Aftermarket stereo ?

Hey guys so I ordered the metra harness for my truck. Hooked up the wires as they called for and everything works except my illumination. It shows orange to orange. I been racking my brain as to why this isn't working. I had my truck started and headlights on as I've read on here but nothing changed. I have a 01 RC with no amp. Can someone please tell me if I'm not doing something right?

 

This was a point of recent discussion on here with regard to DCs, not sure if the same applies to SC. I am still interested in trying to hook this up to my headunit as well
@shifty` @BubbaW

 

Indeed, we did discuss this and it started here: https://www.tundras.com/threads/another-jbl-amp-bypass-thread.153750/page-3#post-3889141

And it continues into page 4.

Here's the reality I'd share with you: My Metra harness has the dimmer/illumination wire. My radio has the dimmer/illumination wire. My OEM harness has the green/white illumination wire. I have all of it hooked up. Dimmer doesn't work as I'd expect. I still needed to go manually into both radios I've had in my truck, and set the dimming manually. Fortunately, my most recent one has a light sensor on it and you can set it to auto-dim or not.

I have yet to see anyone actually get auto-dimming to work on modern touch-screen head units. It seems it works with the OEM head unit that has backlit buttons, but it doesn't seem to function on either of my Alpine heads thus far.

 

Could wiring the dimmer wire on the radio to the dimmer switch be a solution? I'll have to check the manual on my head unit to see if it has a dimming setting. Thanks for the info. Apparently I suck at using the search on here because I tried several different wordings to try and find something in this exact issue on non amplified stock stereos and couldn't find anything.

 

It seems like the illumination wire is present on almost every aftermarket radio even though it seems to do absolutely nothing. When I had a basic single din in my truck with the illumination wire hooked up it did nothing, but with my touch screen Sony unit, it works perfectly. Main point here is, I'd say there's nothing wrong with the truck side, it just depends if the radio supports it or not.

 

My 2000 AC equipped originally with non JBL 6 speaker system was replaced with a Pioneer double din touch screen non Apple car play. Think it’s an AVX or AVH series head unit. Has a dimmer wire, dims when the lights are turned on at night. Not sure if the issue is difference in truck wiring, or difference in head units? My previous pioneer single din I had for years also dimmed with the headlights activated.

 

I think what Nick said and K alluded to may be it: If the radio doesn't support the dimmer function as your truck is wired, there's not much you can do.

Maybe theres more than one way head units treat the dimmer wire? Maybe some are looking for changes in resistance, others in voltage? I can really only guess, and do what others have done: Share my experience.

I can tell you from that other thread I linked, Metra's 8117 harness for our trucks doesn't even include a dimmer wire you can attach to your head unit, even though the green/white wire is present in the OEM harness the Metra plugs into. The Metra 8121 harness does. https://www.tundras.com/threads/another-jbl-amp-bypass-thread.153750/page-3#post-3889141

It's a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma I guess.

 

The only thing the dimmer does in my aftermarket head units in both my 1GT and 5th Gen 4Runner is turn it from "light" mode to "dark" mode when the headlights go on. Much like the settings in your phone. This is OK, but I sure do wish there was a way to actually dim the backlighting. It's still pretty bright at night.

 

That may actually be what my Alpine is doing, then. The display brightness doesn't seem to change, but in CarPlay I do remember it kicking from white background to black background.

But I found their ilx-W770 to be much dimmer than the

$280 ilx-W650 7" double DIN touchscreen digital multimedia receiver with bluetooth, apple carplay and android auto

ilx-W650 model I had prior that I found forcing CarPlay into 'dark theme' but putting the head unit in 'always-Daytime' with the brightness all the way up was my only means for sanity.

 

So if I was to try messing with dimming function over this weekend, I could simply connect the orange "dimmer" wire on the headunit harness with a Positap to the green/white "illumination" wire on the OEM harness?

 

If your Metra harness didn't have one, in theory, that should do the job.

Just make sure you grab the correct green/white wire. Isn't the negative, like, white with a green stripe and positive is green with a white stripe? I'd need to scroll back to our prior conversations with Bubba to pick through the EWD pages to confirm.

 

Reading back through, looks like the solid green with silver marks as well as the green/white with silver marks in the Yellow box in photo above carry the illumination +/-

 

True but with slight correction. The solid Green(pin 2) is ILL+ and the White/with Green tracer(pin12) is ILL-

I point out the use of green/white versus White/green because when we're looking for ground conductors for whatever reason, Toyota marks them White/Green, White/Blue, White/Black and Black

 

Good info and I definitely appreciate the additional detail and explanation. I didn't get to this today so maybe tomorrow