Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

Nomad + USB Setup Issues

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
Hello Folks - New M3 owner here and need some help. I've the following setup and it does not work reliably for me. Looking for some suggestions from the community.

Nomad wireless charger - left connection is connected directly to the USB port on the car. Right connection is split using the Splitter provided by Nomad. The 'Charge' end of the splitter is connected to the USB port on the car. I have a Sabrent USB hub connected on the 'Data' end of the splitter. The hub has two 128Gb Sandisk USB drives connected. One drive has the TeslaCam directory and the second one has music on it.

Both drives work great simultaneously when directly connected to the two USB ports on the car. Nomad wireless charger works fine when directly connected to the USB ports.

The above config with the hub is however a hit or a miss. I notice the following issues:
  1. Many times songs from the USB drive fail to load - 'Loading Error'.
  2. On several occasions, I've noticed that if I charge two phones simultaneously, both the Dash Cam and the Music drives disappear from the interface.
  3. Songs marked Favorite on USB disappear, since the USB is reloaded each time the car is parked and then re-started
  4. When I measure the charge current using Ampere app on Android, it reports anywhere from 200 to 450mAmps, is that normal for Nomad?
I am sure that people on this forum have done significant research. Can someone recommend a good and a reliable setup please.
 
There were a lot of these glitches when the Dash Cam first came out and there were numerous threads on this. You can search the forum for this issue.

I had similar problem initially. Here are 2 possible solutions.

The 1st is a easier, quick and dirty method to try. Insert the Sabrent USB hub directly into the right Tesla USB port. Plug both of your USB drives into the Sabrent Hub AND the Normad USB POWER side of the splitter into the Sabrent hub (leave the data side free). This method will only require you to switch the connections around to see if this works. The rationale for this is that the 2 USB drives may be drawing too much power simultaneously from the data side of the cord and causing the USB drives to fail intermittently. (The data side of the splitter does not provide much power). By plugging the Sabrent Hub directly into the right Tesla USB port, the Sabrent hub may be able to provide sufficient power to all 3 connections.

The 2nd method is what I used and it solved the problem. Don't use the Sabrent USB hub at all. Connect the Normad splitter directly into the Tesla's right USB power port, and connect only ONE USB drive to the data side of the splitter. Now you need to partition the USB drive into 2 drives--one for the Dash Cam and the other for USB music. This worked perfectly for me using only one USB drive. You have 128GB drive. It should be enough for for music and Dash Cam.

This thread tells you how to partition USB drive using either PC or Mac:

[V9] How to Format USB into 2 Partitions for DashCam and Music [Windows]

The instruction for partitioning USB drive into 2 drives using Mac is also in the thread and it is so much easier using the disk utility on a MAC to partition the drive.

I hope this helps.
 
@Wildbill - I had tried the partition instructions before a couple of times and they did not work for me. Based on the most recent comments on that thread, I ended up trying the Minitool Partition Wizard. That seems to have done the trick. Things work so far with one splitter and one USB drive. Thank you for your detailed response.
 
I am using 2 USB splitters, plugging one end of each to the Nomad and the other to the USB drives...

so far its fine for me, also, try swapping the side you have the USB driver on,( of the splitter), one is marked and the other isn't, I think there was a reason, you can look them up on Nomad's website.