[AT] driver convenience systems

[Jim Becker]

I hesitate to reply to my own email.  It seems a bit pathological.  But here is another quirk that I was reminded shows up in the Equinox.

It has the auto stop/start feature that shuts the engine off when you are in Drive, completely stopped, and your foot is on the brake.  It seems like a reasonable rule for when to stop/start.  I understand it bothers some people but I don’t have a problem with it.  The weird thing is when you pull into a parking place or garage.  If you hesitate (and not much) on pushing it into Park, it will shut the engine off.  Then you put it in Park and it restarts the engine.  Then you have to push the button to shut it back off.

I have a light in the house that has a similar behavior.  My basement stairs have a switch at the top that controls a ceiling light at the bottom of the stairs.  Illumination at the top of the stairs was tolerable but not great.  I was thinking about fishing a wire from the basement fixture to the wall above the switch.  My brother-in-law suggested getting a motion and light level detecting battery-powered LED fixture for the top of the stairs, which I did.  The weird thing about it that when you are going up the stairs and turn the wall switch off.  If there was enough light, the LED would not be on.  When you reach the top and turn the light off, the LED light goes on.  After a year and a half, I still am not used to that.

Jim Becker

From: Jim Becker 
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2020 10:21 PM
To: Antique Tractor Email Discussion Group 
Subject: Re: [AT] driver convenience systems

That might work.  I know that at least on the 2012 Cruz the phone button on the steering wheel and the phone button on the instrument panel don’t act exactly the same.  My cell phone is usually unreachable in my pocket.  But if it is out and accessible I can initiate a call with the cell phone then talk through the bluetooth.  My wife has found that she can use google maps turn-by-turn instructions on her phone and have them displayed on the in-dash display.

Yes, the Equinox is an upscale version.  We decided at our ages the adaptive cruise, blind spot warning, lane departure etc. might become more important before wear the car out.

Jim Becker

From: Roger Moffat 
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2020 9:36 PM
To: Antique Tractor Email Discussion Group 
Subject: Re: [AT] driver convenience systems




  On Jan 24, 2020, at 9:53 PM, Jim Becker <mr.jebecker at gmail.com> wrote:

  Since my cell phone is paired up with bluetooth and the car has a "built-in" cell phone as part of onStar, I'm not always sure which phone I'm using.  I know which one it is when it tells me I don't have any minutes, which the built-in phone never has.  I should have said it doesn't let anyone key an actual phone number on the control panel, evidently regardless of which phone you are using.  I never have been able to use the saved contacts on my phone either.  That may be me, not the system.  It will let me use the contact list of the built-in phone.  I am able to answer my phone through bluetooth, no problem.  Some of what I'm remembering may be with my 2012 Cruz rather than the 2019 equinox, but I think they both behave about the same regarding the cell phones.


We can make calls from our Equinox while driving by using the phone's capabilities when connected to the Equinox - press the phone button on the steering wheel, and my iPhone’s Siri activates, so I can then say “Call my wife” and Siri then dials and connects and I speak through the connection on the car.

I would assume that if you have an Android phone something similar can be setup so that you can dial “hands free” by giving voice commands to the phone through the car.

>From the sounds of other things you say, yours must be a higher level model - we have rear camera, but no forward camera, and don’t have the steering wheel nagging at us either.

Roger


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