to constant 12+ Batt and YELLOW wire to switched/ign sence AND changed the programming from "Blank" to "soft pwr off" (i think it was) it responded the way I wanted it to. Once the vehicle stabilized the current draw was below 0.04amp which is good enough for me. It just seems weird that the ign would power-down the control head when shut off, yet the tranceiver would still be in stnd-by. And holy crap did I get tired of waiting for the vehicle to go thru its current draw-down rutine, took at least 15min of various sensors and what not draining down each time.

The install manual gives a clear warning about hooking up the control head RED lead the way I did, but who reads manuals these days?

[chartofmaryland]

You have found the secret of the new radios.

More computation.

There is now more than one processor monitoring the state of the new radio product lines using the "O" series control heads. With the introduction of the Atmel processors to the control heads to meet the GUI needs of the consumer? there now needs to be constant power fed to these devices to allow them to operate in a proper "stand-by" mode while still able to scan for button functions and logic states. With the red control head wire tied to the wrong source the control head will attempt to function in a way not designed and will produce the effects shown. It could be said the O5 control head will drain power through the brick via the not meant for it control head cable when wired improperly.

Follow the installation guides to a "T"

The engineers at Motorola are gone who protected the green installers and lame car stereo shops attempting to install real radios while tying the green and orange leads together from the old "A" and "W" series control heads to switched sources.

The old equipment had simplicity where the new is too smart to allow it.

This very issue has drawn more heated arguments in local and state government fleet garages where the old dogs wired the new radio JUST like the old radio which worked fine that way ! ! ! !. WHAT'S THE "F-ING" DIFFERENCE?

I thought explaining the process of microcomputers to the resident "test light god" might require me to leave. I advised on more than one occasion, "I'll rework the wiring and not charge you". That corrected the issue and we moved on.

CoM

[GlennD]

I think "we have always done it this way" is universal. Years ago I had a major tiff about black ball mounts. Since they are long obsolete the installers use NMO mounts but long for the old days!

[wnyevs]

Wont the "Soft Power Off" feature shut the radio down completely and eliminate the current draw?

[Jim202]

Wont the "Soft Power Off" feature shut the radio down completely and eliminate the current draw?

Motorola has some really dumb ass engineers working for them now. The days of good designs, simple designs and simple functionality went out the door the day they started using microcomputers inside the radios. By this time the good engineers have left for one reason or another. Motorola is going through some very poor management and cleaning house. What they have ended up with is cheap labor, poor designs and crappy operating equipment.

If the top management doesn't stop and take stock of what they have, how their customers feel and where the future is going to lead them, they won't have much to work with in just a few short years. The days of listening to the customer went out the door with the Gavlin family. Today it's make a fast buck at the expense of customer satisfaction. Time will tell how Motorola makes out in a few years.

Jim

[WB4JGI]

Look in the Radio Wide tab, find the tab that says control head, once there look for a check box that says control head(s) required for power up and make sure it's checked.

Reprogram the radio and your current draw should be next to nothing. I accidently stumbled on that setting one day and we use that setting more in the field than anything else to limit the current drain of the battery. Here we use that setting in conjunction with Soft Power Off and it works great.

[Pj]

You'd think. With the current APX7500 firmware, I've noticed this little jem now... shut the vehicle off, and the control head will power back up to the "APX 7500" on the screen then shut itself off. I routinely pull the A+ fuses under the back seat but I need to power the O5 back on afterwards as I found out (at least with XTL's who still had console power) the head will not see the radio and will power up into maintence mode by itself after a few minutes and remain on....and walking back to a dead truck when I come off the plane. Now I just power up the head and then turn it off and have had no power issues.