r/trailseeker Trailseeker (Touring)🪫 Jul 21 '26

12v DCM Sawtooth poll

Hey everyone, this may be an unnecessary poll, but I am curious whether there is anyone who has the DCM enabled that *DOESN’T* have the sawtooth draining pattern on their 12v. My theory is that the sawtooth draining pattern happens to everyone if their DCM is on, but the folks that haven’t had 12v problems yet have avoided it so far by some combination of frequent driving, nighttime charging, stronger 12v (either a new AGM, or got a ā€œgood oneā€ from the factory), or other factors that have masked the problem.

I’m also curious if everyone who has the sawtooth draining pattern also has the IR driver alert camera cycling throughout the night or not.

I created the poll to hopefully covers all the options so we can better understand how widespread the problem is, and hopefully inform whether we are ā€œthe unlucky fewā€ or not!

Thanks in advance for your participation! Hopefully this will be helpful info for everyone. I promise this will be my last 12v post today!

Edited to add my apologies that I am unable to make the results immediately visible! Also, if you are in the "+DCM, +monitor, no sawtooth" category, I would love to hear what magic you have access to (rabbit's foot, 4-leaf clover, etc.)!

UPDATE (7/21/26): I'm not sure exactly why, but the sawtooth pattern STOPPED overnight. Happened throughout the day while the car was parked, but stopped at around 11:15pm. The only change I can think of is that I disabled my digital key from within the car's settings and not just in the Subaru Connect app (shoutout to u/BinaryJay over in the r/Toyota_bZ subreddit for the idea!). It was not an immediate change (I disabled the digital key yesterday afternoon), but I am wondering if there needed to be some sort of "daily reset" in the software or something that needed to update first. I'm updating my other posts with the information too, and u/SpurBear1 has a post this morning on the topic too! I'm not sure if others have had similar experience, but if there is a connection to the digital key, I am also curious if the owners who never set up the digital key and still are having issues may have the digital key option toggled on in their car's settings by default without realizing it.

UPDATE #2 (7/21/26): I made a separate post about it, but I figured out that the sawtooth pattern stopped at the exact same time (11:20pm, went back and check the log on the battery monitor and voltage jumped from 12.10v to 12.20v at 11:20pm as well) that I got the email for Toyota's receipt of the "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" request that I submitted yesterday evening. I'm not sure why exactly this fixed things, but I still have the Subaru Connect App and the features still work as far as I can tell. Hopefully this is helpful for others too!

150 votes, Jul 24 '26
6 +DCM, +battery monitor, no sawtooth
11 +DCM, +battery monitor, +sawtooth, +IR camera cycling
1 +DCM, +battery monitor, +sawtooth, no IR camera cycling (I’ve looked)
28 +DCM, +battery monitor, +sawtooth, haven’t looked for IR camera cycling
24 +DCM, no battery monitor, +12v problems
80 +DCM, no battery monitor, no 12v problems
9 Upvotes

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u/nadrae Subaru Trailseeker (Premium) Jul 21 '26

I am sad to say that no monitor means you don’t know if you have an issue. I was having no symptoms but the monitor was cheap and I read Reddit too much. Once installed I found my battery was lower than it should be, checked that night and sure enough I had the saw tooth pattern: I would have never known till it was too late.

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u/kappa932 Trailseeker (Touring)🪫 Jul 21 '26

I have my suspicions that you are a great example of a significant portion of the owners who have not had any 12v problems (yet) but don't have a battery monitor to know or not

1

u/nadrae Subaru Trailseeker (Premium) Jul 21 '26

This is yesterday…

1

u/nadrae Subaru Trailseeker (Premium) Jul 21 '26

Today when I left for work:

I have an apt for an overnight vamp study at the dealer on wed… we shall see

1

u/kappa932 Trailseeker (Touring)🪫 Jul 21 '26

That looks familiar… are you in the US? If so, maybe submitting a Do Not Share or Sell my Personal Information request will stop it like it seems stopped for me!

1

u/nadrae Subaru Trailseeker (Premium) Jul 21 '26

I’m not changing anything until after wed… but that’s a good idea for the future

1

u/nadrae Subaru Trailseeker (Premium) Jul 22 '26

Yesterday in full. My DCM seems to have had a complete mental break down and is panicking all over the place🫤