Can't turn the car radio off
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@lucas1 the car computer is cool, it's just not comparable with a phone
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@fbmac Honestly you can do better with a £10 phone holder and a male to male jack lead.
My car doesn't have a computer and my phone does everything. So I have a Cig lighter iphone charger, iphone holder and bluetooth jack.
EDIT: technically my car has a computer ... it turns the engine off on the motorway for no reason (then I have no power steering) because a sensor got hot and almost killed me. Said sensors have been replaced.
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@fbmac You don't need a car computer, given a smartphone will do everything a car computer does and more, and do it better.
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@RaceProUK said in Can't turn the car radio off:
a smartphone will do everything a car computer does and more, and do it better.
The exception is navigation, where a car computer can do better due to having more power, a better aerial for GPS, and possibly access to the car's sensor network. I've compared (multiple) navigation systems running on my phone with the one in my car, and the car won every time; it's just enormously better at getting a good fix on where it is and what it is doing.
OTOH, I'd guess the phone might have an advantage when it comes to avoiding heavy traffic; I've not tried hooking my car up to the internet.
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@dkf No. Sorry. Google Maps is updated more often and does so without me knowing most of the time. Car GPS systems are garbage in comparison.
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@dkf said in Can't turn the car radio off:
OTOH, I'd guess the phone might have an advantage when it comes to avoiding heavy traffic; I've not tried hooking my car up to the internet.
Both of mine get the traffic from the TMC signal. They do just as good a job as Copilot (which I used beforehand) does.
@RaceProUK said in Can't turn the car radio off:
do it better.
Wrong. The car system is integrated with the car which, for starters, makes controlling it (and my phone) while driving easier. It doesn't require an additional device, or a data connection, or unsightly holders and cables.
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@loopback0 Actually most car manufacturers would admit they (in car computers) are a bit shit and aren't a good idea as it takes concentration from the road itself. In the US this probably isn't a big as a problem as in the UK.
Also if you are in the UK it is illegal (3 point license penalty and fine) to use your phone in the car.
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@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
Also if you are in the UK it is illegal (3 point license penalty and fine) to use your phone in the car.
Which is why being able to control it from the car is handy.
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@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
Actually most car manufacturers would admit they (in car computers) are a bit shit
Citation required.
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@loopback0 I have the phone plastered to the windscreen and with hands free I can do most stuff via voice. It is as good if not better than my old bosses 50k BMW
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@loopback0 I can't be arsed to find the top gear vid where clarkson of one of the other two mention it .. it might be on one of the DVDs they did.
Also computers in cars are about as secure as most IoT devices. I like my car being a dumb car. Even the limited computer in my car is a danger. It literally switched off the engine at 70mph (which turns off the power steering and loads of other crap) because a sensor thought my crankshaft was broken. It didn't even go into Limp mode first.
People have hacked a car while driving. It was on Arstechnica a while back.
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@dkf said in Can't turn the car radio off:
OTOH, I'd guess the phone might have an advantage when it comes to avoiding heavy traffic
That, and getting updated maps is free and can be done at any time, whereas in-car systems you typically pay for the update and have to have it done at the dealer.
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@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
I can't be arsed to find the top gear vid where clarkson
Clarkson said it on Top Gear? It must be a fact.
@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
Also computers in cars are about as secure as most IoT devices.
Mine isn't connected to the internet, so doing anything to the computer would already require physical access to inside of the car.
@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
It literally switched off the engine at 70mph (which turns off the power steering and loads of other crap) because a sensor thought my crankshaft was broken. It didn't even go into Limp mode first.
The engine can't keep running if it doesn't know what position the crankshaft is in because it doesn't know when to inject the fuel. The issue isn't the computer, it's that the manufacturer didn't built redundancy into the system.
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@loopback0 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
Clarkson said it on Top Gear? It must be a fact.
I would imagine he speaks to a few people in the industry. I am just repeating an opinion that he heard.
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@loopback0 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
The engine can't keep running if it doesn't know what position the crankshaft is in because it doesn't know when to inject the fuel.
Worked in cars that didn't have sensors before why does it need a sensor suddenly? I am not a mechanic, but why did something that worked fine with sensors suddenly need sensors?
Speaking to people in the pub about this (not a statistical sample, I will admit) half of all the problems they are getting repaired are the sensors and not the car.
I have a "Clutch" sensor ... WTF does that even do? If the clutch plate is fucked the car isn't going anywhere.
The issue isn't the computer, it's that the manufacturer didn't built redundancy into the system.
I don't give a fuck about the difference when my car shuts dies on the outside lane of the motorway and I have to hold the clutch down and coast across three lanes. I drive the most popular UK car of all time the Mighty Vauxhall Astra.
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@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
I drive the most popular UK car of all time the Mighty Vauxhall Astra.
The Ford Focus has sold more.
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@RaceProUK Astra has been around since the 80s where the Focus was the replacement for the "Escort" ... so I doubt it. They even had a bit on the radio where they had some trivia about the Astra being the best selling of all time. However I am getting my facts from Sam FM ....
Anyway if I was to buy a car now, I would buy one of those Skoda Octavias.
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@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
Car GPS systems are garbage in comparison.
Mine isn't. It doesn't have up to the minute road layouts, but it does do very well at knowing its actual location. That turns out to be an exceptionally useful thing with a navigation aid.
Look, I've run several of these things in parallel (two phones, one car GPS, all in navigation mode to the same destination). The car system was the only one that coped the whole way, whereas the phone systems had a tendency to give rotten advice due to thinking that we were driving in the middle of a field, flying over a canal, or otherwise generally defying the laws of physics. (All picked the same overall route from start to finish, FWIW.) The big issue is that we've got some fairly long steep hills round here, so losing sight of a full set of GPS satellites is incredibly likely; the car can fall back to using dead reckoning as it has a fairly good idea what its velocity is, as it has a pretty decent set of sensors. The phones simply cannot.
The car in question is not a bottom of the range model at all. ;)
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@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
Anyway if I was to buy a car now, I would buy one of those Skoda Octavias.
They're pretty good. Looked at them before settling on a Volvo (with most of the factory fitted options too).
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@lucas1 I looked it up, and you're right, the Astra has sold more than the Focus.
But both the Escort and the Fiesta have sold more than the Astra.
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@dkf said in Can't turn the car radio off:
When was this though. Because I used to have this problem when I killed my motorola X+1 and had to go back to my Samsung S3 mini (biggest POS phone ever). But anything past 2014 and mid range phone has been better than something like a Tom Tom (which is a PITA to update).... Minor Rant, Updating a Tom Tom took me with my "Windows XP laptop just in case I need to do .NET 1.1 dev" to update his fucking GPS.
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@dkf I am a bit worried about German cars as I've heard they are expensive to fix.
My Astra is reliable enough and fixing it can be done for the most part with spanners. I probably drive this car into the ground tbh. I think it is only worth a £1000-1500 now. Also as a first car lets say it got some dings.
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@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
@dkf said in Can't turn the car radio off:
Volvo
Explains everything ;-)
It is big, and it is clever. ;-) Big, in that it only just fits in the driveway at the side of the house, and clever, in that Volvo were bought by the Chinese a bunch of years back, and they seem to have brought a lot of electronic systems knowhow in. Also, no way am I going to do complicated maintenance on it in the first place…
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@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
Worked in cars that didn't have sensors before why does it need a sensor suddenly?
Electronic fuel injection, which has plenty of benefits. Besides, even without sensors, if a mechanical part like the distributor fails, the engine is going to cut out exactly the same.
@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
I don't give a fuck about the difference when my car shuts dies on the outside lane of the motorway
Still not a problem introduced by sensors or computers.
@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
I drive the most popular UK car of all time the Mighty Vauxhall Astra.
BZZT. Wrong. Fiesta and Escort both sold more over time.
edit:
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@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
I am a bit worried about German cars as I've heard they are expensive to fix.
Not particularly. They also need repairing less.
In fact, thanks to all of those evil evil sensors they can diagnose problems faster with evil evil computers which makes it cheaper to diagnose and you can even do that at home if you so wish.
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@loopback0 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
Electronic fuel injection, which has plenty of benefits. Besides, even without sensors, if a mechanical part like the distributor fails, the engine is going to cut out exactly the same.
I don't drive a petrol fuelled car.
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@loopback0 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
In fact, thanks to all of those evil evil sensors they can diagnose problems faster with evil evil computers which makes it cheaper to diagnose and you can even do that at home if you so wish.
Yes you can but they cost quite a bit to fix even if you are doing it yourself. If you aren't doing it yourself it can cost 100s.
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@loopback0 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
BZZT. Wrong. Fiesta and Escort both sold more over time.
Okay whatever, couldn't really give a fucked.
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@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
I don't drive a petrol fuelled car.
So? What if a mechanical part of the fuel injection system failed on an old diesel? Oh yeah. No fuel, engine stops.
@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
Yes you can but they cost quite a bit to fix even if you are doing it yourself. If you aren't doing it yourself it can cost 100s.
As someone who spent years fixing French cars, this is the same on non-German cars.
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@loopback0 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
Still not a problem introduced by sensors or computers.
Yes it is because it turned off the fucking engine when there was nothing wrong. The sensor told the computer to turn the engine off.
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@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
Yes it is because it turned off the fucking engine when there was nothing wrong. The sensor told the computer to turn the engine off.
No - if the crankshaft sensor fails, the car CANNOT inject fuel because it does not know when to. It didn't cut off by choice.
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@loopback0 And my whole point was Diesel engines existed and worked fine for years without needing the sensor. So why does it need it now?
I rather things break down gradually than catastrophically. The latter put my life in danger.
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@lucas1 Electronic fuel injection.
You're missing the point - if a component failed under mechanical fuel injection then the same problem happens. The component wasn't a sensor on a mechanical system but its failure would still have caused the engine to stop.
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@loopback0 The problem was the sensor because I replaced it and the engine is fine. Fuck the sensor wasn't even that fucked because I drove the car for a whole week while I waited for the replacement part. I just kept the car under 1800 rpm.
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@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
@loopback0 The problem was the sensor because I replaced it and the engine is fine.
You're still missing the point.
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@loopback0 No you are.
I'd rather something break gradually for valid reasons like wear and tear because as a person you can make an informed judgement on whether it is likely to still work for "journey X". I've built my own bicycles and fixed my own motorbikes ... everything is analogue and if you know the machine you know when there is something wrong. "oh my brake pads on my bike are almost worn ... I will ride more carefully until I can get a replacement".
When something decides to just "stop" for what I consider non-valid reasons aka nothing was broken bar a piece of electronics and almost cost me my life. I consider that piece of tech bullshit.
Everything is over-engineered to the point where you won't know when and why it will fail. The title of this thread is "I can't turn the radio off".
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@lucas1 You're an idiot. Some components, be them electronic sensors or mechanical fuel pumps or whatever will fail instantly (or seem to) due to wear and tear. This is not a problem introduced by technology, it just isn't a problem it solves.
@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
because as a person you can make an informed judgement on whether it is likely to still work for "journey X"
Are you not even reading your own posts now?
@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
because I drove the car for a whole week while I waited for the replacement part
I'm not saying that it's fine that the engine cut out at 70mph I'm saying that it's not a new problem introduced by electronics.
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@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
Everything is over-engineered to the point where you won't know when and why it will fail
You didn't know (in advance) when and why mechanical components would fail. You knew they failed when they failed.
This is one of the problems the sensors try to solve. Maybe not the crankshaft sensor (because it can't) but others that detect a failure and put the car into safe mode so you can still carry on your journey.
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@loopback0 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
You didn't know (in advance) when and why mechanical components would fail. You know they failed when they failed.
If you ride/drive something regularly you know when there is something not right if it is due to wear and tear.
My car has a problem for whatever reason with the front end brake pads. It has started shaking the wheel when braking on the motorway again. I will probably need to get new discs and pads again. It probably something to do with my driving as I tend to have a bit of a heavy foot.
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@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
If you ride/drive something regularly you know when there is something not right if it is due to wear and tear.
By which point it is failing, which I covered.
@loopback0 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
You didn't know (in advance)
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@loopback0 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
@lucas1 You're an idiot. Some components, be them electronic sensors or mechanical fuel pumps or whatever will fail instantly (or seem to) due to wear and tear. This is not a problem introduced by technology, it just isn't a problem it solves.
No, you can inspect things and see if they are worn. You can then make a judgement on how worn they are as whether they are good or not.
When something decides "oh I am not working if I get too hot" as was my case. You cannot inspect that.
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@lucas1 You're acting like ALL problems with non-electronic engines can be identified by inspection and that's not true. On either electronic or non-electronic systems some components fail gradually and some fail instantly. Some let you limp the car home and some do not.
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@loopback0 Okay the last time my car went into Limp mode it was a coolant leak. I would have known about it sooner if I had a temperature gauge.
Ironically I was complaining to my step-dad about my air-con not "being crap". Vauxhalls have excellent heating / cooling and always have done and my father said "oh if your heating isn't working properly in a vauxhall there is something wrong with the engine".
All the computer crap didn't tell me anything until I was stuck at the side of the road trying to find some water so I could fill up the coolant reservoir.
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@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
All the computer crap didn't tell me anything until I was stuck at the side of the road trying to find some water so I could fill up the coolant reservoir.
Sounds like the opposite if what you were bitching about. No sensor to check the coolant level.
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But also not a problem introduced by electronics. Coolant leaks happened before.
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@loopback0 I am complaining about electronic sensors that just fail suddenly when there is nothing really wrong .
Not things like a temperature gauge which is just a glorified thermometer.
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@loopback0 I wasn't complaining about the leak. I was complaining that I had no way to know (no temperature gauge) that the engine was getting too hot until the car went into limp mode.
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@lucas1 said in Can't turn the car radio off:
@loopback0 I wasn't complaining about the leak. I was complaining that I had no way to know (no temperature gauge) that the engine was getting too hot until the car went into limp mode.
Lack of temperature gauge is still not a problem specific to electronics. In fact the temperature sensor meant that the car knew at the point it was a problem and told you.
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@loopback0 No it didn't. Because most of these sensors fuck up all the time and I knew it was a 50/50 toss up on whether it was bullshit or not.
e.g. My mates car just used to go into limp mode every so often he sent it to a mechanic to find out what was wrong and they couldn't find anything other than the computer was fucked.