App not working to set climate remotely

[Eevee]

One of the features I was really counting on is not working properly. I can't seem to get the app to work to set the car's climate unless I'm really close to the car or in the car.

At first I thought it was our wifi. When I turned off wifi on my phone and on the car it seemed to work. But now I'm thinking that all that happened was that I was near the car with my phone.

My car is 50% charged, so it's not that.

Why isn't it working correctly?

 

[BerTX]

The app does not have a direct connection from phone to car. It only operates through the Internet, by sending a command through the Tesla servers, which then send the command to the car. Phone proximity was not a factor.

Likely the car is not getting a good wifi signal, or your wifi is having problems with connecting to the Internet. Most likely the former.

Do you have any kind of repeater or range extender? The car can show a good wifi connection, but if those devices are not connecting to the router, then you will not be able to contact the car. If your wifi signal is weak, realize that the wifi antenna for the car is in the passenger side mirror, so it helps to have that facing the wifi source, and it tends to work better laterally than vertically, so you may find you get a better connection if your wifi signal source is not located above the car.

 

[Lloyd]

The command is not necessarily via WiFi, however. If you are in an area of poor cellular coverage it will not work either.

 

[David29]

The command is not necessarily via WiFi, however. If you are in an area of poor cellular coverage it will not work either.

One thing I have found is that poor WiFi seems worse than poor cellular service. My car is in a parking lot about 100 feet from my nearest WiFi transmitter in my condo. On a good day, it will recognize the WiFi signal. But if I leave it connected to WiFi, it tries to connect to WiFi in preference to the cellular signal. And if it cannot get a good WiFi signal, it tends to get nothing. So for example, I cannot start a new podcast while I am in my parking lot close to the condo. i need to start pulling away until i am definitely out of reach of the WiFi and in an area of at least some AT&T coverage. So most of the time, I turn off WiFi in the car.

I very rarely have trouble reaching my car to turn on heating, etc., unless the AT&T signal is essentially non-existent.

 

[MathijsKok]

The model S is very very hard to wake up via wifi (even on a very strong connection like mine, it is literally parked a few feet from a professional Ubiquiti AP).

 

[Eevee]

Ok so it IS my wifi, like I originally thought. Funny that I so quickly talked myself out of it. Anyway, turned off wifi in the car and now it works fine.