I had a Scangauge II hooked up in my Mini. On occasion, upon start-up, instead of coming on on the default selected guages screen, it would open to the "home" screen, the one that has the choices between gauges, trip, etc. I could tell when it was going to do this because the blue colored background would come on first (as opposed to the orange I set it to). I always assumed this had something to do with Mini's bizarre electronics (which performed other unexpected feats). However, now that the Scanguage resides in my Mazda, it does the same thing, though less frequently. In addition, sometimes, but not always, after locking the doors after parking, the gauge will come back to life and show the voltage (which is one of the guages I selected for view). The remaining gauges will show their names in the screen, but no info., which is not surprising because they all involve measurements of the running engine. Sometimes it will turn off again and sometimes it stays on. So, is my Scangauge defective or is somethinhg else going on?

 

Since it is not performing correctly in two different vehicles I would say it is the cable (make sure the connections are solid) or the Scangauge. Give Scangauge a call and see if they can help you.

 

I recently had to charge the battery in my Mini. It had not been driven for almost a month except 3-4 times in/out of the garage. Due to that, the battery reported itself as being low.

I put it on a 3A slow charger (Sears brand charger), after a few hours it was fully charged again. The charger has a green light to indicate it is done. I happen to notice the charger would cycle on/off every few minutes after it had reached a full charge. When it cycled on and off, my Scangauge turned itself on/off to the gauges page, which is where I leave it. I thought it was odd since the Scangauge didn't turn on when I first put the charger on or during the charge, but when that green LED on the charger lites up, the Scangauge would turn on and then timeout and shutoff after a short time.

It never turned on to the home screen unless I left it there.

I've never charged a Mini battery before so when it happened, I thought, another one of those "British quirks" and didn't think about it again until your post.