RNS-510 not remembering most recent station

[Mr. Furious]

Hello all,

I've noticed a particular behavior in my RNS-510 that I don't think is normal, but I wanted to make sure before mentioning it to the dealer.

Sometimes*, when I switch from MDI to Radio, it goes to AM 530 rather than whatever Sirius station I was listening to most recently. When it happens, I've noticed that there's nothing listed on the preset buttons, though those populate correctly after a few seconds. It's not a critical issue, but it's annoying.

Is this normal behavior, or is my RNS-510 buggy?

* I'm going to try to pay more attention to when it happens to see if I can narrow it down

 

[LokiWolf]

The RNS-510 is buggy. There is a flash out there for it that your dealer can do, if it isn't at the most recent.

-Loki


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[Mr. Furious]

So on the "narrowing it down" front, I've discovered that the behavior occurs only when I start the car in "Media-In" mode rather than radio. If I was listening to the radio when I shut the car off, it will start up on the same station without issue.

Also, it doesn't matter how long the system has been on - when I switch from Media-In to Radio, it will exhibit the same behavior. I thought that, perhaps, it only happened if I switched from Media-In to Radio before the system had time to start up all the way (and, as we all know, the RNS-510 is kind of pokey in that regard), but I tried it after I'd been on the road for about 10 minutes and it did the same thing.

I'll ask the dealer to make sure that it's at the latest software revision next time I have it in.

 

[GeekDrew]

My RNS-510 does the same thing - I have an iPod attached, and whenever I go back to radio mode, it doesn't tune to the last station. Most of the time it tunes to the very last preset button I have programmed on the last page of presets (which is an FM station I rarely listen to). Try assigning some station to that button, and see if it regularly tunes to it when switching from MDI mode. I'm not 100% on this theory, as I *think* that it has occasionally tuned to other FM stations that are presets on the last page of presets, but it has been a while since I used MDI, so my memory is hazy.

 

[Mr. Furious]

I'll try that! I only have the first six presets programmed, so the last one is empty.

I did some more playing around with it, and I found that it will remember the last station if it's on AM or FM, but not Sirius. That is, if I go from MDI to Radio mode, it will tune to the last AM or FM station that was on, even if the last radio station I was listening to was on Sirius.

This leads me to wonder if the Sirius tuner part of the HU isn't turned on when the car starts in MDI mode, and the startup lag when it's switched to Radio confuses the HU into thinking that it's not present/not working, so it pops back to AM/FM.

 

[TomB]

I hate this system. VW needs to do entire rework of the code because it is just so buggy and a pile of crap as it exist.

 

[GeekDrew]

I don't hate it -- but it's far from great. If it ran 9999x faster than it does, I'd be very happy with it. There are a few bugs, but they aren't anything huge.

I kinda wish that they'd just have Kenwood make something to serve as a drop-in replacement.

 

[fredthe]

I just found another case of the RNS-510 not remembering the most recent station. I was listening to an HD-3 channel on a station, and on stopping/restarting the car, it reverted to the HD-1 channel of that station. This seems to be repeatable, so it looks like a bug. It's really annoying when you expect to get music, and get talk radio instead.