Anti-theft warning on entertainment screen?

[M.M.]

I had a really weird experience in my Clarity last week, and I'm not seeing any threads with similar info here.

Wife got into the car and instead of the normal boot-up on the entertainment system there was a warning something to the effect of "The battery was disconnected and the anti-theft system has activated. Hold down the power button for 2 seconds to confirm." I didn't think to take a photo for exact warning.

The stereo was disabled with just a black screen, although the backup camera did work, until I did as it said and held the power button down for 2 seconds, at which point it went back to normal. I noticed that at the same time it also reset the charge timer completely, although nothing else I've noticed seems to have changed.

Has anybody else seen this? I'm assuming it would be triggered by the 12V battery being disconnected, which is weird because it wasn't, nor was anything else odd electrically done to the vehicle.

 

[KentuckyKen]

That is strange. When I disconnected the battery to install an air horn, all I got was all the warning icons that went away after a short drive but not anything like what you are describing.
Chalk it up to another one of the oddball Clarity quirks (or electronic hiccups, as I call them) I guess. The Clarity seems prone to unique events experienced only once and not by anyone else or maybe it has so many programmed messages that we haven’t encountered all of them. Makes it either fun or frustrating to reverse engineer and figure out what it’s doing and why.

 

[M.M.]

That is strange. When I disconnected the battery to install an air horn, all I got was all the warning icons that went away after a short drive but not anything like what you are describing.

That makes this much odder, then; it'd be one thing if it was just expected 12V battery loss behavior (every modern vehicle I've owned has done something similar when 12V power was removed from the electronics), but I'd expect it to at least be consistent.

Given that the entertainment system isn't exotic and runs entirely off the 12V power, it doesn't seem like this should be Clarity specific in any way, though. The only thing the Clarity would do different from the perspective of the entertainment electronics is the DC-DC converter maintaining a more consistent voltage on the 12V bus, and that wouldn't have any effect at all on this.

 

[2002]

I had a really weird experience in my Clarity last week, and I'm not seeing any threads with similar info here.

Wife got into the car and instead of the normal boot-up on the entertainment system there was a warning something to the effect of "The battery was disconnected and the anti-theft system has activated. Hold down the power button for 2 seconds to confirm." I didn't think to take a photo for exact warning.

The stereo was disabled with just a black screen, although the backup camera did work, until I did as it said and held the power button down for 2 seconds, at which point it went back to normal. I noticed that at the same time it also reset the charge timer completely, although nothing else I've noticed seems to have changed.

Has anybody else seen this? I'm assuming it would be triggered by the 12V battery being disconnected, which is weird because it wasn't, nor was anything else odd electrically done to the vehicle.

Two other instances that I could find, both were caused not by 12V disconnection but by 12V going dead.

https://insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?threads/12-volt-battery-dead-after-3-1-2-weeks.4612/

"I left on vacation with the traction battery at 2/3 but when I returned, the 12 volt battery was dead so the car would not start. I put a 2 amp charger on the battery overnight and it was back up to 12 volts the next morning. When I pushed the start button, I got several error messages and the screen ended with a message saying "Anti Theft System This system has lost power. Push and hold the power button for more than two seconds to enable the system."

https://insideevsforum.com/communit...ttery-dead-after-3-1-2-weeks.4612/#post-57079

"apparently the 12 volt battery didn't like all that cycling for some reason. Once I hooked up my jump-start battery it started up fine, although a bunch of errors popped up that went away after I reset the anti-theft feature on the entertainment system."

 

[M.M.]

Thanks for digging up that thread, 2002. That's indeed the same thing that happened to me. Now that I've got the right wording to search for, I determined that it's a standard error message for all recent model Hondas. Here for example is a video of the same thing in a Pilot:


I found the same thing described for many other models as well. Generally brought on by disconnecting the battery, but in a few cases people had it pop up randomly in the same way I did. My case definitely wasn't a dead battery--the car had only been parked for a couple of days, nothing was left on, and it started normally. I would assume that whatever piece of electronics maintains the anti-theft signal must have rebooted itself randomly.

Amusingly, the "power button" message confuses just about everyone in a car that has a start button for the ignition--lots of people with other models and the same confusion.

Assuming it doesn't happen again (if it does, there's probably something broken in the anti-theft system), just a standard Honda glitch. The actual oddity now is that KentuckyKen didn't experience it when the 12V battery was disconnected. That should happen any time you unhook the battery. Maybe there's a delay for the entertainment system before this kicks in or something.

 

[ClarityDoc]

Thanks for digging up that thread, 2002. That's indeed the same thing that happened to me.... The actual oddity now is that KentuckyKen didn't experience it when the 12V battery was disconnected. That should happen any time you unhook the battery. Maybe there's a delay for the entertainment system before this kicks in or something.

Note that if it were simply power interruption and restoration, then the anti-theft security would not work - moving the unit from one car into another would allow the reboot. Instead, there is some sort of handshake between the entertainment unit and the specific car - code(s) is/are passed in the right sequence - to confirm proper pairing.

My guess is that the entertainment unit's handshake fails occasionally, and power reset restarts the handshake in the proper sequence. The latter may have been anticipated for 12V power interruption - since that will happen with battery replacement etc - and so there is a designed mechanism to prevent this message for Ken's scenario. Some other gremlin may rarely interfere with the handshake - and that triggers the warning. Just speculating, of course.

 

[KentuckyKen]

While your car was only parked for a couple of days, could the 12 V battery have gotten low? That seems to be a common factor. Might be worth checking the battery for free at one if the auto parts stores or at least with a Volt-Ohm meter.

 

[M.M.]

My guess is that the entertainment unit's handshake fails occasionally, and power reset restarts the handshake in the proper sequence. The latter may have been anticipated for 12V power interruption - since that will happen with battery replacement etc - and so there is a designed mechanism to prevent this message for Ken's scenario

The handshake failure theory was my guess as well, which is sort of backed up by a few reports from people with other Hondas who have had this happen randomly when their battery was fine, and a couple of reports I found from people with other Hondas who have had the system fail and repeatedly generate these errors for no reason until repaired.

While your car was only parked for a couple of days, could the 12 V battery have gotten low?

I haven't bothered to put a meter on it yet, but extremely unlikely given that, looking back, the car had been parked for less than 10 hours since the last time it was driven, it started up fine, none of the other systems complained about power loss or threw errors (just the entertainment system and the charge timer reset), and it hasn't had problems before or since when sitting for several days without use.

Actually, I didn't even have any problems with the 12V battery when the car went un-used for a solid month while I was on vacation earlier this year. In hindsight I should have poked the battery with a meter when I got back to see how discharged it was.

 

[MNSteve]

This is posted in the "misery loves company" vein. It could have been a lot more hassle. Some Honda radios get very upset when the 12v supply is interrupted. My mother-in-law left a light on in her CRV and ran down the battery. When things were charged, the radio was convinced that it had been stolen. This is what we had to do to revive the radio (taken from https://itstillruns.com/reset-after-putting-new-battery-5938268.html, one of several that describes the procedure):

Code Retrieval and Entry
Step 1
Turn the ignition switch to the "On" position. Turn on the radio and verify that the display reads "Enter PIN Code." Turn the radio off, but leave the ignition switch in the "On" position.

Step 2
Press and hold the No. 1 and No. 6 radio preset buttons, then turn on the radio. The display will flash two different codes - these are the first and second halves of the radio's serial number. Ignore the letter before each number and combine the two numbers to create an eight-digit serial number. Turn off the ignition.

Step 3
Go to https://radio-navicode.honda.com/ and click on the tab labeled "Get codes." Input your radio's serial number, vehicle's VIN and your personal information, then click "Submit." Write down the security code.

Turn the ignition switch to the "On" position and turn on the radio. Enter the security code using the soft buttons on the touch screen display. Turn off the ignition when the radio resumes normal operation.

Tip

• If you input the code incorrectly 10 times, you must wait one hour before attempting to enter the code again.

 

[Clarity_Newbie]

This is posted in the "misery loves company" vein. It could have been a lot more hassle. Some Honda radios get very upset when the 12v supply is interrupted. My mother-in-law left a light on in her CRV and ran down the battery. When things were charged, the radio was convinced that it had been stolen. This is what we had to do to revive the radio (taken from https://itstillruns.com/reset-after-putting-new-battery-5938268.html, one of several that describes the procedure):

Code Retrieval and Entry
Step 1
Turn the ignition switch to the "On" position. Turn on the radio and verify that the display reads "Enter PIN Code." Turn the radio off, but leave the ignition switch in the "On" position.

Step 2
Press and hold the No. 1 and No. 6 radio preset buttons, then turn on the radio. The display will flash two different codes - these are the first and second halves of the radio's serial number. Ignore the letter before each number and combine the two numbers to create an eight-digit serial number. Turn off the ignition.

Step 3
Go to https://radio-navicode.honda.com/ and click on the tab labeled "Get codes." Input your radio's serial number, vehicle's VIN and your personal information, then click "Submit." Write down the security code.

Turn the ignition switch to the "On" position and turn on the radio. Enter the security code using the soft buttons on the touch screen display. Turn off the ignition when the radio resumes normal operation.

Tip

• If you input the code incorrectly 10 times, you must wait one hour before attempting to enter the code again.

MNSteve

It's my understanding the head unit in the Clarity doesn't require the use of "Navi" codes as in the past.

 

[Elm]

The Anti theft warning failure plus no accessories visible thru the screen happened to wife today. The only thing different in the normal start up routine was Waze on an iPhone was running and plugged into the car prior to initiating power up. 10 months ago we had electrical quirk when started the car while charging a laser pointer via USB prior to start. I wonder if start up with a device already running somehow interrupts the start up sequence. (The car is kept in a garage and was plugged in last night and at full charge.)

Holding the audio power button 2 seconds cured it. Honda really should invest in a few more characters on the screen to specify audio power and not say power - which just like the legions before me I took to mean ignition / car power.

I did find this forum saw this once before - https://www.insideevsforum.com/comm...anti-theft-system-power-loss.2114/#post-16318