TITAM - Technical issues that affected me

May be associated with other errors, such as "Check Engine" light, ICS / backup system warning, etc.  Simple fixes that may save you time/money: 1.  Check gas cap is tight. Yes, it's stupid - damn stupid, in fact.  But it worked for me and others . Note the old RX330s had a similar issue, in that it would throw error codes if the gas cap was loose.  Happened to me a few time when the weather got really cold.  It's all because the car is looking for leaks in the emissions control system and sees that the pressure in the gas tank is not holding steady. 2.  If codes do not clear themselves, disconnect battery for 5 min, then reconnect and start. •  Open the door during that 5+ min, to ensure system is fully discharged.  Not needed but can't hurt. •  Yellow ICS light (top right-hand corner on RX350) will flash on restart.  It will self-reset upon driving, don't worry about it. 3.  Recharge battery to full, then retry.  Worked for h...

I have an ECS-10 in my basement, but it's for an Xmas present.  So I don't want to unpack and measure it (yet). Note: this information applies, in a limited way, to the Stryfe.  The Modulus ECS-10 has additional extra space under the battery tray; the Stryfe (apparently) does not.   Stryfe owners have the option to buy an extended (deeper) battery cover - Modulus owners do not. Also note this assumes you remove the stock ECS battery tray completely . See this video for a good look at ECS-10 disassembly and internals.  Also see this video for how to wire a plug. If you don't understand the battery specs below, see this video . Voltage : 7.4V (2S) for stock motors; 11.1V (3S) for some upgraded motors.  If in doubt, go 2S. Current :  Higher C rate is better.  But unless you are truly hardcore, anything over 25C is likely fine. I have to mention many people get C discharge rate wrong.  The discharge rate is the number times the...

This information would be good to know for anyone considering this system, but does not seem to be available. I measured two sensor samples as follows: -  Standby (active):  25 uA max -  Detect:  16.2 mA max for about 2 seconds It's not actually 16 mA for the full 2 seconds, but that's close enough.  Especially since the 2 seconds might be anywhere from 1 to 3 seconds - I did not bother to measure more accurately than that. The sensors run on AAA cells, which I personally hate because of their relatively low capacity.  But, running the numbers, the effective capacity of AAAs should run these sensors for a very long time. Assumptions: -  Due to self-discharge and temperature effects, cells will only deliver 75% of their rated capacity. -  I estimated alarm consumption at 16 mA for 4 seconds.  This is twice as conservative as the ~2 seconds I estimated from observing the unit current. These work out as follows: Using 1000 mAh ...

NiMH batteries are cool, but they are expensive.  If you really want to "go green"* and switch wholesale to NiMH, it's a significant investment and you want to get the best stuff you can afford. I know a lot of people out there don't know if they should go for "high-capacity" NiMH or "low-discharge" NiMH. I know it caused me a lot of consternation when I needed to replace my older cells - none of which were low-discharge type, so I had no experience to go by. Here's my take: Low-discharge, hands down. This is based on my experience - no formal tests, but the experience is so compelling I don't think it's even worthwhile testing. Many of my NiMH batteries go into my SLR flash.  Obviously I do not use my camera every day, and it sometimes sits for weeks.  I also obviously want to be able to pick it up at any time and go to it, which I often do for work purposes. Before, every third time I picked up the camera the flash batteries...

Recently my Xperia X10i has started "crashing" and shutting down when attempting to take a picture or video. The phone was working fine, and I don't recall doing any significant updates.  It's always possible that an application updated in the background, though. Still, the phone was working fine for quite a while, and for at least a month since my last application was installed. First, the phone started to shut down whenever I tried to take a video using the built-in camera application.  I chalked this up to some kind of bug between the camera app and CameraZoomFX, which I had tried but no longer used. Next, it started to crash and shut down when taking a photo. One time it began "crashing" and shutting down over and over.  I began to restart it, over and over, and it would shut down over and over before I had a chance to see what was going on. After four or five attempts, I noticed the battery indicator had dropped from 40% to less than 10% in ...