Radio dimming???

[Blind Driver2]

The Kenwoods are even worse. Be lucky you have an alpine

 

[f-two-fiddy]

I outfitted the Wife's ride with a Pioneer. It was so bad that I disassembled the faceplate and darkened all the white translusent panels with a black sharpie. It made it bearable at least.

 

[riotwarrior]

I hear ya...wife bout a Dual cd player for the ranger....it's freaking lightening bright blue LED and cannot be dimmed what so ever....I cut some black tape and that fixes it by sticking it over the face plate.

For me I will not settle on a deck until I know I can either manually DIM it and it has something other than freaking lightening BLUE leds perhaps the ability to change the colour even. I would go as far as having the sales person turn out the lights and let me see the deck in THE DARK to gauge the level of intensity of lighting!

JM2CW..my Yeasu radios are orange in colour and it's not too bright so I have been thinking to match that!

 

[79jasper]

Bringing this one back up.
Kenwood has red displays now also. I should've got a pic since I was just in my truck.
It's fairly bright, but being red doesn't bother me.
It has a dimmer in the settings, but if I dim it, I can't see it in daytime. Least not easily.


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[redneckaggie]

the dimmer wire on most radios does not have a variable rheostat hooked to it, it searches for +12 and when it sees +12(or close enough to it) on the illum wire it dims just a little, if you have the wire hooked to the factory dimmer, it is probably not going to dim because that wire is connected to the resistor on the switch, you must hook it to the wire on the switch that has +12 when lights are on and nothing when they are off. I cant remember which wire I tied it into for it to work and I have since rewired the truck where the radio doesnt dim.

I recently put a pioneer 2500 bt double din unit in the golf and its lighting is awesome, fully selectable brightness and multiple colors to choose from for the backlighting.

 

[theguruat12]

^What he said. It's because the stereo is backlit with LED's, and LED's don't dim using linear-voltage adjustment like halogens/incandescents. They use what is called PWM, or Pulse-Width Modulation. Essentially, it's switching them on and off at full power with variable on and off cycle times. Like upwards of 60 times per second. The longer they stay at 100%, the brighter they appear.

 

[79jasper]

Yep.
Brightest/contrast is where it's at.
Can't say I care for the color changeable ones, as I'd most likely set it to red and leave it.
Although the green on some is pretty sweet.
I've had some older ones that would dim with the switch. (In gm vehicles though) But those were probably not led.
I'll see if I can find it. Still have it somewhere. Wanna say it was a vr3 or something.


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[franklin2]

If you had a truck with a factory digital radio, Ford will have two wires in the harness for dimming. One wire will be the blue/red stripe wire. This is the wire that feeds all the instrument cluster and dash lights, and is fed from the rheostat in the headlight switch. It sends out a variable voltage like was mentioned, and Ford used this with a regular light bulb inside the radio to illuminate all the lettering on the buttons.

Then you have the digital readout section of the Ford radio. It needed to be dimmed also, so Ford ran an extra wire up to the radio harness, the famous darkbrown wire that feeds all the running lights in the whole truck from front to rear. This was a solid 12v signal that they used to signal the display to dim.

When I install a aftermarket radio, I use either the blue/red or the brown wire, it doesn't matter in my case because I always run my instrumentation control wide open for max birghtness. I have always liked my dash lights very bright.

If you find the blue/red does not work for you, and you do not have the brown wire up at the radio, you should be able to find it over near the driver's side kickpanel. It will be hanging there empty if you do not have roof lights, or will be plugged into a wire running up the A pillar for the roof lights if you have them.

 

[fsmyth]

My old F350 sports a JVC KD-G210. manual/auto dimming. works. no USB, tho.