ipb32

Just completed installing Alpine 9812RB into MY03 - thanx to everyone who gave advice. I'll post pics soon.

Problem is that at night the display is just too bright -it's in my peripheral vision and reflects from windscreen and side window.

The matrix display can be turned off but the blue buttons can't.

The unit has a wire marked "Illumination" and in cars which have variable dash brightness this would allow the brightness of the unit to be dimmed.

I know the Impreza doesn't have dashboard variable illumination. What I'd like is that whenever I turn on my headlights the brightness of the head unit reduces. This is what happens with the clock as standard. I was wondering if it would be possible to splice into the clock brightness wire and connect it to the illumination wire of the Alpine, but I'm not sure what the Alpine expects to see on that wire. Obviously with nothing on the wire it displays at full brightness which I can't quite get my head round because if attached to a car with variable illumination and you turned it al the way down wouldn't that be the same as having nothing at all so it would suddenly go full brightness again?

I'll give ALpine technical people a call on Monday but would like to have a go at doing something over the weekend so any help gratefully received.

Ian

ipb32

Been looking at Car Audio Direct forum. Maybe it's not constantly variable illumination. I think 12 volt going into the wire will just dim it in one step and thinking about it the obvious place to tap into is the illumination for the aircos or cigarette lighter.

Ian

BigRed

My kenwood headunit is wired to the illumination circuit EG the bulb at the rear of the cigar lighter, when you switch the lights on it dims, but this can be altered by going into the menu and setting the brightness when the lights are on eg setting 5(DIM) when lights on / setting 10(max) when lights off.

I don't know if the alpine is the same but it may be worth a try.

ipb32

Hmm - I should read the manual - found a way of manually dimming the display - AFTER wiring it up to cigar lighter.

Problem I have is that the illumination on the buttons is only dimmed slightly and they reflect at the top of the windscreen and side window. Doesn't appear to be anyway round this which is a bit of a ****.

Ian