Hey guys.

I'm not sure if this will be beyond this board, but i figured id pick some brains. I'm a Porsche tech in northeast ohio and am currently retrofitting a navigation unit into a car. The system uses fiber optics to communicate.

Other systems in the car that use the same optic circuit is the amplifier and CD changer. So that's three systems using one optic line. After adding the navigation unit and purchasing a new fiber optic cable that can support an additional device, i've lost communication with all of them. Im hoping this is because the CD changer, which will arrive next week, is not yet installed. This means that one end of the fiber optic line is just hanging with a cover on it.

So my question is.

Will this loose end allow the communication between the control unit and all of these creature features fail? The amplifier functioned before, now it does not.

Thanks!

no, it should not cause it to fail. the optic line should still be sending a signal to the other components. there must be a cut or a break in the line somewhere. that is not allowing the signal to transmit. in the construction world we use the lines and leave open ends in comm vaults to tie into later.

Either your optical line is broken (ie: separated) somewhere or the central processing unit or the network of units don't understand the combination of signals.

Is there any piggybacking going on or is everything just hooked up in parallel.

There are two optic lines that travel through each unit like a looped network.

Traditionally a loop network requires all of its clients to be live, but since the light is distributed anyway, i wouldn't figure this to work the same way.