Annoying app all of a sudden

[hmadsen]

So i have only had the car for 3 weeks, in the beginning the app was connecting ok, sometimes it took 10 seconds but most of the time it was a second or 2 and it had connected to the car.

But now "all of a sudden" it is really hard to get it to connect, especially at home, when it is charging, sometimes i want to manage how fast it charges due to solar panels and house consumption not having to go over a certain max figure.

I will open up the app, the app will say that it is connecting and that it has not seen the car for X minutes, but the wheel just keeps spinning and spinning, and sometimes it connects after a minute, sometimes it will not connect.

Sometimes it will even seem as it has connected, but if i adjust the charge amps, it will just jump back to whatever it was previously set to, and the app says "Failed to set charge speed".

I tried "everything".

The car sits in the driveway, not the best of wifi so tried turning off wifi to the car, thinking that it might be because of a very low signal wifi, but this has not helped.

Tried turning wifi on and off on the phone, thinking it could be something with my home wifi, and let the phone connect to 5G instead. There is plenty of coverage at home for cell networks.

I also tried the brake pedal and both scroll wheels pressed until the car reboots and i have tried restarting my phone and even tried resetting the app on my phone and starting over, thinking it might be the app, that had a problem.

Funny thing is....If i have the app open and have had the wheel spinning for minutes, without ever connecting, if i then go to the car and open up the door, it will almost instantly connect to the app, and i can then control everything via the app.

To me it seems that the car might get into a sleepmode that is a bit "sleepy" since it will not respond, and when i open the door, the car exits the sleep and suddenly sees that the app is trying to communicate.

Sentry mode is set to off at home, as i have camera's pointing at the car in the driveway, so i dont want to "waste" the energy, that sentry mode uses.

Has anyone experienced anything like this.

PS. The phone key works flawlessly 99,9% of the time so even though it does not want to speak to the app, it does recognise that the phone is near the car.

 

[GtiMart]

IF you open the door and then it connects, it probably means the car was sleeping. That would indicate it was NOT currently charging otherwise it would have been awake.
It sounds like your car doesn't receive the SMS that the Tesla servers send to wake it up when you try to connect with your mobile app. Is it possible that the car has poor LTE connectivity where it is parked?

 

[hmadsen]

IF you open the door and then it connects, it probably means the car was sleeping. That would indicate it was NOT currently charging otherwise it would have been awake.
It sounds like your car doesn't receive the SMS that the Tesla servers send to wake it up when you try to connect with your mobile app. Is it possible that the car has poor LTE connectivity where it is parked?

Yes the car is not plugged in, and it is set to not run sentry at home, but i wonder why it would sleep so deeply that it does not wake up at all.

The reception on both 4G and 5G is strong, and the car also shows strong signal so i doubt that this is the problem.

The reason the car is not just plugged in is, we have variable prices for electricity and we have solar panels, so i manage the charging myself, based off of when we make more solar power than we use, and if no solar is available, we charge in the cheapest hours of the day, but the cheapest time of day is not some fixed off-peak hours, sometimes it is in the daytime, sometimes it is at night.

Do Tesla really send a text to wake up the car...Sounds a bit archaic to do it that way. I mean, my phone uses very little power to idle with the screen off, and they still need the computer to "idle" to receive a SMS. ?

That being said...Even when i AM charging sometimes, it will do this. If i want to adjust the charge current i need to go to the car and set it from the car screen, because i can not "get a hold" of the car via the app.

 

[GtiMart]

How would you wake a car that sleeps and is not connected to anything? To save as much energy as possible, the car stops all computers, wifi etc and only runs a couple devices: reader for key card and cell phone connection, that sort of thing. To wake the car, a message needs to be sent to it, and the cell phone is the only thing still alive if it sleeps.
The mobile app simply connects to a Tesla server in the cloud, and it is that cloud machine that talks to the car. When you have trouble, it's on that path somewhere. Soemtimes the Tesla server itself is down, or one of its communication channels. More often than not it's the car that doesn'T receive the sms to wake it up. If after 20-30 seconds the car hasn't woken up you can kill your mobile app and start it again. I believe that tries to send the message again. I've had some success doing that.

 

[hmadsen]

How would you wake a car that sleeps and is not connected to anything? To save as much energy as possible, the car stops all computers, wifi etc and only runs a couple devices: reader for key card and cell phone connection, that sort of thing. To wake the car, a message needs to be sent to it, and the cell phone is the only thing still alive if it sleeps.
The mobile app simply connects to a Tesla server in the cloud, and it is that cloud machine that talks to the car. When you have trouble, it's on that path somewhere. Soemtimes the Tesla server itself is down, or one of its communication channels. More often than not it's the car that doesn'T receive the sms to wake it up. If after 20-30 seconds the car hasn't woken up you can kill your mobile app and start it again. I believe that tries to send the message again. I've had some success doing that.

Well seing as text messages are data, much in the same way as LTE is data, i dont see the big difference.

Cell module needs to be running and active to be able to run the radio transmitter/receiver.

If i charge my phone to 100% and let it sit on my table without turning on the screen, but with an active data connection, it will consume less than 10% of my 4500mAh battery, so less than 1Ah off of a 3,7 volt lithum battery, and even with the screen off, multiple apps will be using the data connection, for example apps like facebook, viber, whatsapp and so on, have a continuous connection to be able to receive notifications.

In the grad scheme of things this not a lot power, so why the car is not running some sort of "basic" service, that can be contacted via data, without having to wake up everything i don't really understand why it would consume massive amounts of power to run a "watchdog".

I tried the "Kill app, and restart" but that has rarely worked for me.

It seems the situation has become a bit more stable again now, but it still takes up to 30 seconds to wake up the car, and sometimes it still refuses to wake up, and i have to go to the car to manually stop the charging, which makes even less sense if, as i thing you said, that while charging, the car does not put the computer to sleep ?

LTE signal is 3/4 (or is it 4/5) bars.

 

[WooWoo69]

Well seing as text messages are data, much in the same way as LTE is data, i dont see the big difference.

Cell module needs to be running and active to be able to run the radio transmitter/receiver.

If i charge my phone to 100% and let it sit on my table without turning on the screen, but with an active data connection, it will consume less than 10% of my 4500mAh battery, so less than 1Ah off of a 3,7 volt lithum battery, and even with the screen off, multiple apps will be using the data connection, for example apps like facebook, viber, whatsapp and so on, have a continuous connection to be able to receive notifications.

In the grad scheme of things this not a lot power, so why the car is not running some sort of "basic" service, that can be contacted via data, without having to wake up everything i don't really understand why it would consume massive amounts of power to run a "watchdog".

I tried the "Kill app, and restart" but that has rarely worked for me.

It seems the situation has become a bit more stable again now, but it still takes up to 30 seconds to wake up the car, and sometimes it still refuses to wake up, and i have to go to the car to manually stop the charging, which makes even less sense if, as i thing you said, that while charging, the car does not put the computer to sleep ?

LTE signal is 3/4 (or is it 4/5) bars.

So i have only had the car for 3 weeks, in the beginning the app was connecting ok, sometimes it took 10 seconds but most of the time it was a second or 2 and it had connected to the car.

But now "all of a sudden" it is really hard to get it to connect, especially at home, when it is charging, sometimes i want to manage how fast it charges due to solar panels and house consumption not having to go over a certain max figure.

I will open up the app, the app will say that it is connecting and that it has not seen the car for X minutes, but the wheel just keeps spinning and spinning, and sometimes it connects after a minute, sometimes it will not connect.

Sometimes it will even seem as it has connected, but if i adjust the charge amps, it will just jump back to whatever it was previously set to, and the app says "Failed to set charge speed".

I tried "everything".

The car sits in the driveway, not the best of wifi so tried turning off wifi to the car, thinking that it might be because of a very low signal wifi, but this has not helped.

Tried turning wifi on and off on the phone, thinking it could be something with my home wifi, and let the phone connect to 5G instead. There is plenty of coverage at home for cell networks.

I also tried the brake pedal and both scroll wheels pressed until the car reboots and i have tried restarting my phone and even tried resetting the app on my phone and starting over, thinking it might be the app, that had a problem.

Funny thing is....If i have the app open and have had the wheel spinning for minutes, without ever connecting, if i then go to the car and open up the door, it will almost instantly connect to the app, and i can then control everything via the app.

To me it seems that the car might get into a sleepmode that is a bit "sleepy" since it will not respond, and when i open the door, the car exits the sleep and suddenly sees that the app is trying to communicate.

Sentry mode is set to off at home, as i have camera's pointing at the car in the driveway, so i dont want to "waste" the energy, that sentry mode uses.

Has anyone experienced anything like this.

PS. The phone key works flawlessly 99,9% of the time so even though it does not want to speak to the app, it does recognise that the phone is near the car.

I have had a similar problem for the last month or so. My car is currently on the 2022.45.15 upgrade but it started with the one prior to this. From reading other similar threads, it does not seem to be happening with Android phones. Is the problem with the iPhone app or the car software??? I am sure that Tesla's programmers will jump on it as soon as they have finished working on more games for the car.

 

[hmadsen]

I have had a similar problem for the last month or so. My car is currently on the 2022.45.15 upgrade but it started with the one prior to this. From reading other similar threads, it does not seem to be happening with Android phones. Is the problem with the iPhone app or the car software??? I am sure that Tesla's programmers will jump on it as soon as they have finished working on more games for the car.

What can i say.

I have an Android phone.

PS. Right now it seems. the problem with connecting is not as bad as it was when i made the post, it still takes a good 30 seconds sometimes, but i am almost never in a situation where it will flat out refuse to connect at all, just super slow.

The slow connect is also still happening even if the car is plugged in, and actively charging, so probably not related to the car being asleep, as i think someone mentioned that while charging the car is not put to sleep.

 

[WooWoo69]

What can i say.

I have an Android phone.

PS. Right now it seems. the problem with connecting is not as bad as it was when i made the post, it still takes a good 30 seconds sometimes, but i am almost never in a situation where it will flat out refuse to connect at all, just super slow.

The slow connect is also still happening even if the car is plugged in, and actively charging, so probably not related to the car being asleep, as i think someone mentioned that while charging the car is not put to sleep.

Glad to hear that it is not just iPhone users - it's nice to have company sometimes. I wish that my delay time was only 30 seconds though. Mine will timeout after about 3 minutes or so without connecting. For me, the problem occurs when the car is charging. It's not an issue at other times. It’s frustrating because I can’t check to see when the car will finish charging but, if it was up to me, I would prefer that their programmers fix the problems that the last couple of “updates” have caused with the Autopilot/speed control.

 

[hmadsen]

Glad to hear that it is not just iPhone users - it's nice to have company sometimes. I wish that my delay time was only 30 seconds though. Mine will timeout after about 3 minutes or so without connecting. For me, the problem occurs when the car is charging. It's not an issue at other times. It’s frustrating because I can’t check to see when the car will finish charging but, if it was up to me, I would prefer that their programmers fix the problems that the last couple of “updates” have caused with the Autopilot/speed control.

Yeah, i found out additional information, that just makes everything even weirder. Mine also predominantly does it when charging for some reason, and i think it is somehow related to the charging.

This is a screenshot, this is while the car was charging.

App says 83%, but in fact the car was at 88%, it does not show the controls for stopping the charging and releasing of the charge port, and the "Last seen 4 hours ago" besides the spinning circle indicates that it does not have a connection to the car.

BUT...

If i go to the first menu item "Control" (Dont know what it is called exactly) where you see the car from above, i can hit the "open" button for the trunk and the trunk will open.

Yesterday my daughter walked to our car and i promised to unlock it, but doing so from the menu bar right below the car in the main menu did not work, the lock icon changed to a spinning circle but did not unlock....When i entered the "control" menu, and hit the "open" in the middle of the car, it unlocked the car at once.


This was a we drove to my parents and parked up there, so after we disconnected the charger.

When i got home, i opened up the app, and it would say "parked" and the correct battery percentage.

Seems to me, that charging gets it into some "loop" and after disconnecting, it needs to be driven some, before everything returns to normal.

So even when it seems to be not connected in the app, in certain menu's it IS "connected" and will do commands from there, but not from other menus.

The "Location" will not update either on mine when in this faulty condition.

They did something to break this, even if i only had the car for a month, i would swear that for the first week this was not a problem.

When it is in this error mode, i have to physically go to the car to adjust the amps on the car, if i want to slow down charging, because someone else needs to use electricity in the house (Wife, turning on the oven to make dinner, or at the end of the day, when the sun goes down, for example)

 

[GtiMart]

Sometimes the mobile app cannot reach the car for some reason. You have to remember that it talks to a web server, and that web server talks to the car. There are a few places where this can fail. It's not new. When that happens you can kill your mobile app and launch it again, it sometimes succeeds the second try.
Some commands in the mobile app can work even without the internet connection. When you are close enough, some commands work through a direct connection to the car, similar to the "phone as key" behavior. Unlocking the car is one of those commands.

 

[WooWoo69]

Yeah, i found out additional information, that just makes everything even weirder. Mine also predominantly does it when charging for some reason, and i think it is somehow related to the charging.

This is a screenshot, this is while the car was charging.

App says 83%, but in fact the car was at 88%, it does not show the controls for stopping the charging and releasing of the charge port, and the "Last seen 4 hours ago" besides the spinning circle indicates that it does not have a connection to the car.

BUT...

If i go to the first menu item "Control" (Dont know what it is called exactly) where you see the car from above, i can hit the "open" button for the trunk and the trunk will open.

Yesterday my daughter walked to our car and i promised to unlock it, but doing so from the menu bar right below the car in the main menu did not work, the lock icon changed to a spinning circle but did not unlock....When i entered the "control" menu, and hit the "open" in the middle of the car, it unlocked the car at once.


This was a we drove to my parents and parked up there, so after we disconnected the charger.

When i got home, i opened up the app, and it would say "parked" and the correct battery percentage.

Seems to me, that charging gets it into some "loop" and after disconnecting, it needs to be driven some, before everything returns to normal.

So even when it seems to be not connected in the app, in certain menu's it IS "connected" and will do commands from there, but not from other menus.

The "Location" will not update either on mine when in this faulty condition.

They did something to break this, even if i only had the car for a month, i would swear that for the first week this was not a problem.

When it is in this error mode, i have to physically go to the car to adjust the amps on the car, if i want to slow down charging, because someone else needs to use electricity in the house (Wife, turning on the oven to make dinner, or at the end of the day, when the sun goes down, for example)

I have seen the same problems that you report. My car/phone use to work well together but the problem started with one of the recent car software updates. It is a shame because using the phone was a very convenient feature. Others have reported being able to reconnect when they open the car. This has been successful for me part of the time but it doesn’t always work. I keep telling myself that it worked well for 3 years so they know how to do it correctly and are bound to fix it sometime.

I am fortunate in that my electric service rates do not change during the day and are low enough that I can’t justify solar. As a result, I don’t have to go outside to adjust the amps or the charging timing. I can understand why it causes a much bigger problem for you though.

 

[hmadsen]

I have seen the same problems that you report. My car/phone use to work well together but the problem started with one of the recent car software updates. It is a shame because using the phone was a very convenient feature. Others have reported being able to reconnect when they open the car. This has been successful for me part of the time but it doesn’t always work. I keep telling myself that it worked well for 3 years so they know how to do it correctly and are bound to fix it sometime.

I am fortunate in that my electric service rates do not change during the day and are low enough that I can’t justify solar. As a result, I don’t have to go outside to adjust the amps or the charging timing. I can understand why it causes a much bigger problem for you though.

I surely hope Tesla knows about this problem and are actively working to fix it.

If it is both android and ios, i would think it might be the software in the car, that is the problem.

I have just ordered an outdoor wifi access point for my Unifi setup, i will mount this in a location where the car will have good wifi, sadly it seems the car does not have very good "reception" for wifi, it can only just see the wifi i have in the ceiling in my house. This is less than 10 meters away, and only a wall and a window between it and the car. The outdoor wifi will be 3 meters away from the car and with no obstacles in between it and the AP.

I am hoping that the addition of a good wifi connection for the car, will make this problem go away, if the problem is in fact the LTE in the car in some way.

 

[hmadsen]

Sometimes the mobile app cannot reach the car for some reason. You have to remember that it talks to a web server, and that web server talks to the car. There are a few places where this can fail. It's not new. When that happens you can kill your mobile app and launch it again, it sometimes succeeds the second try.
Some commands in the mobile app can work even without the internet connection. When you are close enough, some commands work through a direct connection to the car, similar to the "phone as key" behavior. Unlocking the car is one of those commands.

Yeah but when i was unable to do it via the button panel on the app, but it worked first time when i went to the menu with the image of the car seen from above i was atleast 160 feet from the car.

I was in my parents driveway, and the car was parked atleast 160 feet away, because the road in front of their house has been dug up, because they are doing new sewage pipes. I was able to see the car, but there is no way the car would "see" my phone at that distance i think.

 

[Prodock]

I only had that happen once in a while for the past 35,000 miles…until today. Updated to 2023.12.1.1 last night and after that neither my wife’s nor my iPhone apps want to connect with the car. I can open and close the tailgate, lock and unlock the car, but location doesn’t want to show and the battery percentage just spins. I hope they can get that bug fixed quickly because I do really like the larger font option.

 

[hmadsen]

I only had that happen once in a while for the past 35,000 miles…until today. Updated to 2023.12.1.1 last night and after that neither my wife’s nor my iPhone apps want to connect with the car. I can open and close the tailgate, lock and unlock the car, but location doesn’t want to show and the battery percentage just spins. I hope they can get that bug fixed quickly because I do really like the larger font option.

Me 2.

Only had the car for 2 months and in the first month or so, i had no problems whatsoever, but now it's really hit and miss, and if it gets into this "mode" where it stops responding, it's a bit like my wife...Even if i try everything that i can, it will take some time before it will start communicating with me (Well, the app )

 

[Fursty Ferret]

Also happening to me. Not a signal problem because it happens everywhere, and it used to work fine at home. I suppose the only coincidence is that this started happening about the same time that Vodafone starting nuking its 3G network. Everything is fine once the car actually wakes up (eg opening a door), as is streaming.

There’s an open service request with Tesla which has been escalated for further advice.

 

[hmadsen]

Also happening to me. Not a signal problem because it happens everywhere, and it used to work fine at home. I suppose the only coincidence is that this started happening about the same time that Vodafone starting nuking its 3G network. Everything is fine once the car actually wakes up (eg opening a door), as is streaming.

There’s an open service request with Tesla which has been escalated for further advice.

My guess is still that it has something to do with LTE and "sleep mode"

After i installed a dedicated Wifi Hotspot outside with a dedicated SSID for the Tesla i have not had any / very few problems connecting to my car.

When i am out and about i rarely have a problem.

The only logical explanation is, that when i am not at home, Sentry mode is active, keeping the car awake, while at home i have sentry set to off, because i have external CCTV camera's on my house covering the car, so dont need the onboard sentry mode, sucking a lot of juice.

So at home where the car sleeps due to no sentry mode, and with only LTE (Before i installed the wifi) i had this problem.

 

[WooWoo69]

My guess is still that it has something to do with LTE and "sleep mode"

After i installed a dedicated Wifi Hotspot outside with a dedicated SSID for the Tesla i have not had any / very few problems connecting to my car.

When i am out and about i rarely have a problem.

The only logical explanation is, that when i am not at home, Sentry mode is active, keeping the car awake, while at home i have sentry set to off, because i have external CCTV camera's on my house covering the car, so dont need the onboard sentry mode, sucking a lot of juice.

So at home where the car sleeps due to no sentry mode, and with only LTE (Before i installed the wifi) i had this problem.

I don't think that is the problem. I have always had WIFI outside and the problem only seems to occur when I am at home. It normally happens when charging but, I just checked and I am not charging yet it does not want to synchronize. I drove the car about 10 minutes ago so I do not think it is related to sleeping either. Tesla engineers - please take a little time out from developing new games and look into this.

 

[hmadsen]

I don't think that is the problem. I have always had WIFI outside and the problem only seems to occur when I am at home. It normally happens when charging but, I just checked and I am not charging yet it does not want to synchronize. I drove the car about 10 minutes ago so I do not think it is related to sleeping either. Tesla engineers - please take a little time out from developing new games and look into this.

I dont know, i was mainly having the problem at home where it would sleep and be on LTE.

That being said, i also had connection problems when the car was at home and charging, which was a bit of a problem, because i have to manually stop the charge, as i predominantly charge in the summer, when i have "free" electricity from my solar panel system and at the end of the day i have to ramp down the charge amps and in the end, stop the charge completely.

I am working on automating this, but until i have this working it is rather important that i can start and stop the charge, remotely, if i am away from home while the car charges.

I would hope Tesla's engineers are looking into this problem and fix it, so that it does not suddenly pop it's ugly head up again here.

 

[davezforce]

My 19’ X had been doing the same thing for a couple months, the app sometimes is almost useless. But I also notice that while I’m driving around the connectivity of the car lte just completely drops out with the line thru it for miles/minutes sometimes most of my trip. My iPhone has att which I believe is the same what tesla uses and the iPhone doesn’t lose signal the same time even turning 5g off and forcing the iPhone into lte. Not sure if it is an actual MCU problem or hopefully just a software issue. It used to be perfectly fine.