Android phone key work around with Tasker?

[octoad]

Yes that is sufficient most of the time. Once when that was insufficient, toggling airplane mode did the trick. I resorted to restarting phone during delivery and only then was able tosetup phone key.

Actually the last two weeks have been great for me. Haven't needed to do any of those things.

If its still an issue, it sounds like an app that automatically resets bluetooth when the driver approaches the car might be helpful.

 

[SDKoala]

Is the fix for your Android Bluetooth woes to simply bounce the bluetooth interface on your phone off/on?

Toggling Bluetooth was the recommended Tesla troubleshooting solution before they changed it to toggling airplane mode. One observation I made early on was that my phone key failed frequently when leaving the car for hours, probably something to do with the phone's Bluetooth radio going to sleep. Toggling Bluetooth on the phone keeps it active and increases the chance of it connecting with the car upon approach. Still far from perfect. This automates the process in the background at regular intervals.

 

[SDKoala]

If its still an issue, it sounds like an app that automatically resets bluetooth when the driver approaches the car might be helpful.

It's a good thought, but I've been down this road already. The problem is getting the phone to detect when it's near the car. The only signal the car is constantly giving off is the Bluetooth LE broadcast which makes the phone key work. If the phone detects that signal, it works as the key and there's no need to toggle the Bluetooth radio in the first place. If the phone doesn't detect it, it won't connect as the key. Since there's no connection, there's no way for the phone to know it's near the car to automate a Bluetooth toggle action.

I've tried tying it to GPS (there are ways to have Tasker save GPS location and perform actions in relation to that position) but it's a huge battery drain to constantly poll location and I remember the GPS couldn't refresh in practical intervals in real-time anyway.

 

[landis]

Since there's no connection, there's no way for the phone to know it's near the car to automate a Bluetooth toggle action.

So what if the Tesla app intergrated some of what you have been doing with tasker?

When i unluck phone with a fingerprint, hit home key twice and launch tesla app, i dont every want to be blocked with app waiting for car to wake up. Several times i have pressed unlock button which was active when i wanted to turn on climate which was disabled. Clearly there is room for some app optimizations. A discreet widget i could use to indicate i am or will be close soon, so please up the game and dont sweat the power impact for the next 30 seconds, would be useful.

For those that will say a fob button would be easier, i say how about app uses accelerometers to learn and recognize anticipation of unlock...

Edit:
If you dont already know i have no interest in a fob, and as a dev am convinced there are plenty of oppurtunities to refine the os implementations and app accommodations for inevitable deficiencies.

 

[SDKoala]

So what if the Tesla app intergrated some of what you have been doing with tasker?

When i unluck phone with a fingerprint, hit home key twice and launch tesla app, i dont every want to be blocked with app waiting for car to wake up. Several times i have pressed unlock button which was active when i wanted to turn on climate which was disabled. Clearly there is room for some app optimizations. A discreet widget i could use to indicate i am or will be close soon, so please up the game and dont sweat the power impact for the next 30 seconds, would be useful.

For those that will say a fob button would be easier, i say how about app uses accelerometers to learn and recognize anticipation of unlock...

Edit:
If you dont already know i have no interest in a fob, and as a dev am convinced there are plenty of oppurtunities to refine the os implementations and app accommodations for inevitable deficiencies.

Sure, if the app has a way to make the Bluetooth LE receiver in phones more responsive, that would be a way to improve the phone key connection. In the absence of that, those of us having problems resort to workarounds.

The Bluetooth LE connection directly between phone and car (the "phone key") is separate from the app sending commands to the car via Internet connection through the Tesla servers, which then communicates to the car by LTE. I agree--it would be nice if the servers were faster and we didn't have to wait 30-60 seconds for the car to wake up when sending remote commands, but this is not the primary cause of poor phone key function.

No one has suggested that a fob replace the phone key. From what I've read, everyone who wants a fob is perfectly happy to let people keep the phone key if it's working for them. We just want a reliable way to unlock the car since the phone key is not it for a lot of us.

 

[RTPEV]

Now that I have my car, and confirmed that Phone as Key works about as reliably as I expected, I finally decided to give this a shot.

I'm not sure this is going to work for me, because I have one of the "societal conformity bracelets" that's probably always connected to my phone via Bluetooth, so the suggested trigger never fires (well, it did once today...maybe I just happened to go out to the bathroom at exactly the right time).

I did notice that you can specify exactly which devices are connected (or not) in the condition, but it seemed to limit me to 3, which was about 1 short of what I needed. Plus I've noticed that for whatever reason, it seems to take an Airplane Model toggle rather than just a Bluetooth toggle to re-establish connectivity, so I think I will probably abandon this approach for now.

 

[crackers8199]

Another update: Since implementing the second Tasker profile to toggle Bluetooth off/on after it disconnects from the car, I have had no further failures to unlock the car in any of the situations that were troublesome for me before. I've not needed to tinker with Tasker or had to manually toggle my Bluetooth off/on to get it to connect. I've not had to reboot my phone, put it in airplane mode, restart the Tesla app, mess around with batter optimization settings, or perform any of the other suggested troubleshooting steps. Literally nothing. It just works now and I'm much happier.

To summarize:

Profile 1: Toggles Bluetooth off/on automatically every hour:

• Purpose: Refreshes the phone's Bluetooth so that it is prepared to connect to the car at all times
• Will not toggle Bluetooth if already connected to another device (keeps it from disconnecting when already connected to the car or using any other Bluetooth device)
• Will only run when Bluetooth is already on (keeps it from turning Bluetooth on if I've manually turned it off)
• Will not run if phone plugged in and charging (not a necessary condition, but I find no need to toggle Bluetooth off/on if my phone is plugged in overnight)
• Every hour may be too often, but there's no noticeable effect on battery life, so I'm not inclined to test out what the minimum interval is because it's working.

Profile 2: Toggles Bluetooth off/on after disconnecting from the car after a delay of 10 seconds

• Purpose: Squashes the bug where when using walk-away lock, going back to the car after barely walking out of Bluetooth range does not allow the phone to reconnect as the key.
• After the car's Bluetooth is disconnected from the phone, Tasker waits 10 seconds, then toggles Bluetooth off/on, refreshing the phone's ability to reconnect to the car. The delay is needed because without it, Bluetooth will toggle as soon as the Bluetooth connection is dropped, then try reconnect to the car instantly. Sometimes it's successful, which put the phone in a weird state where it shows it's connected, but it's not.

Instructions are in the posts above. No guarantees it will work with your specific phone, but on my Pixel 1, it's been flawless. I'll update again any new situations that arise that need troubleshooting.

How are you getting the delay in there? This works for me it seems for the most part, but when I left my car running with my wife in it to run into the store tonight it wouldn't let me drive when I got back...had to tap the key card. Not sure if the delay would solve that...

 

[crackers8199]

i take that back, the toggle on disconnect isn't working reliably either. this is so frustrating i'm about ready to give up and just get my wallet out and tap the damn door every time i go to the car...

i'm using a oneplus 5 and i'd say it works maybe 20% of the time. if that. that may be generous.

 

[nvx1977]

i take that back, the toggle on disconnect isn't working reliably either. this is so frustrating i'm about ready to give up and just get my wallet out and tap the damn door every time i go to the car...

i'm using a oneplus 5 and i'd say it works maybe 20% of the time. if that. that may be generous.

Have you tried this?
Android users: phone-as-key FIX

 

[crackers8199]

Have you tried this?
Android users: phone-as-key FIX

yeah, that was the first thing i tried. i think it's because battery optimization is completely broken in oxygen OS...i may have to root my phone and throw cyanogen on there to see if that works. i don't know what else to do at this point, other than just take my wallet out and tap it on the door every time. it's seriously that unreliable that i feel like an idiot walking up to the damn car and trying to open it and never having it actually unlock...

 

[Falkirk]

yeah, that was the first thing i tried. i think it's because battery optimization is completely broken in oxygen OS...i may have to root my phone and throw cyanogen on there to see if that works. i don't know what else to do at this point, other than just take my wallet out and tap it on the door every time. it's seriously that unreliable that i feel like an idiot walking up to the damn car and trying to open it and never having it actually unlock...

I'm using a OnePlus one and in the same boat as you. I made the setting change as well but it basically never works, maybe 15% of the time it'll work. I've read that low energy Bluetooth 5.0+ is needed to get reliable usage so I don't think there's anything I can do to improve this other than a OnePlus 6! Not ready to do that yet though.

 

[crackers8199]

I'm using a OnePlus one and in the same boat as you. I made the setting change as well but it basically never works, maybe 15% of the time it'll work. I've read that low energy Bluetooth 5.0+ is needed to get reliable usage so I don't think there's anything I can do to improve this other than a OnePlus 6! Not ready to do that yet though.

you may be right on the opo, but me on the op5 should be fine i would imagine....yet it's still crap. this has been a pattern with oxygen os since i got the phone. i've hesitated rooting and putting a custom rom on, but this might finally be the straw that breaks the camels back...

 

[SDKoala]

yeah, that was the first thing i tried. i think it's because battery optimization is completely broken in oxygen OS...i may have to root my phone and throw cyanogen on there to see if that works. i don't know what else to do at this point, other than just take my wallet out and tap it on the door every time. it's seriously that unreliable that i feel like an idiot walking up to the damn car and trying to open it and never having it actually unlock...

Did you try turning off battery optimization for the Bluetooth services? This made a big difference for me after one of the firmware updates broke my Tasker workaround. See my post here.

The frustrating thing is that I'm able to open the trunk like 99% of the time, but the doors aren't nearly as successful. Since that post, I've had only one unexplained failure to open to trunk. It happened after charging, which always seems to cause the car to be less responsive to unlocking. That means car and phone are recognizing each other pretty much every time, but for whatever reason the doors don't respond the same way as the trunk.

 

[crackers8199]

Did you try turning off battery optimization for the Bluetooth services? This made a big difference for me after one of the firmware updates broke my Tasker workaround. See my post here.

The frustrating thing is that I'm able to open the trunk like 99% of the time, but the doors aren't nearly as successful. Since that post, I've had only one unexplained failure to open to trunk. It happened after charging, which always seems to cause the car to be less responsive to unlocking. That means car and phone are recognizing each other pretty much every time, but for whatever reason the doors don't respond the same way as the trunk.

i can't disable battery optimization for bluetooth because it's a system app. oxygen os doesn't allow you to do anything to system apps unless you're rooted (which i'm not).

 

[BlueWRXPride]

Did you try turning off battery optimization for the Bluetooth services? This made a big difference for me after one of the firmware updates broke my Tasker workaround. See my post here.

The frustrating thing is that I'm able to open the trunk like 99% of the time, but the doors aren't nearly as successful. Since that post, I've had only one unexplained failure to open to trunk. It happened after charging, which always seems to cause the car to be less responsive to unlocking. That means car and phone are recognizing each other pretty much every time, but for whatever reason the doors don't respond the same way as the trunk.

I've noticed the same thing about the truck! I read somewhere that there are multiple bluetooth receivers around the car to sense your phone for unlocking. Maybe the one in the truck gets better range.