Good installers get by. Smart installers get paid.
Constant Ignition Ground is the true story of how a kid who took apart his brother's toys grew into a 35-year veteran of the twelve volt trade, and what that road teaches about doing the work right.
It is written for the person under the dash: the technician, the shop owner and the independent installer who wants steady work in GPS, telematics and camera installation.
Read the Book Kindle edition coming soon on Amazon
Steven Riebman takes you from a Radio Shack project kit and a year and a half of hearing “no” at a car audio shop counter, through his own retail shop and dealership expediting, to the first GPS install job he ever did, and then to life as a road warrior installing tracking systems across the Southeast.
Along the way the book answers questions every installer runs into sooner or later:
Every chapter hangs on the three wires an installer connects on nearly every job: the constant, the ignition and the ground. The constant stays live with the key out, which is how persistence works too. The ignition tells a device when the vehicle is running. The ground is where it all has to end up, and where most problems start. The wires give the book its name, and they give each story a lesson you can carry to the next vehicle.
Steven Riebman is the owner of API Signal and has spent 35 years in the twelve volt trade. He started in car audio, built and sold a retail shop, ran a dealership installation business, and has installed GPS, telematics and camera systems for fleets across the Southeast. API Signal has installed on more than 11,000 vehicles.
Read the whole book online, page by page, or turn on Read to Me to listen to it. The Kindle edition is coming to Amazon, and this page will link straight to it as soon as it is live. Book One is the first of a planned series.
© 2026 Steven Riebman. All rights reserved.
We send screened fleet GPS and dash cam jobs to independent installers near the work.