Kills The Battery

[SRTorRed6sp]

09 Challenger SRT. If I am in the monitoring mode and shut the car down, without hitting the stop monitoring button, my battery dies in about 8 hours. Hitting the stop monitoring button before the screen goes blank prevents a dead battery. For some reason the car will not go to "sleep". I can tell because the next time I turn the key on the radio does not go through it's boot up procedure before it comes on. It will power right up and start playing immediately. If the car is sleeping before I turn on the key the radio displays it's boot up logo first then takes several seconds before it plays. Also, if I don't hit the monitoring button at key off, the next time I key on the Trinity is still showing the stop monitoring button. Not the monitor display screen. Any ideas on what might be going on with the car? I can't say it's an issue with the Trinity because I have a Dashhawk and I have the same problem with that. If the Dashhawk is hooked to the OBD port and I key off and leave it hooked up the screen on it goes blank but it kills the battery. I doubt a dealer would be much help with an issue like this.

[mikel]

Is there any type of non stock-electric devices connected to the car anywhere?
Radi?
Amps?
Remote start?
Anything?

[SRTorRed6sp]

No, nothing. Car is all stock electrically.

[mikel]

do you by chance leave the key in the car?

[SRTorRed6sp]

No key, it's the Keyless Go push button and I take the fob with me. I could set it up to use the key and try it though if you think that might have something to do with it.

[mikel]

Please do, and let me know.

[SRTorRed6sp]

I disabled push button start last night. Fired the car and started monitoring. Shut the car off & removed the key. This morning I had a dead battery so that had no effect.

[Quick]

This is interesting. How does the Trinity decide to power down? If you're monitoring a parameter that responds to a poll with the car off, would that do it?

[SRTorRed6sp]

Thats something to think about. I'll make a dash with one rpm gauge and try using it and see if there is any change.

[Quick]

Don't know how they power the unit down.
Some scanners will power down when no signals are detected for some amount of time (means that there is no response to the polls). The thing is that the diag port and OBDII bus is always powered. It's just a matter of whether there is activity on the bus or not. Naturally, if you're polling you're creating activity so you would have to look for responses maybe. The real trick is to get a device to drop into a "sleep" mode and then automatically wake up when you start the car. Lots of gotcha's there since stuff like an OnStar diagnostic will trigger a bunch of activity. I was mainly curious how they do the power down.

[06MonteSS]

why do you leave it in the vehicle and plugged in anyway??

I would be afraid of someone seeing it in the vehicle and breaking in to steal it... and even at home, in my garage, I always take everything out and lock my car....

the cold temps in a garage can wreak havoc on electronic equipment...

[Quick]

I leave all my stuff in my car at home. It's a bit of a hassle to dismount it, slip it into a case and then the glove box or door cubby in a parking lot but a real pain to actually carry it in the house when I get home along with my other stuff and then remember to carry it back out in the morning. I'm confident about my car's contents at home. If something happened to it, it would be more likely (although still slim) for someone to steal the whole car. Ideally you want your scanner to shut off automatically with all your other gauges (or a short time later) and then automatically power up where it left off when you start the engine again.

[SRTorRed6sp]

I leave all my stuff in my car at home. It's a bit of a hassle to dismount it, slip it into a case and then the glove box or door cubby in a parking lot but a real pain to actually carry it in the house when I get home along with my other stuff and then remember to carry it back out in the morning. I'm confident about my car's contents at home. If something happened to it, it would be more likely (although still slim) for someone to steal the whole car. Ideally you want your scanner to shut off automatically with all your other gauges (or a short time later) and then automatically power up where it left off when you start the engine again.

Exactly. Also, my car sits in the garage all the time and it's seldom left in a parking lot withough me watching it.

[SRTorRed6sp]

This morning I created a new logging layout with just an ambient temp gauge. I put it on the screen in monitoring mode then shut the car off and and it is still keeping the car from sleeping. So I doubt it was one of the gauges I was using.

[SRTorRed6sp]

No other thoughts on this one?