Nice! Looks like a simple timer circuit to emulate the butt-in-seat occupancy sensor. What could possibly go wrong!

(...seriously, for $40 I'd try it if I needed it -- like for car camping)

 

As opposed to using the button on the steering column?

 

That button is only good for about 30 minutes of operation.

 

Watched a YouTube video of a fellow sleeping in his ID.4 (in the winter). He was able to have the heat come on just after midnight, then again at 4:10 am. Nothing was placed in the driver's seat. He made some selections on the infotainment screen and went to sleep. Obviously, there must be a way to keep the car "active/responding" when no one is in the driver's seat. YMMV.

 

Watched a YouTube video of a fellow sleeping in his ID.4 (in the winter). He was able to have the heat come on at midnight for 30 minutes, then again at 4:00 am for 30 minutes. Nothing was placed in the driver's seat. He made some selections on the infotainment screen and went to sleep. Obviously, there must be a way to keep the car "active/responding" when no one is in the driver's seat. YMMV.

My guess would be that they set the two available scheduled departures with a corresponding temperature under the Aux climate

 

The cabin maintains temp pretty well, too - so that sounds more conservative on energy than if you kept it on for 8 hours. However, there was a great video from Tom Moloughney from State of Charge who tested his F-150 Lightning and Rivian keeping only the cabin temp on simulating being stuck on the road in winter, and they used very minimal battery. I'd be curious how long you could sustain your SOC in those same conditions (I think he did it in the 30s F?). I did notice he put a tool kit on the seat of the Lightning...do they have the same butt issue? haha and if so, can you just do the same with ID.4, i.e. place a dumbbell in the seat?

 

Hi, i cant find this gadget. Did you have another link?

 

So... I bought this device... I'm just building up the courage to install it... It is pretty simple it seems (but it does not come with any instructions / diagrams!). I just need to power it with 12V, then I need to plug it in between the occupancy sensor and the module. The device comes with these male/female plugs that allows it to be installed without breaking / tapping into any wires. I seem to have found where I should plug it in, seems to be the blue connector shown in picture below. However I need some encouragement / tips and tricks. Is it really this simple? Should I disconnect the 12V battery first? Would the computer go crazy and render my ID.4 undriveable? Would the Airbags deploy? Would I need ODIS / OBD11 to reset the errors? Thanks for any input

 

How does the driver activate or bypass this device, once installed?

 

It looks like there's a push button below the three LEDs.

 

Yes there is a push button with LEDs for selectable options:

1. "Original car" (I assume means factory mode)
2. "Camping" (I heard it means vehicle stays on for 8 hours)
3. "10 seconds" (meaning the seat stays "occupied" for 10 seconds after we leave the seat, instead of immediately)

I will try this evening plugging it in after disconnecting 12V negative terminal.... wish me luck!

 

So you have to go diving under the seat to change modes? Or do you plan to leave the box accessible somewhere? Center console maybe? Seems a discrete, remote pushbutton works be in order, but even then there's the matter of knowing which mode it's set to.

For insurance most of the time I want to car and occupancy sensor to operate as designed. Then there is the "leaving passengers in the car for a few minutes" scenario which is probably unplanned and just the act of getting out of my seat to change modes is going to shut the car off.

And I sure don't want to have it in occupancy mode and leave the car only to forget I have to change it back to bypass mode.

So... how DO you plan to use this day to day?

 

So you have to go diving under the seat to change modes? Or do you plan to leave the box accessible somewhere? Center console maybe? Seems a discrete, remote pushbutton works be in order, but even then there's the matter of knowing which mode it's set to.

For insurance most of the time I want to car and occupancy sensor to operate as designed. Then there is the "leaving passengers in the car for a few minutes" scenario which is probably unplanned and just the act of getting out of my seat to change modes is going to shut the car off.

And I sure don't want to have it in occupancy mode and leave the car only to forget I have to change it back to bypass mode.

So... how DO you plan to use this day to day?

Because of that long cable down to the place where it intercepts the seat occupancy sensor, it IS a remote pushbutton.

 

Soo.... a few beers and swear words later, the thing is installed. I was not sure but I decided to tap into 12V constant on for now. A few interesting observations:

1. The LED also indicate occupancy sensor activations. So for example if I set it to "original car" mode, the first LED would light up when I sit down and turns off when I leave the seat.
2. With the second mode (camping mode / 8 hours), the LED remains lit even if I leave the seat (and the car stays on). I haven't tested it if it really stay on for 8 hours.
3. On camping mode, however, if the car is off and I set the device to camping mode then, the car does not turn on until I sit down (like normal).
4. This way also we can tell easily if we forgot to turn off camping mode. Normally the car turns off automatically when we leave the seat. If it doesn't, then we know the camping mode is on.

My ID.4 is still recovering from its 12V battery being disconnected (errors on the dash). There was around 10 errors and after driving around a bit it went down to one (electrical error), I hope it clears up tomorrow. I'm not sure if the device will still work tomorrow I will update as I use it more...

 

This morning the car started as normal, no more error messages. The device seems to work fine so far, and the setting sticks. Remains to be seen the long term effect of having another 12V continuously powered device (I already have an always on dashcam).

Tested the third mode (10 seconds delay); when I leave the seat, one of the other LEDs blinks ten times and then the car shuts down. Kinda cool but I think its useless . I wish its like 10 minutes instead of 10 seconds, so I could use that as a default on occasion. It will be convenient for like charging stops, it would let me go out of the seat and finagle with the charging stall without shutting down the car.

It looks like this, easy access and also easy to tuck away under the seat when not needed. Looking forward for my next trip / camping, no more kettlebells

 

Really interested in trying this. Though the pictures of the device on the site now says 1.5h, 15m, 10s, but the product description has the 8h setting.

Is this just plug and play? No splicing needed?

 

Yes I asked that question to the seller; those settings were for the older version of the device. The ones being sold now are the current versions only which has Original, 8 hours and 10 seconds settings.
Now I somewhat think that the device may be truly plug-n-play. But when I did mine, I had the 12V battery disconnected first. After that its all plug-n-play, no splicing factory wires at all (the fuse tap does need some splicing). For +12V I am using one of the empty fuse slots under the fireman disconnect fuse (they seem to be always-on). The empty fuse slots only have a connection on the right side, so I made sure my fuse tap pigtail is pointing left.
Initially I had a 10A fuse and I thought that was too big. So I drove around and found 2A fuse at a local automotive store. Then I went ahead and switched the fuse immediately, forgetting to disconnect the 12V battery first! It seems like doing so did not cause any issue, no airbag light or anything. So you may get away installing it plug-n-play even without disconnecting the 12V battery first (but YMMV of course!).

So I still haven't fully tested the 8 hours claim yet, not even more than 30 minutes, still looking forward for my next trip where I will be needing a nap or two . I have the device connected for about a week now, the car does not seem to be complaining so far 🤞

Pictures I stole from the internet, with my markups:

 

Couldn't you just plug in a seat belt alarm silencer, or even the seat belt itself, and it will run as long as you want it to? We have used that to keep the radio going during drive-ins, never needed someone actually in the seat.

 

Sadly no, this is how far we have to go to get the AC to stay on past 30 minutes.

 

This is pretty cool. This might be handy to get so I can leave my dog in the car while I get in some ski runs.

 

That's very interesting, and glad to hear it works! How did you tap into a 12v line? Is there any risk this would drain the battery?

 

So I just tested keeping my ID.4 on longer than 30 minutes. I found out that I still need to plug in my trusty belt buckle silencer. Even in "camping mode" setting, if remove the seat belt (release brake pedal) and the infotainment says "Good bye", --even though not immediately-- the car would still turn off after 30 minutes. So this is the way I do it: after a drive (device set on camping mode), keep the brake pedal depressed, remove my seat belt, plug in the seat buckle silencer, then finally release the brake pedal (the infotainment stays on / no "Good bye" message), so far the car is still on after 1 hour!

 

Your pictures and markups are excellent, thank you! I went ahead and ordered mine.

 

How did you connect the red 12v lead on the unit to the fuse? Also, where did you connect the ground? Thanks!

 

As described above you could use an ATO or ATM "fuse tap" looks like this picture below. I believe the actual slot that I use is an ATO slot but I have an ATM fuse tap laying around and that one works too. If you never fuse tap before, maybe read up a little bit on how a fuse tap works.

For ground basically any metal point of the car. I happen to find this convenient screw behind this trim panel where I connect ground for this device as well as my hardwired dash cam.
Pry open this trim panel:

The screw that I use is visible facing upwards fastening the dash to the chassis pointed here. It is easy access near the fuse box.

 

Thanks for this, this is very helpful! I imagine you also needed some cable extensions for the leads to reach?

 

Another question would be - does the 12v system still provide power if the car has been powered off for some amount of time? Hoping to prevent draining the 12v battery.

 

Thinking more about the 10s mode, could be helpful when you're trying to make a quick parking adjustment and you don't have your seatbelt on. Sometimes if you lift your butt the car will stop. Having a 10s buffer would prevent that.

 

Thanks for this, this is very helpful! I imagine you also needed some cable extensions for the leads to reach?

The red and ground wires (power) are more than long enough; the way I wire it I had to tidy / bundle it up a bit inside the dash. The wire that goes to the seat sensor though is just about one or two feet. If you want to mount the controller somewhere further than under the seat then you may need to do some extensions.

That entire column of the fuse slot that I marked up are always on 12V, so yes it does have the potential of draining 12V battery (I have "Energy Management" setting enabled in VW app). For ACC (turn device on/off with the car) you could fuse tap the trunk cigarette / accessory socket fuse slot (SC52). Since the device is simulating the seat sensor, I believe it should be always on (Not sure how the car/airbag computer would react to a missing seat sensor signal) but if you have the bravery you can try wiring it with ACC power and let us know what happens I have a feeling it may be okay as I did disconnect the fuse and nothing happened. The only thing I can think of is that it would reset to default each time the car is powered on (I believe the default is "Original" setting).

Thinking more about the 10s mode, could be helpful when you're trying to make a quick parking adjustment and you don't have your seatbelt on. Sometimes if you lift your butt the car will stop. Having a 10s buffer would prevent that.

Yes thats true. The device has a relay which triggers with seat sensor detections, so during quiet moments I hear a "click" when I adjust my butt (in original mode). This does not happen in 10s or camping mode. If you want this setting as default you may need to wire the device to 12V always on.

 

Update. I have taken a nap in my ID.4 twice now, 5-6 hours each. The second time I forgot to put my belt silencer on but it still stayed on longer than 30 minutes so maybe it is not necessary in some cases. It works well both times. I have not actually reached 8 hours yet so I'm not sure if it would turn off after 8 hours.

It was a relatively cold nights (50F); it is colder on the back and I like it warm so I set climate to 75F. Battery went down 5-6%. The fan ran all night on fresh air, but I am not sure if its wise if I use recirculation mode I'm wondering if I do this too often it might kill the heater soon, what do you think?

 

Did you get a warning when you removed and replaced the in-seat occupancy sensor cable - such as "Error: Airbag"? Did you have to take it to the dealer for them to reset it / what did they say?

 

I did not get any airbag error at all, but before unplugging the factory sensor cable I had my 12V battery disconnected first (so the car was completely dead during install).

I did accidentally unplug the fuse, which means the sensor emulator device was de-energized (with all cables still connected), while my 12V battery was still connected. This also did not produce any error.

I have not had the sensor completely disconnected with 12V battery still connected, so I can't tell you what will happen in that case. I'd say disconnect your 12V battery first before installing.