If you look close in the pic you will see the unit vertically mounted

 

Regarding the Mr12volt firmware change log... "PCM3.x_20230906" Corrected PCM3.0 / 3.1 with PDK camera display issue (DIP 1 ON for PCM + PDK)" Does anyone know what this actually does?

I've set my camera to Parking Key, as gear position required the park brake to be off before the camera would turn on. It would also immediately switch off when you went into a forward gear, rather than stay on a few seconds. In Parking Key, it now comes on regardless of handbrake, which is good, and stays on when moving forward, but it stays on a long time, maybe 15sec or more.. The big issue is that the parking sensor view, that would turn on when moving slowly close to objects when not in reverse, does not come on.. You have to manually go through the Car menu in the PCM to call it up.. I'd love to get that feature working as stock again if possible.. Is it worth trying DIP switch 1 to on?

Thanks.

 

 

So after trying to figure everything out, I think I have it solved.. Above are the conditions under which Parkassist and the reverse camera operate.. I have these now working as they should.

I have set DIP switch 1 to ON, all others OFF (the label on the Mr12volt box has all set to OFF, I think this is for an older firmware).
I have not received a clear answer on what exactly DIP 1 does, but from testing, it seems to change the park brake response.. So I assume it has something to do with what it is reading from the CANBUS. When off, the camera would trigger regardless of park brake state, now with it on, the park brake must be released for the camera to trigger, this is how it should be.

To have the camera act as in the manual above the mode needs to be set to Parking Key, if it's set to Gear Position, it comes on when in reverse, but turns off immediately once out of reverse. Parking Key lets it stay on for 30sec or above the 15km/h.
Parkassist also comes on normally, BUT, and I think this is what was confusing me.. when the PCM first turns on after a cold start and Mr12volt is the source, it needs to boot up and connect to the phone, it seems like this "active" process in the TV tuner is like pressing a button on the PCM, so it escapes the Parkassist. If Mr12volt is booted up and in a steady state, the PCM acts as normal.

So in short, with the latest Mr12Volt Kit, with the firmware PCM3.x_20241024, in a Panamera with PCM 3.1 and PDK, set DIP switch 1 to ON, select OE Camera (if that's what you have) and select Parking Key as the reverse condition and all should act as normal.

It would be good if Mr12volt provided updated instructions for current hardware and firmware, this would have saved me a bit of time and hassle. I appreciate they make this box for many different cars, so maybe the admin is troublesome. I would have loved a current printed set of instructions to come with the box, just to save all the research an confusion. That being said, THIS IS THE BEST carplay solution for the PCM. It is a masterpiece of electronics and worth every bit of hassle.

I hope this helps someone and makes for a quick setup for anyone else, saving the research.

 

Great details!

 

Yeah, Mr12volt is basically only active when you select the TV source, just as if you had a TV card and watched the TV input... In radio, CD, Nav etc, it's as if it wasn't there... Only thing to note though is that if you DON"T connect your phone to the PCM bluetooth, you won't have the phone working.. You can have both PCM and Mr12volt BT connected at the same time, but there are some funny issues with the phone changing audio output once the call is handed to the PCM.. Basically you have to switch back on the phone output to direct audio to the Mr12volt not stay with the PCM.. There are ways to deal with this, like setting up an automation etc.. But the best solution is to NOT connect to the PCM at all via BT, let Mr12volt handle the calls.. There is a big plus to this too, Mr12volt has a cabin echo calibration that it can run, it helps give a much better quality sound on calls than the PCM.. The PCM calls I used to use was pretty bad actually..

 

Ah you're totally right. If you have the newer version of Mr12Volt, you should totally just unpair your phone from the PCM. My instructions apply to those who have the older Mr12Volt without factory mic support or, I suppose, those with the newer version but still need to keep their iOS device paired to the PCM via bluetooth as well. I forgot that Mr12Volt updated their hardware to make use of the factory mic. I installed mine a number of years ago so I've got the older version without factory mic support so I have to use the terribly annoying workflow of changing the audio output target on my iPhone every f*ing time I get into the car. I even got fed up with having to do that about a year ago and unpaired the PCM and my phone... only took a few phone calls where I had to fumble the phone while driving to enable speakerphone to revert back.

I remember watching a DIY ( ) by santirx (https://www.youtube.com/@porscheDIY) soon after I had first installed mine where he hacked his own factory mic solution together by tapping into the available pins behind the PCM using a simply 3.5mm patch cable. I never got around to doing it to my car and just settled. This thread is re-kindling my desire to go back in and fix this once and for all. It's so damn annoying to have to change the audio output target on my iphone every time I get into the car.

On a side note, the DIY linked above also mentions that he customized his Mr12Volt PCM startup graphic. If anyone is interested in customizing the startup graphic on their Mr12Volt, let me know. I still have the folder of assets I compiled along with the necessary boot file that you can simply copy to a flash drive and plug into the Mr12Volt device followed by a reboot. If you've formatted the flash drive just right, and have your custom graphic named in a very particular way and exported in a very particular format accompanied by a text file with some simple boot instructions, it'll pull your custom image and overwrite its default at boot. You then just unplug your flash drive and are good to go. I even have a Adobe Photoshop template pre-sized to the correct dimensions along with a handful of various Porsche graphics I dug up online.

Here's the graphic my PCM displays at boot with the Mr12Volt installed now.

 

And here is mine, I have made another as well😀

 

 

Love it!

 

I did find that creating the splash screen on a mac, and removing the .jpg, didn't seem to work, but when i did it on a PC it was all happy.. To clarify that, I could make the 800x480 file on the mac, but putting it on the USB and removing .jpg I would just get a blank boot screen. But using the file created on the Mac and copied to the PC, then PC to USB and then remove .jpg worked flawlessly.

 

I use a Mac. If I remember correctly, the key was exporting the jpg image with very specific output settings from Photoshop. I even took a screenshot of the output settings and saved it at the time as a reminder. Here is what worked for me.

 

I believe the output setting that mattered most was selecting Baseline ("Standard"). I think Photoshop defaults to either Baseline Optimized or Progressive.

Actually, now that I think about it, it might have been the Matte setting that had to be set to None. Photoshop defaults to using a white solid matte color. Anyways, if you just match the settings in my screenshot, it should work regardless of the OS.

 

That would be it! Great info. When I did the other files that worked I ended up resizing and cropping outside of photoshop..

Oh, It was also very specific in the instructions to keep the file below 30Kb, That didn't seem to matter.. nor did dpi. I think the current file I'm using is 175Kb.

 

This is the one I'm currently using, I like that it matches my perforated leather seats and is the Turbo colour 😄 I also wanted the boot screen to be different enough that it was clear when the Mr12volt was booting, not the PCM.