IPC Lights brightness issue...

[Phillip Karhoff]

Happy Saturday all,

So I have a weird little annoyance with my 19 Expy Limited 4x4. I tend to like the cluster lights on the dim side, especially at night. So I set the daytime level to 3 bars out of 6. and the nighttime to 4 bars out of 12. Every so often, sometimes a couples of days and sometimes a week or more, the lights will all be back to full brightness. I cannot figure out for the life of me what causes this. This also happened on my 18 Explorer Platinum.

Has anyone experienced this and found the cause and possibly the fix? On the Expy, no CEL lights or codes are ever present. The Explorer had codes, such as "Lost communication with DSS" but never APIM or IPC which controls that.

My OCD compels me to figure this out and it really does annoy the hell out of me.

Respect to you all!
Phillip

 

[Sunflowergirl]

Happy Saturday all,

So I have a weird little annoyance with my 19 Expy Limited 4x4. I tend to like the cluster lights on the dim side, especially at night. So I set the daytime level to 3 bars out of 6. and the nighttime to 4 bars out of 12. Every so often, sometimes a couples of days and sometimes a week or more, the lights will all be back to full brightness. I cannot figure out for the life of me what causes this. This also happened on my 18 Explorer Platinum.

Has anyone experienced this and found the cause and possibly the fix? On the Expy, no CEL lights or codes are ever present. The Explorer had codes, such as "Lost communication with DSS" but never APIM or IPC which controls that.

My OCD compels me to figure this out and it really does annoy the hell out of me.

Respect to you all!
Phillip

Are the lights the only thing you notice that gets reset like that?

 

[Phillip Karhoff]

Oh yes, just the IPC brightness is all that is reset. The ambient light color stays the same. All the infotainment settings stay the same. I had hopped that upgrading SYNC from 3.0 to 3.4 would have an effect as it disables the auto-dim feature of Sync as I figured that might be the culprit, nada. In fact every other feature setting and convenience setting stays exactly where it was. I am about ready to become the juggernaut, without the helmet, and run into a wall. Sigh...

 

[Sunflowergirl]

Oh yes, just the IPC brightness is all that is reset. The ambient light color stays the same. All the infotainment settings stay the same. I had hopped that upgrading SYNC from 3.0 to 3.4 would have an effect as it disables the auto-dim feature of Sync as I figured that might be the culprit, nada. In fact every other feature setting and convenience setting stays exactly where it was. I am about ready to become the juggernaut, without the helmet, and run into a wall. Sigh...

Yeah Thts odd that it’s resetting just the dim feature. Could always use Forscan to disable auto dim if that’s a possibility in there

 

[Uturn]

I wonder if accidentally bumping one of the two instrument panel brightness buttons to the right of the light switch would cause a reset of the auto dim settings.

 

[Phillip Karhoff]

I wonder if accidentally bumping one of the two instrument panel brightness buttons to the right of the light switch would cause a reset of the auto dim settings.

That is a good suggestion. However, in my case, if my knee bumped that it would only be either the daytime or the nighttime but not both. When my IPC brightness gets reset to full it will reset both.

On a side note though, at first I thought it might be related to another intermittent error that pops up. When I take the Expy through an automatic carwash the Park Aid Module will sometimes will fault. It happens when the front sensors detect an object too close, the front wheels are on the conveyor belt stationary and the back wheels are still turning as they are not on the belt yet. The computer freaks the hell out and all but sets the dash into a Christmas Tree. What I figured is that it could cause a short of sorts and just reset. Again, after testing this theory out I was wrong here too.

 

[Yoop33]

Did you figure this out yet?

I was having the same issue and was noticing it especially with Apple Car Play. Sometimes when my phone was plugged in and displaying ACP, the screen would randomly be very bright and I too like things pretty dim. I manually press the buttom to dim everything and then the very next night everything would be bright again as if it reset when I shut the truck off. No idea why.
Now I am having issues with my ambient lights not working. The door panels and bright blue yet nothing from the footwells or cup holders.

 

[Phillip Karhoff]

To date, I have not figured it out. I have never plugged my iPhone via USB into SYNC and has always been via BT. However, your post gives me an idea. I am going to factory reset the system and not attach a phone via BT or USB to it and see how long it will go before resetting to max brightness again.

Originally, I had hoped updating from 3.0/3.1 to 3.4 on Sync would help but it didn't. I'll keep searching and if I find something will post back.