Aftermarket Tesla CarPlay and Android Auto Devices

[timeshifter]

Does anyone know if the Tesla-Android project way of getting CarPlay is any less laggy at least? (Since it still needs to use an adapter from the same manufacturer)

Can't speak to whether it's less laggy or not, but what I've read is that it's gotten better. I can speak from experience for what I'm about to say - I ran the Tesla-Android solution for about 6 months. If you're frustrated by the hoops you have to jump through to get CarPlay working each time you get in the car with the T2C you'll be super frustrated with the Tesla-Android setup.

You'll have similar problems getting your Tesla connected to the TA WiFi, but it will take longer as the boot time is much longer. Once that connections out of the way you need the iPhone / CarPlay connection to fire. In my experience this is MUCH smoother with T2C, almost a non-issue. On TA it was a nightmare for me. Sometimes I could kill the AutoKit app on the Android interface... there were a few work arounds include a full reboot of TA but none of them were 100% consistent. I even bought another Carlinkit dongle.

Unfortunately, while TA is a great project, the developer is not focused on optimizing the CarPlay connection experience as it relates to getting in and out of the car and getting the connection going.

 

[Mikecm1]

Two major issues with this for me, and they've already been mentioned by others:

1) Lag - there's no rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes it's responsive, but most other times, it's several (10-15 at least) seconds behind. The map lags, the apps lag, touches don't get registered for a ridiculously long time. My phone is literally right next to the T2C, there's no other interference (i.e. I can be out in the middle of nowhere, no other devices around)

2) With my Tesla, I finally stopped having to go through the "keys, wallet, phone" check sequence upon leaving the house. But now when I get in the car, I need to check to ensure that (a) the phone is connected to the T2C, as it sometimes just doesn't want to do so automatically and then (b) that wifi is on and connected to the T2C and that (c) the T2C has connected to my phone's hotspot. All of this despite having "keep connected while driving" on for both my home SSID and T2C SSID. I even tried spinning up a SSID in my garage using the same name as my T2C.

Still, it's been fun to play with this though. It might be good for longer trips, but if it takes a good 5min to get up and running, it makes in-city use too difficult. I may keep this just to tinker.

Does anyone know if the Tesla-Android project way of getting CarPlay is any less laggy at least? (Since it still needs to use an adapter from the same manufacturer)

Do you have refresh rate set to fast in the device settings? Mine works fine and I have an atom processor.

 

[Mikecm1]

Maybe test with your laptop connected to your phone's hotspot, rather than the Tesla. Might ID if it's a phone or a T2C / Tesla issue.

Although, may not be a pure test. I'm using my iPhone as the hotspot for my laptop right now. If I look at settings it doesn't have an "Ethernet" entry like it does while my phone is acting as the hotspot for my T2C.

The confusing part is that it’s intermittent. 50% of the time the internet is unusable when connected, the other half it’s normal. It’s almost like the device is sucking up all of my bandwidth or something.

 

[timeshifter]

@Mikecm1 I tried testing my speeds with and without being connected to T2C. Inconclusive, because the Speedtest app I'm using would connect to a different server based on whether I was connected to T2C or not.

 

[sbtz]

Did you try resetting network settings before you did a full wipe?

See step 7 here If your iPhone or iPad won't connect to a Wi-Fi network

If not I wonder if that may have been enough to get the positive result you had.

Yes, I did. I've gotten it to work with more consistency now, not sure what's changed, frankly. It eventually starts working - perhaps it's the time it takes for the unit to obtain a cellular signal and start broadcasting wifi "properly" - who knows. But still, it's so dog-slow 90% of the time it's unusable (yesterday, I measured a 5 minute lag), even when moved right next to the passenger side mirror (apparently where the wifi antenna is). I've tried switching frequencies, channels, all sorts of things. It's not worth digging in to change out the wifi antenna (until/unless there are more detailed instructions out there than that one Reddit post.) I'm going to try Tesla-Android just to see if it there's some tiny chance that the Pi's signal strengths and processing power are somehow better.

 

[timeshifter]

Have you tried a different T2C unit?

 

[sbtz]

Have you tried a different T2C unit?

Yes - heck, even my car suffered from the infamous factory-reset bug while I was testing the T2C initially. (recent software update caused it to reset everything) So for this thing, I've factory reset my car, my phone - all for the novelty of CarPlay, I guess.

 

[timeshifter]

I've been absent from this thread for a few weeks. Every time I'd click the home page I didn't see any notifications on the bell icon, so I figured no one was talking about this for a while. One day I came back to the thread and had a lot of catching up to do. Guess the forum quit notifying me, but now it seems to be working. Anyway...

So, @sbtz you had lots of trouble getting it to work at all and the thing that fixed it was a complete wipe of your iPhone. But now you're having trouble again. Is that an accurate summary?

 

[sbtz]

I've been absent from this thread for a few weeks. Every time I'd click the home page I didn't see any notifications on the bell icon, so I figured no one was talking about this for a while. One day I came back to the thread and had a lot of catching up to do. Guess the forum quit notifying me, but now it seems to be working. Anyway...

So, @sbtz you had lots of trouble getting it to work at all and the thing that fixed it was a complete wipe of your iPhone. But now you're having trouble again. Is that an accurate summary?

Yep. The main issues appear to be the phone not always connecting to the T2C automatically and then issues joining the AutoKit SSID (no DHCP or no internet errors, or prompting for the password repeatedly). I'm able to get it to work ~5min into most drives now, but most of the time it lags badly, even with "ideal" placement.

 

[jerome8283]

I've been absent from this thread for a few weeks. Every time I'd click the home page I didn't see any notifications on the bell icon, so I figured no one was talking about this for a while. One day I came back to the thread and had a lot of catching up to do. Guess the forum quit notifying me, but now it seems to be working.

The same thing happened to me.

 

[jerome8283]

Yep. The main issues appear to be the phone not always connecting to the T2C automatically and then issues joining the AutoKit SSID (no DHCP or no internet errors, or prompting for the password repeatedly). I'm able to get it to work ~5min into most drives now, but most of the time it lags badly, even with "ideal" placement.

Your definitely an edge case. I would look to replace the T2C device at this point.

 

[timeshifter]

Your definitely an edge case. I would look to replace the T2C device at this point.

I think he already has.

Might be worth testing "on the bench", i.e. having a laptop take the place of the Tesla.

 

[jerome8283]

Might be worth testing "on the bench", i.e. having a laptop take the place of the Tesla.

I think he tried just about everything. @sbtz can you confirm?

 

[Mikecm1]

@Mikecm1 I tried testing my speeds with and without being connected to T2C. Inconclusive, because the Speedtest app I'm using would connect to a different server based on whether I was connected to T2C or not.

Same, but below are screenshots doing a test just now with the same server. Connecting my car to my phones hotspot directly saw 100Mbps+ before the browser force closed.

It seems like one of 3 things could be happening:

1. The wifi broadcast from the device is malfunctioning
2. The device is using all of my data for unknown reasons (it’s not unheard of for Chinese spyware/malware to be on electronics). I wouldn’t be surprised if this was true.
3. My car itself is sending/receiving large amounts of data to Tesla. I don’t think this is true because I don’t have issues when connected directly to my phones hotspot.

Hopefully it’s just #1 and a software update will fix it. I wouldn’t have even noticed if I hadn’t used my phone at the right moment the first time it happened. Now I check the speeds sporadically and as mentioned before, half the time there’s almost no bandwidth left available.

 

[KurtMan]

I use mine with a SIM card and so far so good. It automatically connects about 95% of the time. With the SIM in it, it also acts as a Wi-Fi hotspot so I can use most of the premium connectivity features without subscribing to it.

This sounds very interesting. How well does it work as hotspot for other devices? I'm wondering if it can be used to get other devices like kids tablets online and if it will work well to enable live view on Sentry. (Are the usb ports powered while in sentry?)
With that it could make sense to pay for a separate data plan and not premium connectivity to get all the tesla features + carplay + hotspot for devices.

 

[Mikecm1]

Forgot to add a question in my last comment. Does anyone’s browser automatically open to the tespush.com website? I think I remember the default page on launch used to be the last site visited, but every time I open my browser now it defaults to this blank TESLA screen. Manually clicking the bookmarks folder and then tespush.com is more cumbersome than it sounds with this super slow atom browser.

 

[ElectricAnt54]

Forgot to add a question in my last comment. Does anyone’s browser automatically open to the tespush.com website? I think I remember the default page on launch used to be the last site visited, but every time I open my browser now it defaults to this blank TESLA screen. Manually clicking the bookmarks folder and then tespush.com is more cumbersome than it sounds with this super slow atom browser.

View attachment 929623

I use tesla android but experienced same behavior change as you did. I think a Tesla car update might have stopped browser from reloading the last visited page before car was turned off. I also used to be able to add a shortcut to the main browser screen & can’t anymore.

 

[timeshifter]

If I leave the browser open and up on the screen, then when I come back it will still be on that page. If the browser is closed then I have to go to the page again. I do still have a shortcut icon under the Tesla logo. I've deleted it by accident a few times, but it eventually comes back.

Wonder if a future update will remove it and make mine look like yours. Hope not.

 

[jorhett]

there is essentially no customer support except referring you to very basic videos that show a few basic steps…
essentially there is no one to help you if there is a problem…
when one uses tech support email or via the amazon chat:

I've had no problem getting responses, and they've pushed out two updates based on problems I've found. I rate their support quite high compared to most non-US amazon sellers.

it takes 12 hours to get a reply
my sense is i am communicating with a non english speaker who is using a translation program…pretty sure of that…

They're in China, so you likely have zero overlap with their working day. The people I've been chatting with English is fine, but it's not their first language so various characterizations typical of Mandarin speakers comes through.

Most of the developers I work with are based in China, as is half my team, so I'm quite used to it

 

[jorhett]

I’ve noticed lately than when using T2C, my phones internet speeds become abysmal.

Make sure your phone wifi is not attached to the T2C. If you are, then your phone Internet access goes Wifi to T2C -> Bluetooth to Phone -> Cellular instead of directly Cellular. You need to "forget" the autokit wifi on your phone