Turn off the damn backup beep

Just came back from dropping off my car at Capitol Toyota in San Jose for its first service. Service rep wanted to charge at least $30 to turn off the backup beep. When I pointed out that most places do it for free, he copped an attitude and said he would have done so if I had bought the car from them. Didn't matter that they did not have the car I wanted or that I had spent many thousands of dollars there for service on my other Toyotas. Has anyone else gotten this response from Toyota service people?

Fortunately, I had already ordered an ELM327 module and should receive it tomorrow. I got the Soliport ELM 327 Bluetooth OBDII OBD2 Diagnostic Scanner from Amazon for less than $21. A reviewer said that it worked with his jailbroken iPhone and iPad2 using RoqyBT (maybe RoqyBT4?) so I'm hoping it will work for me.

--Dave

 

Sucks. Once you have negotiated everything about the car just make it a final condition of sale that they disable it, as it literally is as simple as plugging in a device and changing a setting.

 

Kinda makes you wonder why they changed the procedure - where you could simply hit a batch of odometer button sequences (if memory serves me) prior to turning the Prius off, then holding 'em down while on restart. What ... was that too easy ... so now you need the scanguage? oh well. I wonder if the backup dinger will re-enable by default - once the aux 12v battery is disconnected. Any brave souls out there? Do I hear anyone stepping forward?

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Re: Turn off the dern backup beep

How were you able to figure this out?

 

Well, they ended up turning the beeps off at no charge. They had to hook up the tester anyway to troubleshoot a problem with low volume on the Safety Connect speaker. (I'll post this info in a thread I started but it turns out Toyota is aware of the low volume problem and will be issuing a fix in a couple of months or so.)

--Dave

 

Re: Turn off the dern backup beep

20 hours of reading PriusChat.com forum messages & 20 years of programming

Others have basically posted the same thing in other topics, just had to put it together.

 

Re: Turn off the dern backup beep

That makes sense. I was getting ready to do much of the same thing because I'll be getting one of those OBDII tools in a few days. I'll give your instructions a try to verify the results.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to post it here.

 

Picking up my PiP tomorrow. I asked sales guy on the phone to please have them disable the beep - he said (of course) "It's a safety feature, we are not allowed to disable it" - I told him Bullsh** - please do it.
We'll see. (I hate dealing with Toyota and their sales people! - second prius and second bad sales experience. If there was a way to keep him from getting any commission on a car that sold itself (no work at all on his part) I would do it)

 

I got my bluetooth ELM 327 device (under $20) today and used Gary's instructions to disable my reverse beep. Worked like a charm! Thanks again for posting this here Gary. You saved me the 20 hours of research

 

For what it's worth, when I asked a service manager about this, she assumed that I was talking about the new external low speed noise maker. I had to specifically clarify "No, I mean the sound that is only heard by the driver", then she was OK with it. For some reason, people get the two confused.

 

Well, it is easy to confuse it as a few vehicles have the backup beep (external) to warn people the car is backing up. But then again, to my knowledge, the Prius v does not have an external reverse beep, so seems a little weird to confuse it with the noisemaker for the sub 20mph movement.

 

Gary, I used your method, and it worked like a charm!

THANK YOU SOOO MUCH!

 

I'm going to have to pick up that ELM device, I asked my rep today about this and he first said that it can't be done, and after prodding said it's against their dealer policy to do it for liability reasons, but it is possible.

baaah.

Sometimes it's just easier to do something yourself.

 

WooHoo- No more beeping

 

The local dealer claimed ignorance when I picked up our v3 a week and a half ago. So, after digging around PC for a while, I ordered the Bluetooth BAFX - ELM327 device from Amazon for about $21. In case you were wondering if it would work with a Mac, it does. I paired the device within the Bluetooth System Preferences. It came up with a name "CBT" and is a serial device. Using ZTerm, a free serial terminal program, I connected using that device at 9600,8,N,1 (default settings). Using the commands from another post, reverse beep now changed to one. Here is the terminal session. Thank you!

Connecting with Windows is just as straightforward.

 

Re: Turn off the dern backup beep

Thanks for posting this. Did anyone try this on the Prius Plug-In and see if it also works?

 

I just brought mine to the dealer during my 1K check and demanded that they turn off the seat beat buzzer and the reduce my back up buzzer to a single beep. Took a little convincing, but overall worked like a charm.

 

Same here. When I went in to get my plates, I asked them to change the backup beep and the seat belt beep. It was the service techs 1st v that he had worked on so the both of us went thru the menus on his computer. Took at least 5 minutes to find the backup beep and seat belt beat commands but when we found them only took a few seconds to change each. I said thanks and they sent me on my way at no charge.

 

Re: Turn off the dern backup beep

Using the Android ELM 327 Terminal app, i didn't change any of the boxes, entered the info in the small white box at the bottom left corner, and it worked great. Took about 30 seconds

 

Re: Turn off the dern backup beep

Worked for me! Thanks VERY much for doing all the research and sharing it here. :nod:

The only thing I'll add is that once I started the ELM 327 app on my phone, I had to hit "menu" then "connect" and select the "CBP" device. Code was 1234.

Thanks again!
Andy (who now doesn't mind putting his car in reverse )