Belkin Auto Kit and shutoff

[chinhster]

When I turn off the car, the iPod pauses as it should. However, for the last few days, it has not automatically shut itself off after a few minutes like I seem to recall it doing before. I'll get in the car several hours later and the iPod is still on pause and the battery level is low from being on the whole time.

Is there some setting I mistakenly changed that is making it not power off? About the only setting I recall changing lately is from keeping the backlight always on to it timing out after 10 seconds.

[kman1666]

Sorry this is no help. But I have noticed mine does the same. It now just stays on pause forever, while a month ago it turned off by itself after a minute or two

[chinhster]

Well it's helpful to know I'm not the only one and was imagining things. Thanks.

[STAT 007]

I'm not 100% on exactly how the iPod is designed to turn off by itself and I don't have my 3G iPod yet (should in less than a month though), but a lot of the "shutoff issues" that need to be dealt with will depend on your car. Most domestic (US) cars are wired so that the cigarette lighter plugs will remained powered even when the key is turned off and removed. Foreign cars on the other hand are wired so that the cigarette lighter jack goes off when the key turns off.

Despite this, it sounds like your iPod's battery is probably taking over when the supplemental power from your car's battery is being turned off (assuming that it IS being turned off--this will kind of depend on what I mentioned above). With this being the case, couldn't you just turn off the iPod whenever you get out of your car by holding down the play/pause button for a couple of seconds? Shoot, if you weren't going to be out of your car for long, you could just leave the iPod on (as long as your car battery wasn't still powering it, of course).

[chinhster]

I've got a foreign car and the cigarette lighter stays on when the car is off. However, the Belkin auto kit is not connected to the cigarette lighter but wired directly to the car.

When I turn off the car, the iPod pauses and it stops recharging. It used to turn off after a few minutes, now it just stays on. Of course we can turn off the iPod manually, the point is that we used to not have to.