I was on vacation in Savannah this weekend, and when plugging in an address on my nav, I noticed the pixels were "dancing" slightly. I pointed it out to my friend, who didn't see it at first, but as I kept insisting I wasn't drunk, finally noticed the waving dancing screen.

It never happened before, why now?? I shut off the monitor for awhile, turned it back on and....still dancing! I shut off the motor, re-started the car and....little bastards are still going!

Then it hit me! I pulled my car phone charger out of the cigarette lighter and BOOM, they finally took their dance shoes off.

Has this happened to anyone else? Should I have this looked at, or is it normal?

It doesn't effect the screen to where you can read it, etc. It's very slight, as I said, my friend barely noticed it.

Thanks in advance!

 

Don't have a NAV system (or even my MINI yet). But, is it Nextel? My Phone in addition to generally not having a signal, screws up every radio, tv and electronic device in the area.

 

It's Cingular, a Motorola phone.

Now I'm wondering, could it be the actual charger? If I used a different one, would that effect the screen? Maybe I'll ask a friend to charge their phone in the car for me....

 

I had a similar problem with my old car. I put in a new head unit that had an aux input on the front of it. I had a car ipod charger that I couldn't use because the noise it generated severly affected the sound on the stereo.

 

The Nav screen on MINIs (and most other makes) can be sensitive to nearby electromagnetic interference. A cell phone, FRS radio, CB, charger or power inverter placed close to the screen will sometimes make the 'pixels' flicker or twitch. Generally this is not harmful unless the particular device radiates an unusually large amount of power; in such cases the screen can either gets 'confused' and needs to be reset (power cycled) or in rare cases can become damaged. Damaged screens can have large amounts of dead or stuck pixels, color problems or totally blank.

It is a good idea not to put a cell phone very close to the screen while it is on. Separating them by aboiut 8 inches or so should not allow any damage or strange effects to occur.

 

I actually use my dock in the car, now. Don't know which generation of iPod you're sporting, but I use the same setup, currently.

Line out available through dock significantly cleaner, and a higher average volume as well. You can keep output volume at minimum, if using the dock minus a power cable.

I'll show you at Tate tomorrow..
Cheers,
Matthew Z.

 

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It was a 2nd Generation iPod, the first ones to support windows. Don't have it anymore, now I have a 40gig 4th Gen. Still deciding if I want to get the iPod interface or what. Been pretty happy so far just using the mp3 ability of the 05 HU.
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this is likely to do with the shielding (if any) that the charger has. If anyone else you know has the same phone and has a different charger you might want to test their charger out to see if it does the same thing.

 

It's definitely the phone charger as I plugged in my MINI Cooler Bag up front with me for a short trip today and the screen was fine.

Still waiting to try a different charger....