06 Civic Build - New Build List on page 60

[scooter99]

Well I found where I saw the guy who posted about relocating to 35 foot extension by using a dedicated power source, but that was about it. It was back in January of 2011 so it wasn't that long ago. The thread was about an alpine unit. Gives me promise, so I don't know. We'll see what I find out in a moment with some testing. I'm going to open it up and test the power on it. not sure exactly how I'm going to determine all this. When I'm going to figure power, do I just ground the black wire on the DMM and then use the red probe to find the pin? Can someone help me with this?

[scooter99]

Ok guys I have some exciting news! I just got done with some testing and I've pretty much proven my theory correct. It's going to take me some time to get some details drawn up based on some stuff I drew on a picture I printed out. But the only way I'll be able to do it so you guys can follow along, is to do it picture by picture and edit in colored lines. So I'm going to work on that, and I'll hopefully be back in a couple hours with some stuff to show you. Very happy about this!

[LCort101]

What program are you using do develop your designs? I'm specifically referring to the power distribution blocks. They look like CAD renderings.

[scooter99]

It's google sketchup and my lame math skills, grouped with my contractor background for measurements. I have ZERO knowledge or experience in CAD.

[Mtnbikecrazy55]

Still looking good bro

[scooter99]

Ok here we go. I'll try and get through this as best as I can. Hopefully everyone can follow along ok. I'm trying to make this as easy as I can to follow along.

So I just went through testing the resistance on the cables, the gepco and some cat 5 I had laying around. Next I told you I was going to try and test the pinouts on the inside connector to see if I could find some voltage and find out if I had a 12v pin in there or if it was already reduced down to 9v, which I was lead to believe the face plate is when it runs.

So I started first to take the unit apart. I'll go through those pics again, and get to the good stuff.

Top off, and you cannot see anything from this view, because the cd mechanism basically takes up the entire unit area. You cannot get to the board from the bottom because the bottom, sides and back of the cage are all one piece. The top is the only removable piece.

So that being said, the other way to get a decent look at the connector without gutting the unit, is to remove the front. One screw on each side,

A little love, and this is what you get.

Now it was time to put some power to it and get some readings.

[scooter99]

Got out the ol DMM, and put the black probe in the cage to ground it, then started checking the connector for readings.

Should've gotten a picture of the connector straight on, but I didn't sorry. There are still 16 connections, 8 top and 8 bottom. Starting at the top left, these were my readings:

Top

1 - 7.40

2 - 0.00

3 - 0.00

4 - 0.00

5 - 0.00

6 - 4.92

7 - 11.94 (MY POWER SOURCE)

8 - 0.00 (I can only guess this would be the ground source, but not sure.)

Bottom

9 - 0.00

10 - 0.00

11 - 0.00

12 - 0.00

13 - 0.00

14 - 4.72

15 - 4.70

16 - 0.00

So that was straight out of the unit, out of the connector at the bottom of the unit, you can see it in the lower middle of the unit in the picture above.

Next I decided to remove the plate from the front piece, and connect that. Immediately this is what I saw.

Lit up like a Christmas Tree. This is what it looks like when you open the face plate to remove or insert a cd.

I removed the plate and took a couple of close up pictures of it cause I knew I'd need them to write on and to do some numbers, tracking, etc. This first picture is the front of the plate, that goes into the front piece of the cage. This is the connector you see that the face plate connects to. The button you see there in the upper left hand side of the plate, that's the eject button. So the eject mechanism is triggered by this button, which sends data to the cd mechanism and tells it to eject, basically. Don't get all technical on me ok! It's over my head, I'm just trying to make it simple. I'll get back to this later.

We'll call this the rear of the plate. This is the connector that connects to the other connector that I just tested on the unit itself. This brings all that data, power, etc, onto the plate and everywhere else after that. I'll get to that. That's where stuff gets REAL!!

Now on the bottom right had side of this plate, you can barely see a little black switch. Here's a more close up view of it.

This switch is triggered by a little arm that is pushed in when the face plate is in the up position. When it's down, that switch is opened up and the board lights up as I showed before. Here's a little frozen demonstration. You can see my fingers there, my index finger is by the switch but not on it, demonstrating the face plate being opened up or down.

Now my index finger is pushing on the switch demonstrating the switch being pushed, would then be by the arm, and the lights are off.

So after that my interest peaked and I had to dig deeper to see if I was correct truly or not. Correct about what? Correct about whether this plate on the back of the front panel was the place in which everything was changed, voltage drop etc. I'll go through it a little bit now for you. Here you can see I did some drawings on paper based on those pictures I took above, the close ups of the panel itself.

Since you can't obviously read my chicken scratch and it was just too difficult to explain from those pictures alone, I did some editing in photobucket that will be easier to explain for me, and see for you. I'll be right back!

[scooter99]

Ok, now it's time to get real! I found my 11.94v pin on the connector on this panel by plugging it into the unit. I used the DMM and found where it showed 11.94, then removed the panel and traced it back to the connector. So here's picture number 1. This shows point 1 on the front side which has two holes through the panel from the connector. Then it goes to point 2 which you can see on the picture, which also has two holes through the panel transferring it back to the rear side. This is 11.94 between both of these points. Again, this is the front side of the connector showing.

Now we go to the rear side, picking up on point 2 which was 11.94v. This goes into two different components, which I have to believe are reducers or resistors or something like that. We'll start with the furthest one, cause for whatever reason I numbered that one #3. That component has a number on it of 303. As you can see in the picture, the voltage goes from 11.94, down to 1.78v. Going back to number 4, the component there is labeled 472 on top, and the voltage drops to 3.70v.

Flipping it back over to the front, this is where it gets a little crowded but I did as best as I could to keep it under control.

Ok looking to the left side of the panel you can see #3 coming through. This is reading 1.78v. It goes up to another component up to the upper left of the panel, near the eject button. This is where it got a little tricky. I tested the opposite side of that component and got a 0.00v reading. I was like WTF?! So I decided to move on. On the middle right side of the panel, just under the connector there, is where #4 comes through, reading at 3.70v. This goes down, up to those two leds, and then back out and around to the middle there. I called this point #5. I put the meter on it and again got 0.00v. I was at this point stumped as hell. I could not figure out how I got voltage from a positive to nothing. Now you can look at the picture and see that these two points that I got a 0.00v reading on, points 5 and 6, are labeled as 0.00 / 9.98v. There's a reason for that.

Here let me show you the reason! Remember this little guy? Yep that's why i got a 0.00v reading. Cause the switch was open. I pushed the switch in, and did the reading again, and got my 9.98v reading, which would be my face plate power. Here's a little drawing I just did. I for whatever reason didn't go any further into it with my testing, maybe cause I'm exhausted, I don't know. But here you can see the yellow line, coming from the switch. It goes into a component, and splits out, one going to #5, and the other to #6. Both again, reading 9.98v when the switch is depressed, again indicating the face plate is up and in the closed position.

The bottom line is this. From what I've gotten out of this little bit of research is that instead of making the connectors as I did on the last go round, I can eliminate those, and go this route. I'll take the panel board and the front panel that it's currently on. I'll move it from the cage to the spot where the face plate will be, hopefully once again in the headliner. Then I'll take the second one I bought, and I'll put it on the front of the cage itself. I'll make a harness that will connect the connector on the unit, and the connector on the panel where the face plate will be, and that should get me better results than the first attempt. In theory. I'm not going to be 100% surprised if this doesn't work. But this is the next attempt in this project. I just have to figure out how I'm going to go about doing it. I have two ways really. I can either solder directly on the board right by the connector, or i can solder directly onto the connector itself. The other way is to try and find these connectors, which I've already looked for at pac parts.com, and cannot find. So I'm most likely stuck with direct soldering them.

I think if I decided to direct solder on the board, I'll have to take the cd mechanism out and get the board accessible. Those are pretty big tabs on that connector, but I'm not sure I want to take the chance.

Here's how things change a bit by doing it this way. By moving the panel, I have to now use the face plate for other things. What do I mean? Well now the eject button is going to not work on the main unit, it will have to be pushed and operated by the panel at the face plate which will now have the board on it. To do this the face plate must be movable. That's not a problem cause it was going to be anyway. I don't however, have to have a face plate or a base or anything like that on the unit itself. Like before. Same thing goes up at the face plate. That switch on the back of the panel, will have to operate and will do so by the face plate opening and closing. The only thing I'll need at the unit, will be to insert a cd, or remove a cd.

So things get a little different, maybe even a little more inconvenient, but if it works, it'll be worth it. I don't think I'll be using the cd player much anyway. So I think it'll be fine.

I'm very happy about all this, so far. Hopefully I'll get to test more soon!

Happy to hear any suggestions or thoughts. Thanks!

[Twostrokeking]

Looks confusing lol! Nice work!

[scooter99]

Kind of. Just think of it like this. I think it'll work like originally planned with it in the headliner, if I make the different harness. But I'll have to test it. I could make a video to explain it too, but it's a lot of work. I'll just do another test harness, out of CAT 5, and test it that way. Soon!