Has anyone considered trying to get the radio to stay on after you turn the car off?

The last two cars I had (a Ford and a Chevy) both kept the radio on after the car was shut off until the driver's door was opened. It sounds like kind of a silly feature and I kind of laughed at it when I first saw it, but now that I don't have it on my Prius I find that I rather miss it.

When I park the first thing I usually do is shut off the car, then I put my sunglasses away and gather up anything I need to take out of the car with me and even though it only takes a little while it would be nice if the radio stayed on during this process... that way you can listen to the end of a song or hear the end of a segment or whatever... and if you're really into whatever's on even after you're ready to get out you just leave your door shut until it's over.

As I've been thinking about this it seems like it would be reasonably easy to fix... Find a constantly on 12V source and use a latching relay to connect that to the radio's power input... then trip the relay when the driver's door is opened.

Alternately, I seem to recall that after the car is shut off you can still operate the power windows until the door is opened, so maybe I could just use that source to power the radio (through a relay if it would draw too much power). I haven't tested this yet and I'm not sure how long the window power stays on... I think the other cars I had will shut off the radio after 5 or 10 minutes to save the battery, so if it's much less than that it would probably be too short to be useful.

Before I get too far in this project I was just wondering if anyone else had tried anything similar... or if maybe I'm just crazy

Thanks,
Brett

 

Yeah, I had considered that, but that requires retraining myself and I'm too old to learn new tricks Besides, I still drive my wife's car occasionally and then I'd just wind up letting it idle longer if I get in the habbit of waiting to shut it off.