Tesla app unable to wake car

[Onshore]

'wake on sms' sounds like the most ridiculous excuse ever.

It's essentially correct. To wake the car when it's in sleep mode, they use a ping feature of the cellular network operator based on SMS notifications.

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/no83jx

In Australia, telstra is used to provide this network feature. There has been a similar outage of this service in the past, a couple of years back

This is not required if the car is "awake" which is why the app was continuing to see the car when sentry mode was running - the MCU remains active, and regular cellular data can communicate with the car.

 

[Sir Surfalot]

'wake on sms' sounds like the most ridiculous excuse ever.

But that _is_ how waking the car remotely technically works.

To wake a sleeping car, the phone app (or a 3rd party app using the same API) makes an API call to the Tesla mothership. Mothership sends a specially-formatted SMS message to the car (the car’s LTE radio stays running when the car is asleep), then the car wakes up.

So if - for whatever reason - the telco that the car’s SIM card is for (Telstra in the case of Australia and I think New Zealand too) doesn’t pass the SMS message from the mothership through to the car, it won’t be successfully woken by the app.

 

[Chuq]

When I opened the Tesla app about 20 minutes ago, the display changed from “last seen 11 hours ago” to “last seen 4 hours ago” and then to “parked”. Tends to suggest something happened at about 4am?

 

[GeoQuack]

'wake on sms' sounds like the most ridiculous excuse ever.

It's what allows you to park at the airport for 3 weeks and still have most of the power you left it with on your return. Compare the battery life of a dumb phone (which can receive SMS) and a smart phone that has a data connection active all the time.

I think it's an elegant solution to conserving as much battery power as possible while maintaining the remote features of the app. (Except it's not currently working.)

 

[qldoldun]

When I opened the Tesla app about 20 minutes ago, the display changed from “last seen 11 hours ago” to “last seen 4 hours ago” and then to “parked”. Tends to suggest something happened at about 4am?

Looking good - mine unlocked the car first go this morning. Fingers crossed that the fix has been implemented.

 

[Astro66]

ChargeHQ started charging the car this morning when my Solar Inverter got to 1.4kW, and the Tesla App connects without walking up to car.

I'm calling it fixed for the moment.

 

[RichardV]

This was not working for me around 10pm to 11pm last night when testing scheduled charging override with ChargeHQ. It now appears to be working. So looks like someone was working late to fix this issue.

Seems this was premature. Tested around 2:30am. Looking at the logs again in the light of day it seems it was already awake and in the falling asleep but not asleep state.

Testing again now and it did not wake when it was in its asleep state.

When I opened the Tesla app about 20 minutes ago, the display changed from “last seen 11 hours ago” to “last seen 4 hours ago” and then to “parked”. Tends to suggest something happened at about 4am?

And at 1:30am and at 2am and at 2:40am and at 3:40am and at @Vostok will not be happy, and neither am I, think of the combined energy wastage of all these wakeups to 'workaround' the issue at 110W to 140W for each of these online, falling asleep states. @Vostok will probably even run the maths!

While the app is still not working in my case they're obviously doing something.

Since 2am this morning TeslaFi shows my car having been woken up 6 times at irregular intervals...

Thanks for the independent confirmation it is not just me. Saves me having to check my side for miss behaviour.

 

[GeoQuack]

chargeHQ is a better way to test the wake up as it tells you the initial state of the car and lets you choose to wake the car. If the app works, it's hard to tell if it did because the car was already awake or the wake SMS command worked successfully.

 

[GeoQuack]

Now I've just got to decide whether to use solar+grid mode and wake it once or to turn on sentry mode. (In ChargeHQ)

Does anyone know what the incremental power use of sentry mode is if the car is already awake while charging?

 

[SL666]

It's essentially correct. To wake the car when it's in sleep mode, they use a ping feature of the cellular network operator based on SMS notifications.

etc

My apologies, looking at the related stuff - that is the most random method for wake that i've ever heard of - the battery drain to have an idle data connection would be almost nothing - like - 5 minutes of headlight usage per day.

I guess the good thing about sms is that it will keep trying to get though for the configured time - and will eventually give a receive/fail message to the senders api - i just assumed it fell back to a low-rate data service like (for example) a pacemaker data upload box - that send data home each night.

Problem with true SMS is that it's easy to break by sending the wrong charset (theres a specific one - 7 bits, close to ascii but some of the fancy characters are in different places) - and can be a real bugger to chase down.

Ok - so how do i get the phone number of my car?

 

[Onshore]

My apologies, looking at the related stuff - that is the most random method for wake that i've ever heard of

It's not unique to Tesla

- the battery drain to have an idle data connection would be almost nothing - like - 5 minutes of headlight usage per day.

The difference is much higher than that. To be in "data mode" the MCU has to be running (which is what happens when Sentry is left on).

Having a permanent data connection means the MCU would be running 24x7x365 and the car would never deep sleep.

 

[Vostok]

that is the most random method for wake that i've ever heard of

Well, how else could you communicate with a car that is not otherwise network attached when it is asleep? Using an SMS is the technically simplest and most elegant solution.

Ok - so how do i get the phone number of my car?

You can’t. The IMSI (unique identifier of the SIM) and MSISDN (the full ‘phone number’) might be visible in a service menu somewhere, or might not. But even if you knew it, you would not be able to “ring” it, as I suspect the SIM would not be provisioned to accept incoming voice calls.

In my LEAF, if you dive down enough menus, there is information about the TCU (Telematics Control Unit) but the IMSI is concealed.

 

[Nevyn72]

Another data point - Had another remote wake up about 20 minutes ago, App is still not working...

 

[Nevyn72]

You can’t. The IMSI (unique identifier of the SIM) and MSISDN (the full ‘phone number’) might be visible in a service menu somewhere, or might not. But even if you knew it, you would not be able to “ring” it, as I suspect the SIM would not be provisioned to accept incoming voice calls.

In my LEAF, if you dive down enough menus, there is information about the TCU (Telematics Control Unit) but the IMSI is concealed.

Fun fact, for a little while at least you were able to dial in to the SIM on the BYD atto3 and remotely listen to everything that was going on in the car, even worse, there was no indication at all from inside the car that someone had connected!

 

[Sir Surfalot]

Another data point - Had another remote wake up about 20 minutes ago, App is still not working...

I checked TeslaFi. My car had a remote wake up right on 2am (and it went back to sleep a few minutes afterwards as it should), nothing before and the only one afterwards was when I woke it via the phone app to turn on the HVAC, where it woke correctly via the magic SMS (rather than me having to stand near the car and use unlock/lock via Bluetooth to wake it up). It's been charging since I got back from the beach - and hence hasn't been sleeping - so I can't re-test again now, sorry.

 

[cafz]

Does anyone know what the incremental power use of sentry mode is if the car is already awake while charging?

I believe very little - most of the cost of Sentry Mode is in keeping the car awake.

 

[Gareth Oakes]

Problem still exists here today in QLD. Model 3 was working flawlessly until last week. Now the app will not work unless: (a) you are in Bluetooth range or (b) the car has not gone to sleep. Also, remote API calls (such as ChargeHQ) are ignored because the car is asleep and cannot wake.

 

[Nevyn72]

For the interests of experimentation I just did a language change and back to force a reconnection with the mothership.

Let it go back to sleep and you guessed it... App is still not working.

 

[Vostok]

for a little while at least you were able to dial in to the SIM on the BYD atto3 and remotely listen to everything that was going on in the car

This is another reason why IMSI and MSISDN for embedded devices should not be visible to the end user, and the SIMs should not be provisioned to accept incoming voice calls.

My understanding is that service numbers (MSISDN) are recycled but only after the previous service has been cancelled and inactive for 2 years, reducing the risk that someone calls an ‘old’ number of someone they knew, and ends up connecting to some embedded device that has microphones attached to it.

 

[Power Hungry]

Response from Tesla service, so at least they are aware:
View attachment 942132

It's unreasonable to own a vehicle with constant software updates and not to expect occasional 'bugs'. I've been an Apple user for computers and Adobe user for photography editing for many years. It's just a fact of life that occasionally we get bugs. I often don't upgrade software to new versions until I've checked forums to make sure the software is pretty well bug free.