Help! Pre-warming Tesla grabs wife’s iPhone, which then blares music

[TigerNinety]

Hello,

I know the title reads strangely, but hear me out.

This evening when I got home, my wife recounted a story about how, at 0709 this morning, her iPhone on her nightstand inexplicably started blaring music at top volume for no reason.

It didn’t take me long to connect this to part of my departure from home this morning. Today, for the first time, I started the Tesla’s pre-heating using my iPhone app much earlier than I’d been doing (and possibly farther away from the car). When I got into the car, I noticed that it had connected to my wife’s phone and was playing music. I was perplexed, but went into the Bluetooth preferences, connected my iPhone, and drove off...at around 0709 this morning. (I presume her iPhone kept playing the music the only way it knew how, over the speakers of her iPhone.)

So, unless you think my diagnosis is off, I think we know the proximate cause. The question is, what do I need to do to be able to remotely pre-heat our Model S (running 2020.36.11) without the car connecting to my wife’s iPhone? Will some version of 2020.40 with priority Bluetooth help? Or, do I have to choose between removing my wife’s iPhone from the Tesla connections, delaying my pre-heating, or moving closer to the car to start the pre-heating?

Thanks for your thoughts!

Todd

 

[drift]

Hello,

I know the title reads strangely, but hear me out.

This evening when I got home, my wife recounted a story about how, at 0709 this morning, her iPhone on her nightstand inexplicably started blaring music at top volume for no reason.

It didn’t take me long to connect this to part of my departure from home this morning. Today, for the first time, I started the Tesla’s pre-heating using my iPhone app much earlier than I’d been doing (and possibly farther away from the car). When I got into the car, I noticed that it had connected to my wife’s phone and was playing music. I was perplexed, but went into the Bluetooth preferences, connected my iPhone, and drove off...at around 0709 this morning. (I presume her iPhone kept playing the music the only way it knew how, over the speakers of her iPhone.)

So, unless you think my diagnosis is off, I think we know the proximate cause. The question is, what do I need to do to be able to remotely pre-heat our Model S (running 2020.36.11) without the car connecting to my wife’s iPhone? Will some version of 2020.40 with priority Bluetooth help? Or, do I have to choose between removing my wife’s iPhone from the Tesla connections, delaying my pre-heating, or moving closer to the car to start the pre-heating?

Thanks for your thoughts!

Todd

How is your wife's iphone close enough to the car to connect?

 

[DerbyDave]

I assume your wife's iphone was within Bluetooth distance of the car, a very short range. The car cannot select to play music on the iphone, and start an app on the iphone to play something, as far as I know. Perhaps the iphone was streaming music to the car, and your wife left with the connection still on. I could see the connection possibly restarting when the iphone reconnects if your wife never stopped the app on her phone.

 

[TigerNinety]

How is your wife's iphone close enough to the car to connect?

Bedroom is basically right over the car.

 

[TigerNinety]

I assume your wife's iphone was within Bluetooth distance of the car, a very short range. The car cannot select to play music on the iphone, and start an app on the iphone to play something, as far as I know. Perhaps the iphone was streaming music to the car, and your wife left with the connection still on. I could see the connection possibly restarting when the iphone reconnects if your wife never stopped the app on her phone.

My wife has driven the car maybe twice, always with me in the car, so far. So, there’s no chance of a scenario when she was actually driving or using the car with the phone connected, then stopped.

 

[jkcheng122]

The recent update added BT priority device. Set it to your phone and see if issue still occurs.

 

[TigerNinety]

The recent update added BT priority device. Set it to your phone and see if issue still occurs.

Yeah, I figure that's a next step....whenever I get that update....

 

[Ostrichsak]

The recent update added BT priority device. Set it to your phone and see if issue still occurs.

They had the right with adding BT priority idea but implemented it improperly. They need to have an option within a profile to specify which phone you want to connect to. This way, even if the car misreads which profile fob gets in and you have to manually change your profile it will automatically select the proper phone too w/o you having to do anything. This is ideal for families with multiple drivers and multiple cars. For bonus points, they can link profiles to phones backwards so whomever uses the phone to pre-condition automatically preloads their profile before even getting into the car. These couple of software tweaks would make the ownership experience for families with multiple drivers/cars less tedious and far more enjoyable.

 

[Ostrichsak]

My wife has driven the car maybe twice, always with me in the car, so far. So, there’s no chance of a scenario when she was actually driving or using the car with the phone connected, then stopped.

I hate to recommend this but until Tesla codes a better solution the band-aid fix may be to just unpair her phone. It takes only a minute to pair if she ever actually wants it paired but in your instance this sounds like the most simple solution that will stay fixed in the firmware's current form.

 

[TigerNinety]

If by “unpair,” you mean tell her phone to forget the Tesla, thanks for the suggestion. We did that late last night and are optimistic. However, we can’t seem to get the Tesla to forget the iPhone! (See separate thread on this.)

Thanks!

Todd

 

[Ostrichsak]

If by “unpair,” you mean tell her phone to forget the Tesla, thanks for the suggestion. We did that late last night and are optimistic. However, we can’t seem to get the Tesla to forget the iPhone! (See separate thread on this.)

Thanks!

Todd

I too have struggled with this and I feel like I've had better luck unpairing from the Tesla first and then unpairing from the phone's list second. Also, there seems to be an unusual amount of lag when you try to unpair from the Tesla screen. So be patient between commands and just give it time. Like more than you would think and then double that.

That's been my experience on MCU1 anyway and I feel like patience is really the key. No matter, unpairing from the phone will prevent loud music from playing either way as the car no longer as permission to trigger audio among other things. This is also why I think unpairing from the car first works best as the car will has permission to talk to the phone to permanently break that handshake.

Note: in a properly programmed situation the order of unpairing isn't important. For whatever reason though Tesla firmware needs a LOT of attention around BT programming specifically so we as the end user have LOTS of band-aids and workaround that wouldn't be necessary if Tesla would properly address their firmware.