laakness

My car wouldn't start this Saturday morning (brand new battery like 3 months old) so I charged it up and came on the forums here. I read about the parasitic drain, etc. I hooked up my multimeter in line with the positive cable and found almost a 1 amp draw while the car was off (even with ipod disconnected from iSimple).

The only thing I've done to it is add an iSimple about a month ago. I unwired it and checked again and my draw went back down to .285 after about a minute with the key off.

Anyone seen this as the cause of a battery drain issue? I guess I'll have to go back to burning cd-rw's for a while which isn't a huge issue.

Bucks13

I have not noticed a problem with mine, but then again I haven't metered it either. My batter is original to the car ('07) and I haven't had any issues yet. I've had my iSimple installed almost a month myself.

laakness

Good to know. I'll have it at the dealer tomorrow for a auto window up/down issue so I'll have them take a peek too. It could be the HFL problem that people talk about as I use that as well.

AirKilroy

I brought up the same issue here three months ago. I'll be interested if you figure out if the iSimple causes you any problem. I havn't experienced a dead battery, yet, but I do think they should have designed it to turn off with the key out of the ignition.

AirKilroy

I just found something interesting. Check out this explaination of how a guy with a C5 vette modified his harness to work power the unit using switched power (not the constant power that is how it is currently wired). Take a look at the last 3 pictures.

I have no knowledge on how to test this for our units, but if someone smarter than me wants to try it out and report back, that would be great.

flyromeo3

^...so he basically took the 12v constant and soldered it to 12v ignition switch. Makes sense but, the only problem I see, based on what i've heard. Is boot times for the pxamg.

maybe when or if i experience this battery drain, I'll try that method out.

laakness

I'm going to contact iSimple support this week about it. I haven't had the battery drain again yet but I also had the iSimple in for about a month before this happened, so it's hard to say.

I do know that it wasn't a dome light or the truck light. I checked all of that before de-wiring the iSimple.

Side Note: I don't care what anyone says, the MP3's on a CD are WAY better quality than through the iSimple. Louder and more clear...not sure what's getting lost in the translation through the iSimple.

digitalbob

I ran across your post on Google. I have the same issue with 2010 Accord. I get the same 285mA draw with iSimple installed.

I've read the CAN-bus is resposible for the draw, as something prevents it from dropping to sleep mode. (which should then drop to 20mA range.)

I won't have a chance to test this until this weekend, but try the following:
Turn off all car accessories. (ie. radio, lamps off, doors and trunk closed.)
Make sure things like power window or power seat switches aren't stuck in an open/closed position.
Disconnect the hood open switch.
Monitor the current for a full 10 minutes. (supposedly, the CAN-bus will drop to sleep mode)

Disconnect iSimple from the back of the radio, and repeat the test.

Like I said, I haven't tested this yet. In the meantime, I've been switching my radio to AM/FM setting and turning off the radio everytime I leave the car. I'm hoping this might allow it to drop to sleep mode.

laakness

I ended up resolving this by RMA'ing the unit I had. The new unit had not caused any issues and it's up on the latest firmware as well.

I believe it was just a defective unit.

twiz03

isimple will keep charging your ipod even if you take the key out...

that's from my experience... does this happen to anyone else?

datmrman

Yea, I see that with my 1st gen iPod nano. I haven't tried with other iPods yet.

Slayreman

The issue is supposedly a high current draw with some of the Isimples. The fix is to update your gateway to the latest firmware. Hopefully it works, because it killed my battery in 1 full day of sitting.

Mike

Jottle

Just wanted to bump this thread and say thanks to the posters. I just paid my mechanic $150 to search this issue only to find out it was my stupid isimiple gateway. Has anyone else updated the firmware and had this issue resolved? Mine is drawing 600mA with nothing connected to it charging (no ipod or anything). I still wonder if this is a hardware or a software issue or both since someone else rma'd their unit to get it fixed.

Henry Crawford

Very interesting. My isimple was installed in my Odyssey for 10 years with no noticed issue, but took my car with dead battery and obvious overnight drain, and the mechanic singled out the isimple.