Radio

Hi I have a 2019 Broadway.
I would like to know when on electic can I use the radio with out draining the engine battery. Van fitted with a smart charger.if the radio does drain the battery what's the point of 2 speakers in the living area?
Thanks in advance

Mids wrote:Hi I have a 2019 Broadway.
I would like to know when on electic can I use the radio with out draining the engine battery. Van fitted with a smart charger.if  the radio does drain the battery  what's the point of 2 speakers in the living area?
Thanks in advance

Do you have the EC700,  think so.
You can use the radio if you are on Electric Hook Up as much as you like. Use Battery select set to Vehicle to keep the Battery charged select Leisure to keep the Leisure battery charged. Selecting Smart Solar will top up both batteries to the limits of the efficiency of the Solar system.

Yes I do have the ec700. If use battery select to vehicle .will other equipment drain the leisure battery ie lights or will the electric override this.(sorry to sound thick about this)
I have the smart charger set to both I thought this automatically swaps between the 2?

Mids wrote:Hi I have a 2019 Broadway.

You might find yourself having to turn it on again every 20 minutes 

I use Mains so little I had to go and check. It does what it says on the tin. Select L and it gets charged and used. Select V and that gets charged and used.
The Vehicle battery is not meant for Leisure loads so its best not to use other than for a short while if desperate. But if on Mains it won't get discharged its run by the Power Supply

I Select Active Leisure and Select Solar to Vehicle that will keep you going I am sure. If you notice that the Vehicle battery is dropping you can Select V and give it some charge.

Oh and you can set the on time to 3 Hours in the menu with the Peugeot.

Thank for your help

Damn, did they fix that on the newer models? 

Mines impossible to change beyond 20 

Marconi just one thing dont understand what you mean by vechile
Battery is not meant for lesiure loads? How would that work anyway?

The Vehicle Battery is designed for engine starting not slow deep discharge like the Leisure Battery. The radio runs from that, also Vehicle electrics, but its not a lot of discharge. When you Select Vehicle Battery with no charging going on then the Habitation Electrics are run from that Battery, as I say, OK for occasional use but not right for battery health.

Many on here have given up bothering with the van radio (probably all of us with the 20min timer!) and use other devices.
My personal choice is internet radio on the phone with a cheap Bluetooth speaker, obviously that depends on mobile signal and your data allowance. 
Or how about a compact stand alone radio, would save all the faff/worry out of selecting the right battery. The sound quality on some of the modern compact units is brilliant for the size.

Dbvwt wrote:Many on here have given up bothering with the van radio (probably all of us with the 20min timer!) and use other devices.
My personal choice is internet radio on the phone with a cheap Bluetooth speaker, obviously that depends on mobile signal and your data allowance. 
Or how about a compact stand alone radio, would save all the faff/worry out of selecting the right battery. The sound quality on some of the modern compact units is brilliant for the size.

That's a shame. The 2019 Radio has good rear speakers, even the DAB works well, I BlueTooth into the Radio for internet radio (the Archers Live when abroad) and stored music, its all very successful.
There is no faff or worry about the battery in practice, so little that when I was asked the question I had to go and look, and we use the radio at least twice a day, before anyone thinks that isn't much use, I leave it on for the 3 Hours for security when we go out and very rarely ever use the switch to switch it off.

Now for the downside, the Radio has TomTom which is so bad it is unfit for purpose, that includes Traffic information which doesn't work in the UK or France but does work in Spain. Having said that the information in Spain is so thin on the ground that I saw 2 hold ups one a crash was over by 3 days by the time we passed it and still showing. The second was shown as a 2 minute hold up so diversion was not considered, when we reached it there was a protest with hundreds of Farmers on tractors with Police control and convoys, no diversions possible and the hold up, with slow crawls over an Hour.

On my Radio the Volume on off button has to be avoided as if it has Covid 19, if by chance you use it to switch On the Radio there is a strong chance that the whole 'Van will start talking Italian, Radio and Dashboard, of course TomTom have never heard of this problem and blame Peugeot, who have never heard of the problem and blamed TomTom. Finally Peugeot have said take it to you local dealer I missed my appointment for that due to lock down, but I don't hold out much chance of a cure. I have though become a dab hand at resetting the Language (done in TomTom) and now know all the Menu Labels in Italian.

It did mean that we were well versed in social distancing, DON'T TOUCH THAT VOLUME KNOB !!

Perhaps the 2019 unit is improved on the previous unit (without the built in satnav) as the quality from mine is just average. I think a lot has to do with the position of the rear speakers also, these are also very average in my Symbol despite trying to optimise with the radio settings.
I guess it’s a matter of finding what suits each of us, I enjoy a couple of specialist radio stations on the phone that the normal radio wouldn’t get.

And even if it was the best radio in the world that 20min timer would still need sorting out 

interesting points about the radio and its not just AS that have time restrictions to protect the cab battery....
but why would you need to? i
n a nutshell, some of these devices are incredibly respurce hungry...
not an AS but i brought my new van home and was surprised /dismayed etc to find my cab battery had gone flat after just a couple of weeks....
the RAC guy got me going but commented that there was a 'large' draw from the cab battery....
i soon realised it was the Poineer head unit (radio, satnav (not tomtom), dvd/cd player, bluetooth etc).
i checked the spec and was amazed to see it could draw upto 10 amps (yes, 10 amp) when on full chat....i rang Pioneer and they comfirmed this...and it drew 'quite a bit' when in standby.
the solution for me was easy....turn off the 'entertainment' button on the control panel when parked up with no ehu or to remove the security panel which kills the unit.
no probs after that...
but why arent radios wired to run from cab battery when engine running and leisure battery when not? cant be that difficult, can it?
Re: the Tomtom satnav, i dont use my van satnav as its Blaupunkt and doesnt take full postcodes nor is it easy to load POI files...
so i use my Tomtom Via 62...
while the POI loading is crap compared to older versions (drag and drop) it is great for 'navigating' and my 'traffic' info comes via my bluetoothed phone and seems to work everywhere (but will need to confirm this when unlocked....)
when on non ehu sites, we use a small cheap stand alone portable radio as suggested and it has served us well all over europe...

Dbvwt wrote:Perhaps the 2019 unit is improved on the previous unit (without the built in satnav) as the quality from mine is just average. I think a lot has to do with the position of the rear speakers also, these are also very average in my Symbol despite trying to optimise with the radio settings.

Same here, in my Symbol I find DAB next to useless when driving around as the signal is so patchy.  If you venture into East Anglia it drops out completely, which always puzzles me as it's so flat there you'd think the signal would be great.

I use a USB memory stick full of my music set to shuffle when driving so it simply keeps playing, or failing that good old FM radio.  When I'm on site I use my phone and bluetooth speaker then if I want music.

marconi wrote:
The Vehicle battery is not meant for Leisure loads so its best not to use other than for a short while if desperate. But if on Mains it won't get discharged its run by the Power Supply

These days the Leisure battery supplied with a new Autosleeper is a dual purpose battery designated for leisure use. It is still capable of delivering a high cranking current but is designed to be resistant to damage if well discharged. It is not a 'deep cycle' battery and will therefore accept charge more quickly from the alternator.

The characteristics of the vehicle and leisure batteries are very similar (indeed when my van was delivered both batteries were identical Mercedes badged units) and no harm will be done by using the vehicle battery for leisure purposes. The current Sargent systems ensure that the vehicle battery cannot be discharged by leisure use beyond the point needed to start the engine.

bolero boy wrote:
but why arent radios wired to run from cab battery when engine running and leisure battery when not? cant be that difficult, can it?

It can actually be quite difficult now, with factory fitted radios.

In order to cut down on wiring, typical factory-fitted radios have relatively few connections on the back, and they react to events signalled to them over CAN. One of the consequences is that they generally don't have an ignition-switched power supply, so you can't turn them on using a switch to switch on the power - they simply won't react.

Some factory-fitted radios won't turn on from the power switch on their front panel unless either the ignition is on or the key is in the ACC position. For those, you can't make them power on without simulating the CAN network and "pretending" that the ignition is switched on.

I can understand why they do it, though. A few years ago, wiring a new headunit tended to be a bit of an ordeal, with wires going to the dash illumination, the speedo, the handbrake and the ignition, in addition to all the other wires, and that did make for ridiculously large wiring looms - so from that point of view it makes sense.

Probably the easiest solution is to fit an aftermarket radio, though as already said, many of the "big screen" ones take a huge amount of power - even when in standby mode - and some of those won't turn on with the ignition off either (my Kenwood won't). It depends on how you use your battery power, but I wouldn't choose to run my Kenwood from the leisure battery - it takes too much power which I would rather save for my fridge!

never understood them fitting the speakers in the back and not addressing the 20 minute radio thing - its not hard to fix you just wire the radio direct to a battery (either hab or engine  - engine is easier obviously)

"These days the Leisure battery supplied with a new Autosleeper is a dual purpose battery designated for leisure use."


Thanks Peter. I have not seen any information on the Vehicle Battery as yet. Earlier in the year I still thought it was AGM, I am sure somewhere in the paperwork it said it was AGM, I haven't found it again though.

Old habits die hard, I won't change my usage pattern, particularly when the Vehicle Battery doesn't get full Solar charge now. Up until the Solar Controller change it would have been pointless to try and use that power when off grid. Rather like fitting another Leisure Battery, if the Solar system can't charge one Battery it sure wont charge two.

Roopert wrote:

bolero boy wrote:
but why arent radios wired to run from cab battery when engine running and leisure battery when not? cant be that difficult, can it?

It can actually be quite difficult now, with factory fitted radios.

In order to cut down on wiring, typical factory-fitted radios have relatively few connections on the back, and they react to events signalled to them over CAN. One of the consequences is that they generally don't have an ignition-switched power supply, so you can't turn them on using a switch to switch on the power - they simply won't react.

Some factory-fitted radios won't turn on from the power switch on their front panel unless either the ignition is on or the key is in the ACC position. For those, you can't make them power on without simulating the CAN network and "pretending" that the ignition is switched on.

I can understand why they do it, though. A few years ago, wiring a new headunit tended to be a bit of an ordeal, with wires going to the dash illumination, the speedo, the handbrake and the ignition, in addition to all the other wires, and that did make for ridiculously large wiring looms - so from that point of view it makes sense.

Probably the easiest solution is to fit an aftermarket radio, though as already said, many of the "big screen" ones take a huge amount of power - even when in standby mode - and some of those won't turn on with the ignition off either (my Kenwood won't). It depends on how you use your battery power, but I wouldn't choose to run my Kenwood from the leisure battery - it takes too much power which I would rather save for my fridge!

thanks Roopert. im not well up on CAN/BUS and adding myriad leisure circuits into the mix cant help with the total wiring volume.
im not sure how its wired, but my van's radio 'wakes up' when the ignition is turned on, as does the stand alone Tomtom, which for me is a pain....as i dont always want that to happen....and then its several screen touches to power it off....(do you want to power off?, do you really want to power off?, are you absolutely sure etc, etc...)  why no single POWER OFF button?
Re: power to the fridge, we have an absorption fridge and only ever run it from 12v when driving.

Dbvwt wrote:Many on here have given up bothering with the van radio (probably all of us with the 20min timer!) and use other devices.
My personal choice is internet radio on the phone with a cheap Bluetooth speaker, obviously that depends on mobile signal and your data allowance. 
Or how about a compact stand alone radio, would save all the faff/worry out of selecting the right battery. The sound quality on some of the modern compact units is brilliant for the size.

Same here, never used it from day one. 

Bluetooth for me and cheap speakers from Tesco for £25 really good. Music on my phone.

Internet radio also, mainly Gold, due to my age

That is the joy with internet radio, the stations available depending on your tastes are vast.

I’m an 80’s soul/disco guy, Solar radio is my favourite, it was born out of an illegal pirate station from the 70’s.

Anyone see that film about radio Caroline as a ship just outside uk waters (true story), very enjoyable.

Pretty sure the radio in my 2019 Nuevo is fed from the leisure battery. When I isolate the habitation electrics, the radio doesn't work. Also it goes a lot longer than 20 minutes before going off, never timed it but must be 2 hours or so.

Flash wrote:Pretty sure the radio in my 2019 Nuevo is fed from the leisure battery. When I isolate the habitation electrics, the radio doesn't work. Also it goes a lot longer than 20 minutes before going off, never timed it but must be 2 hours or so.

I am ready to believe anything. How are you isolating your habitation electrics.

I ran my radio last night I am pretty sure it discharged the Vehicle Battery, I didn't pay much attention. I have just put it on again, I will monitor it. I have assumed all Current from the Leisure Battery would show on the Active Battery Discharge scale it shows zero current. Selecting the Vehicle Battery as the active Battery still shows Zero Current although the Control Panel load or whatever does seem to drop the voltage reading by 01 Amp intermittently.

If fed from the Vehicle Battery I would expect the Radio Current to be unmonitored as are the engine electrics. Similarly the EC700 quiescent Current from the Leisure Battery.

I set the On time of my Radio to 3 hours which I think was the maximum.

Flash wrote:Pretty sure the radio in my 2019 Nuevo is fed from the leisure battery. When I isolate the habitation electrics, the radio doesn't work. Also it goes a lot longer than 20 minutes before going off, never timed it but must be 2 hours or so.

I'm pretty sure its powered from the vehicle battery as part of the vehicle electrics and not the leisure battery.  If you want to prove this, turn off the vehicle electrics using the red tab on the ignition and the radio should stop working.  Similarly, remove the leisure battery's 20A in-line fuse and if the radio still works it can only be getting its power from the vehicle battery.

In my 2009 Nuevo the radio  only stayed on for 20mins and not reprogrammable and sound was awful. My 2015 Nuevo radio stays on for 3 hours and sound is fantastic, now I don't need to carry a separate radio around.