Mixed feelings about OGM1

dlweninger · September 26, 2012

Well I purchased my OGM1 in the spring from ADC Mobile (great customer service). I am not totaly happy with the OGM1, it is slow, if I have voice guidence on Igo primo freezes up (have to do a reset with the little button on the top right), can't skip back to the beginning of a movie on ipod (you have to hold the scan backwords button for about 5 min). I contacted advent and they said "that is the nature of the ipod", wich is not true because every other device I own or have seen can skip forward and backwords. I have downloaded and installed the firmware and software multiple times plus updates and resets with no luck.

wottenad · September 27, 2012

Well I purchased my OGM1 in the spring from ADC Mobile (great customer service). I am not totaly happy with the OGM1, it is slow, if I have voice guidence on Igo primo freezes up (have to do a reset with the little button on the top right), can't skip back to the beginning of a movie on ipod (you have to hold the scan backwords button for about 5 min). I contacted advent and they said "that is the nature of the ipod", wich is not true because every other device I own or have seen can skip forward and backwords. I have downloaded and installed the firmware and software multiple times plus updates and resets with no luck.

The only things I can add to this is that Advent did Apple certification testing and passed, so unfortnately the function you're talking about is not specified by Apple as a feature that's required to pass Apple certification. You can blame it on Advent, but that may be a little misguided - you should really be looking at the certification process...

Is the iPod control a deal breaker? In terms of what other features the deck has and how they relate to the integration in a GM vehicle, the OGM1 is pretty solid, so I don't think any other deck that solves the iPod issue will be any better a fit in the truck. In fact, we haven't been able to make the case for ANY other high quality navi deck in these trucks due to the cost and hassle of the adaptors that are required to make them work.

As far as the voice issues: What you're describing probably has to do with memory issues and may take a little sleuthing to figure out. Have you changed any of the factory settings on your SD card, like any mods to the sys.txt file? If so, take them back to stock. Do you have thousands of files on your iPod? If so, try unplugging your iPod and do another test to see if you still get the same response. Try unpairing and re-pairing your phone to the unit.

Basically, when you consider what functions the deck has to accomplish in the vehicle, it works as one of many different computers that all have to talk to each other, as well as accomplish it's own chores. When other tasks are being done such as indexing the iPod or establishing communication with Bluetooth devices or other network functions, there's a chance that any one of the fuctions canmax out the available memory and cause errors. It's pretty rare, but with a little detective work, we can generally find out what's causing it.

Try some of the stuff noted above and see what happens...

430HP70 · September 29, 2012

walt, off topic, but i updated the firmware to the 060612 tonight. everything seemed to go fine except i never got the "full license is activated" message. i ended up skiping that step and proceeding on. seems to work fine. should i reinstall?

im with the op; mixed feelings. its the BEST option, but could be better. slow load up, we need xm and fm presets mixed, presets need to roll over to next set instead of going back to the first etc. with all advent has changed so far, i hope they keep listening and keep changing.

i understand that it may not be possible to make it faster. ive come to accept that and it doesnt seem as bad as it used to. but there are three buttons on the wheel to control stations; up, down and right arrow. up and down should shift presets, but the right arrow should allow the pages to be scrolled. id prefer it to go from preset 6 /page 1 to preset 1 / page 2. id also prefer to mix xm and fm stations on one preset page. these are all things that the stock navi allows and i think it would make the advent much better as well.

tanked_darren · September 29, 2012

I just ordered the unit, haven't got it yet but I've talked with a friend who has an after market unit and he says there is some start up time with his Kentwood 9990HD. Nature of the beast?

roth79 · September 30, 2012

I just got my OGM and the tailgate camera from Walt at ADC mobile. All I can say is this unit is fantastic. I installed yesterday and e mailed Walt staurday at 8 am EST and he responded in a minute (hes in Washington ont the west coast). I also called him and he answered my question regarding a install question. Been playing with the deck all day, I love it and the customer service from Walt was second to none. Call him and go for it.

Roth

MikeNH · October 1, 2012

I wouldn't want mixed presets, I've always liked them separate, I had them that way on the OE deck. Though I suppose if mixed presets were enabled I could still keep them organized by FM, XM, etc.

430HP70 · October 1, 2012

walt is an amazing guy, no doubt about that.

newest firmware is still working, so not sure i should reinstall. another issue is still the fm reception. its so bad that its not useable. didnt have the issue with the factory radio, and my buddy has the advent toyota version with the same issue. i know they were working on it, but it seems there needs to be another fix.

wottenad · October 2, 2012

walt is an amazing guy, no doubt about that.

newest firmware is still working, so not sure i should reinstall. another issue is still the fm reception. its so bad that its not useable. didnt have the issue with the factory radio, and my buddy has the advent toyota version with the same issue. i know they were working on it, but it seems there needs to be another fix.

I live in the toilet bowl of FM reception in the United States (Seattle/Tacoma), and have offered to use my own car as the crash-test dummy for whatever fixes any manufacturer wants to try to improve FM reception, but I have to tell you in all honesty that in my Tahoe, the Advent works fairly decently on FM here - certainly no worse than most other decks.

Having said that, I have heard that these decks are having issues not with sensitivity (grabbing weak signals) as much as selectivity (the ability to filter many adjacent signals). This becomes an issue if you live in some very large metropolitan areas like Chicago/LA/New York etc. where you have a station on every number on the dial - the deck has a harder time blocking the adjacent station.

I have also been told that these parameters are adjustable in software, and most of the firmware updates released so far have included incremental fixes to try and combat some of the issues. We would expect if they continue to hear complaints regarding reception that they would take a harder look at it, but I personally have not heard that many complaints at all about FM reception in relation to the number we've sold, so I don't have much to report to them.

Once again, as far as I'm aware, Advent is the only manufacturer that is tackling this stuff with firmware updates - they're doing incremental changes that are making it better each time...

wottenad · October 2, 2012

I just ordered the unit, haven't got it yet but I've talked with a friend who has an after market unit and he says there is some start up time with his Kentwood 9990HD. Nature of the beast?

Any of the SD or HD based units have a boot-up time since they have to access all of the data to make the system run from memory each time, and some manufacturers prioritize their boot-up sequences to allow certain functions early (like listening to the radio) at the expense of other functions that take much longer to be able to use. The shortest one we've ever measured is the JVC, but it's still ~4-5 seconds. Some of the Kenwoods are ~10 seconds or so, but some of the older Pioneers still hold the record at ~45 seconds and more. Really, Pioneer thought it was acceptable to ship the old F900BT that took (if you had an iPod plugged in) almost a minute before you got ANY sound whatsoever out of the deck! You couldn't even get the rear camera to come on within 15 seconds! It was horrible, and so bad I had to take it out of my own car and put the factory deck back in...

Keep in mind that no current universal Double-DIN deck takes into account ANY vehicle-specific functions, as they all rely on adaptors to communicate via data to the vehicle, while the Advent has all of the data processing on-board. When you consider the housekeeping that needs to occur when the key is turned on (reporting to the on-board LAN and getting instructions to sound whatever warnings you need to hear such as chimes, shaking hands with the XM tuner, pairing Bluetooth, indexing the contents of the iPod/iPhone, displaying the reverse camera, sounding the reverse sensor warning and displaying the visual icons for the sensors, etc.), it's pretty amazing that they've gotten the boot-up time as short as it is.

430HP70 · October 3, 2012

Having said that, I have heard that these decks are having issues not with sensitivity (grabbing weak signals) as much as selectivity (the ability to filter many adjacent signals). This becomes an issue if you live in some very large metropolitan areas like Chicago/LA/New York etc. where you have a station on every number on the dial - the deck has a harder time blocking the adjacent station.

thanks again walt. i do live in orange county, so we have TONS of stations and is probably the main issue. it does seem to have some sensitivity issue though. ive noticed that while driving in areas where there used to be a little static, the station is now gone completely. again, not sure why, but both the ogm1 and the tundra version are doing the same thing.

fwpdrobin · October 4, 2012

I am mostly happy with my OGM1. It has 2 problems that are pretty consistent right now. First, the minor one: If I start the Acadia with the drivers door open, XM doesnt work/ wont boot up.....not a big deal to work with. Second, the bigger problem: my rear seat controls are jacked up. When you power up the rear seat controls, I loose all speaker audio through the OGM1. Only the rear headphones have sound. Advent claims they are working on it; but it has been over a month now since I contacted them; I suspect some sort of CAN issue. This is a big deal for me, because I have kids in the back who like to listen to different things then mom and dad (when they forget their ipods).

wottenad · October 4, 2012

I am mostly happy with my OGM1. It has 2 problems that are pretty consistent right now. First, the minor one: If I start the Acadia with the drivers door open, XM doesnt work/ wont boot up.....not a big deal to work with. Second, the bigger problem: my rear seat controls are jacked up. When you power up the rear seat controls, I loose all speaker audio through the OGM1. Only the rear headphones have sound. Advent claims they are working on it; but it has been over a month now since I contacted them; I suspect some sort of CAN issue. This is a big deal for me, because I have kids in the back who like to listen to different things then mom and dad (when they forget their ipods).

I just talked to the engineer in charge of this fix last week, and they're looking at it, but finding vehicles that exhibit the problem are kind of rare.

Can you send me an email with a good explanation of the symptoms and a pic of your RPO code tag (silver tag in the glovebox with all the 3 character codes on it)?

I'll forward it to the guys that need to see it.