Head Unit Very Slow When Cold-start.

SugarRuy

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Hi there,

I have a 2020 Civic Hatch EX. Recently I found that the head unit would take about 1 minute to start when I cold-start the car(I know it's hot outside in the US but let's say cold-start as it parks on the parking lot for a couple of hours or overnight).

When the head unit is starting under that situation, I could get the rear view but without the guideline if I change to R gear.

However, the starting time is reasonable(less than 10 seconds) when it is not a cold-start, which is, for example, starting after I turn off the car.

Does anyone have the same issue?

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An update:

Seems like the slow start of my head unit is mostly related to the temperature.

It was normal in recent 2 starts which are 84F and 97F respectively, when I started the car in the morning and night.

I've ordered a sunshade for windshield. Let's see if it will make it!

------------------------------------
A new update on Aug 9:

Now it becomes randomly, not depends on the temperature. The sunshade doesn't make it better, unfortunately.

It is very annoying because the Bluetooth will not work if the head unit doesn't, as well as the guideline of back camera. I will visit the dealer next time for it.
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ryanfk7

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Hi there,

I have a 2020 Civic Hatch EX. Recently I found that the head unit would take about 1 minute to start when I cold-start the car(I know it's hot outside in the US but let's say cold-start as it parks on the parking lot for a couple of hours or overnight).

When the head unit is starting under that situation, I could get the rear view but without the guideline if I change to R gear.

However, the starting time is reasonable(less than 10 seconds) when it is not a cold-start, which is, for example, starting after I turn off the car.

Does anyone have the same issue?
I live in PA with a 2017 hatch. We have fairly cold winters and hot summers, I havenā€™t noticed anything when itā€™s warmer than say 40-50 degrees outside but anything below that and my head unit takes a good 20-30 seconds to load everything up
 
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SugarRuy

SugarRuy

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I live in PA with a 2017 hatch. We have fairly cold winters and hot summers, I havenā€™t noticed anything when itā€™s warmer than say 40-50 degrees outside but anything below that and my head unit takes a good 20-30 seconds to load everything up
Thanks man. I live in VA where is about 30Ā°F in winter and 90Ā°F in summer. I bought this car in Jan 2020 but I think this phenomenon comes out in recent one month. Now it is like 80-90Ā°F outside in my area. I am not sure if the temperature matters.

Generally, it takes about 10 seconds from pushing the start button to the screen with "Notice" and an OK button.

I attach two videos if you interested.

Fast Start

Slow Start
 

17exsedan

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Sometimes in the morning if I'm in a hurry and I go to back out of my garage too soon after starting up the rear camera will lag a bit and maybe not show the guidelines, but it corrects itself fast enough.
 
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SugarRuy

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Hi there,

I have a 2020 Civic Hatch EX. Recently I found that the head unit would take about 1 minute to start when I cold-start the car(I know it's hot outside in the US but let's say cold-start as it parks on the parking lot for a couple of hours or overnight).

When the head unit is starting under that situation, I could get the rear view but without the guideline if I change to R gear.

However, the starting time is reasonable(less than 10 seconds) when it is not a cold-start, which is, for example, starting after I turn off the car.

Does anyone have the same issue?
Visited the dealer for solving it.

The service man had no idea but reset my head unit.

It doesn't work.

Still don't know what is going on...
 


sLing

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Is the clock incorrect when it lags during start up? Had it happen to me recently and the time was incorrect.
 
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SugarRuy

SugarRuy

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Is the clock incorrect when it lags during start up? Had it happen to me recently and the time was incorrect.
Thanks for your info. In my case, the time is correct.
 
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Were you able to find any solution for this? I recently got a 20' Si and it has started to do this a lot.

I'll make a 15 minute trip away from home, get out of the car for 30 minutes, and when I get back in the head unit does the long boot up process. This is really consistent, happening over 50% of the time. On the other hand, after I make a 15 minute trip back home, the next day it'll boot up just fine pretty much every time.

I guessed that it might be weather/battery related - with colder temperatures these days, the battery is under more load so after a short drive it might not be fully charged, leading the head unit to shut itself off completely instead of going into normal sleep mode, in an attempt to reduce battery drain. This didn't start happening for me until a few weeks ago when the temperatures started to drop - before then it was very rare. But that doesn't explain why it always works after resting overnight.

In Settings>System at the very bottom there's a memory refresh option, by default it was enabled for me to reboot the head unit every day at 2 AM (the option says this is to keep it from getting slow/unstable over time). So maybe that's why it always turns on the next day - it'll refresh and then fail to shut itself off?

I've also had the issue happen pretty consistently in this situation: drive 15 minutes away from home, take 30 minute break, come back to car > long boot time, drive 2-3 minutes > take 30 minute break > come back to car > long boot time, drive 15 minutes back home, next day it starts up fine. The long boot twice in a row after a short drive makes me think it is a battery issue. Especially since the rear window / mirror defoggers and seat heaters are also on.

I have HondaHack installed so I can see the battery voltage on the head unit, but I keep forgetting to put it into acc mode first - I just start it up immediately out of habit and then the voltage reads 14+ since the engine is on. I'll try to take a look at that over time and report back. And also disabling the memory refresh to see if that makes it start doing the long boot after overnight rests.
 
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SugarRuy

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Were you able to find any solution for this? I recently got a 20' Si and it has started to do this a lot.

I'll make a 15 minute trip away from home, get out of the car for 30 minutes, and when I get back in the head unit does the long boot up process. This is really consistent, happening over 50% of the time. On the other hand, after I make a 15 minute trip back home, the next day it'll boot up just fine pretty much every time.

I guessed that it might be weather/battery related - with colder temperatures these days, the battery is under more load so after a short drive it might not be fully charged, leading the head unit to shut itself off completely instead of going into normal sleep mode, in an attempt to reduce battery drain. This didn't start happening for me until a few weeks ago when the temperatures started to drop - before then it was very rare. But that doesn't explain why it always works after resting overnight.

In Settings>System at the very bottom there's a memory refresh option, by default it was enabled for me to reboot the head unit every day at 2 AM (the option says this is to keep it from getting slow/unstable over time). So maybe that's why it always turns on the next day - it'll refresh and then fail to shut itself off?

I've also had the issue happen pretty consistently in this situation: drive 15 minutes away from home, take 30 minute break, come back to car > long boot time, drive 2-3 minutes > take 30 minute break > come back to car > long boot time, drive 15 minutes back home, next day it starts up fine. The long boot twice in a row after a short drive makes me think it is a battery issue. Especially since the rear window / mirror defoggers and seat heaters are also on.

I have HondaHack installed so I can see the battery voltage on the head unit, but I keep forgetting to put it into acc mode first - I just start it up immediately out of habit and then the voltage reads 14+ since the engine is on. I'll try to take a look at that over time and report back. And also disabling the memory refresh to see if that makes it start doing the long boot after overnight rests.

No, I haven't found any solution. The local dealer could not replicate it when they did the oil change in Oct 2020 so they also have no solution.

I also think it is temperature/battery related. Differently, from my experience, it is 'higher the temperature, higher the probability of long boot time'. In summer, it always happens but now it is rare ... Similarly, I often do the short drives...

The one thing I noticed is that, when it happens, the Honda badge comes alone in the screen, whereas normally the Honda badge and a blue HondaLink badge should come together. It reminds me when I did a manual Android system restart, which also has the Honda badge alone and might take a long time to restart. The manual Android system is done by 'pressing the volume button for seconds until a dialog comes out for restart the system'.

In terms of the 'memory refresh option', I have not experienced any difference between on and off.

Anyway, I will let the dealer to take another look for solving the problem. It might need to replace the head unit...
 
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Here is my data so far. Initially I was clicking the car's power button twice which apparently puts it into ON mode (with engine off), not ACC mode. I realized that and started measuring the voltage in ACC mode instead, and always get 12.0Ā±0.2 volts. This is measured from HondaHack on the head unit itself (in ON, the headlights and dash and everything drag down the voltage a bit).

What I've noticed is that since I started putting it into Acc, it almost always boots normally. I let the head unit start up and get to the home screen, take a picture of the voltage on the display, and then start the engine. So *perhaps* putting it into Acc, then giving it just a few seconds before going into On / engine start might help? I'm going to revert to (quickly hit start button twice > measure voltage in ON > turn on engine) / (turn on engine directly) and see if that makes the issue start happening frequently again.

Here are some charts of the rest time and outside temperature vs. whether it turned on normally (blue) or rebooted (red). I get the same flat white Honda logo like with an Android system reboot instead of the silver 3d Honda logo with the normal startups. The chart with a few data points is from my initial dataset in On mode (seems to be no correlation with time in this one), and the next one is from the measurements in Acc mode (here only short rests caused it, but that might just be a coincidence given that the data size is somewhat small).

In the data table, ? is for when I turned on the engine directly and forgot to measure voltage first. On row 32 I experienced a long boot up - for this one, after the head unit did come up I had to turn it off and on again to get HondaHack to display the voltage, and it showed 12.1 (this is without the engine ever being turned on). And given that the voltage always reads around 12, I guess this might not be a battery issue.

Honda Civic 10th gen Head Unit Very Slow When Cold-start. section1


Honda Civic 10th gen Head Unit Very Slow When Cold-start. section0


Honda Civic 10th gen Head Unit Very Slow When Cold-start. datatable
 


SDAlexander8

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Are you using the default skin or the alternate tiles style?
 
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SugarRuy

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Once again, I can confirm that it is highly related with the tempature.

Now it is winter in VA, normally it is about 40-50F(5-10C) outside and the head unit is good at most of the time... but days ago, the temperature was 60-70F(15-20C) outside, and again, the head unit restarted when I started the engine, which took a long time(1 min).

I might not have the enough data points to confirm my guess, but I think it should be related with the inside temperature.

What I have noticed is:
In summer, it got problem when cold-starting(the cabin is hot because of the outside temperature), and was good when starting after driving a becuase using A/C can cool the cabin down.
In winter, it will be good when cold-starting(cabin is cold), but might get problem when starting again after driving a while because the cabin becomes warm when you drive it for a while.
 

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Hi,

just been reading your thread.

Regarding the head unit, itā€™s basically an android tablet, which has a slow processor and limited onboard memory.

if you are using Honda Hack, you will notice that the processor tends to be on overtime for the first minute or two when you start the car, I suspect loading various background programmes.

after a short while it tends to settle down and drops to say about 20% to 30% processor load.

I suspect that the head unit goes into a low power mode when the car is used, stopped and then used again in a short while.

if the vehicle is left overnight it probably turns off, thus goes into a more full on boot mode, taking longer.

you will also find sometimes the unit will seem to do a full reset or full boot.

I've never had a issue waiting for the system to boot and select car play and the pod cast or music I want before setting off for the day, I always like to ensure car play has activated correctly.

maybe, just slow down a little and then you wonā€™t experience the issue anymore, Iā€™m certainly never in such a rush that is proves an issue to me, I just see it as a android table booting up.

it would be like me trying to make a call or search the internet on my iPhone, the moment I press the power on from cold button, it just wonā€™t work...

yeah it sucks that itā€™s not running the latest technology, but as the car will have been specā€™d in 2015 to launch in 2016/2017, I suspect we just expect things to be faster and faster.

cheers
Darren
 
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I'm using the default skin.

SugarRuy, your observations are very interesting. I got the car in mid November so haven't tested it in the summer yet. But with the scatterplots I posted above, it seems that in warm-ish weather (the plot with few points) the issue seems to occur randomly, but in colder weather (the plot with more points) the issue only occurs when starting the car a second time shortly after the first start - such as after making a short trip where the heat is on high.

I won't be driving it much for the next ~2 weeks, but I'll continue the data logging with a focus on cabin temperature instead of exterior temperature this time. Even if it doesn't solve the issue, at the very least with some more data logging we can get confirmation that the issue is in fact due to the interior temperature being high.

It seems like this issue isn't affecting a lot of people so our head units must be defective - but from the other experiences I've read here, I assume a dealership would just say they couldn't reproduce it or try to pass it off as normal and avoid actually fixing the issue. I do have to take it in soon for a rattle so I'll ask about it anyway.
 

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my 2016 EX-T was being real slow, like sitting on a black screen or sitting on just the base background and nothing else with music attempting to play but constantly glitching from the CPU being pegged out each time I got in the car for several days in a row, I did a Reboot on the headunit and that seams to have solved it for now.
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