I love being able to add my favorite music to the car using a USB stick, but I can't believe you or your passenger can't scroll through the file listing while the car is moving. That's as stupid as the passenger not being able to enter addresses into the GPS.
Lots of people have, I'm sure, along with all of the other "lockouts" once you're moving. There are fixes to this - some involving a plug-n-play kit, and others that use custom electronic circuits, to defeat the "lockout" of features when moving. They do have trade offs, but here are the threads: Plug-n-play ($250+): http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii...s-society-navi-hack-installed.html#post967285 Custom Circuits ($30 + some electronics hobbyist knowledge): http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii...ensor-bypass.html?highlight=navigation+bypass Here's my specific post (#145) with the circuit I built: http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii...erride-speed-sensor-bypass-15.html#post959286 Get ready to read.... you may want to work your way backward in the threads..... Enjoy!
I tried searching for "USB", but didn't get anything. I prefer not to use a $250 kit, nor even a $30 kit for a car that I've just paid cash of well over $30K for. I guess I'm just being an unreasonable newbie?
This is a very old safety issue and when you consider all the accidents from people texting and the like I can hardly blame the legislation and the lockouts. This was something I was sore about on my 2007 Prius right off the bat. I got over it. I hope you will too. I got a thin separate plain-white manual concerning the USB. I haven't read it yet/I haven't used USB yet. Everyone and their sister thinks they are good carefull drivers. Is that's why we still have what, 40K? 50K vehicle related deaths every year? I think distractions of one sort or another and sometimes at the wrong place and the wrong time is the leading cause of all these accidents today.
I agree with your safety concerns, Susan, but I don't think it distracts from my driving to have my wife use the touchscreen from the passenger seat. Thanks for the links, JayVee!
Yeah, Anthony, many people have voiced the same thing. many have called for a weight sensor on the passenger side to unlock the lock-outs. After all, the Prius already uses weight to determine if the passenger should be wearing their seat belt. At the current time, however, you have to deal with it. Sorry.
+10000. Toyota's implementation of the audio controls are a total failure. At least for those of us that paid way too much for the NAV system. You can't scroll the folders either. Ridiculous!
I agree that sensing someone in the passenger seat would work with responsible drivers but just like texting it will be abused; not by you at all but by many others. I do not have a good feeling that enough drivers are that responsible. If drivers were distracted less and stayed focused on their driving more vehicle accident statistics would drop. Is that happening? When I was first troubled by being locked out of even glancing at the screen to see what track was playing on the 2007 Prius I had just bought I filed a complaint with the NHSTA (NHTSA?) that they should remove all restrictions on driving distratction prevention or tighten it up much more by restricting any use of a touchscreen and the like by the driver while driving. Well, they can't do that either and I knew that. The whole affair of trying to decrease accidents is caught up between driver skills and all the electronic gadgetry distractions and its like being caught between a rock and a hard spot.
When I first got my Prius, I would totally agree with you. After all of the media hysterics lately and the call for class action lawsuits against Toytota for "reported" incidents, I think I can better appreciate Toyota's stance on overdoing safety. If you can activate the screen with someone in the passenger's seat, what is to keep the driver from making changes to the screen? I have caught myself being distracted enough with what I am allowed to control. I have learned that all it takes is a little pre-trip planning to set things up the way you want or use the voice commands.
Don't search - just click the links in my post above. The 'lockout' applies to a whole bunch of functionality on the NAV unit, including radio functions, USB, phone, and navigation. The same fix fixes all of them. And there is no "software" fix or hack to address this.....yet. And I think it will be some time, if ever.
If you safety nuts are so worried about being distracted, then don't order an audio system in your car, but for the rest of us, its frustrating not to be able to use the expensive audio system we paid for. My other cars let me scan the song list and the folder list while driving. And they do so quickly, not like the ultra slow computer Toyota cost cut the Prius with. I mean it takes forever for it to show info, that right there is a distraction. If you can't use it while driving, then what's the use of having it in a car? Umm, we drive cars not sit in them in the garage and listen to the audio system.
Hmm, I'll have to look into voice commands to see if there are any for the USB playback. More irritations on the USB: 1. You can only put up to 255 files in each folder. 2. Scrolling file names is very slow. Press the scroll button, wait 5 or more seconds, see five more names scroll into view, press the button, wait again...would take several minutes to scroll through the whole list, even with the 255 file limitation.
That's my irritation, Anthony: even if you could scroll through the list of MP3s on the memory stick, it would take forever! It can help a little bit to have your music arranged in folders. Then, with the proper screen displayed, at least you can switch folders when stopped. This is still amazing, though, if you think of what was available a few years ago. Now, you can plug in a single, tiny, $15 USB memory stick, and it contains several days-worth of music. My 2002 Sienna, for instance, can only play one standard CD at a time, and my bulky box of 25 CDs contains about one day of music. Also remember that the Prius CD unit will play MP3 CDs, which can each hold many hours of music...
I've given up on the USB feature, and am instead using my cell phone's bluetooth. With it I can store my 1,400 favorite MP3 files in a single folder, and have them randomly played (which can't be done with the USB...you can only randomly play from a single folder with less than 256 songs)...and like the USB it'll save its position when I leave and return to the car. The only disadvantage is that the song title isn't displayed on the Prius screen like with USB files, but I can view it on the phone if I have to...plus I can scroll through my song files much faster.
Well, on the brightside, you guys actually get the USB option. Unless I'm completely missing something, my car doesn't have that option. I've got a 3 disc changer that came with my car which reads mp3's but it is by no means the same as being able to throw everything on a USB stick. I should say I am allowed to navigate from folder to folder. But I think I would rather have the usb option.
