Tesla App: "Waking Up"

[PianoAl]

I'd like my wife to be able to use her Tesla phone app to see where the car is when I'm not home. But when I start the app up, it just says "Waking up," and the location data it displays is old.

I have the Tesla app on my tablet as well, and that works (it has the current data).

If I go to the car and open it with the phone in my hand, then it's "woke" and has current info.

So, how can I get the phone to wake up and smell the car's location if the car isn't at home?

Thanks.

 

[hugh_jassol]

It should just work - there's nothing you need to do. Did you set your wife up as a secondary account or are you signed in on her phone as you?

 

[ewoodrick]

If the car doesn't have cellular service, you can't wake it

 

[PianoAl]

Both signed in on same account.

We do have sketchy cell coverage here, yet the app worked from the tablet.

The trunk turned out to be open a bit, but that shouldn't make a difference.

Working now. I'll experiment later.

 

[hugh_jassol]

The trunk turned out to be open a bit, but that shouldn't make a difference.

Wut?

 

[PianoAl]

The trunk wasn't all the way closed.

 

[PianoAl]

Here's what happened tonight: Both our phones and the tablet showed the "Waking up" message. I took one device closer to the car, and everything in the app started working (I could honk it, turn on the heat, and view the location, for example).

My wife drove the car out of the driveway, and the app said it had a connection error. The location still showed the garage as the location of the car.

She's now driving in a location with plenty of phone service, and I'm at home with wifi, but the app can't connect. It displays "Vehicle connection error."

The app is V 3.10.3.
Car version: 40.50.7

Any clues?

Thanks.

 

[PianoAl]

Well, 25 minutes later, and it's showing up again. Parked where expected.

It should work even when the car's moving, right?

I'll conclude it's either glitchy or it's having trouble dealing with spotty coverage. Googling shows that others have the same problems.

 

[ZOMGVTEK]

The device you use to connect to the car should never make any difference. The problem is most likely the car has intermittent cellular service, there’s not much you can do about that. It works while the car is moving, yes. It shows the location and speed of the vehicle.

 

[PianoAl]

Good to know, thanks.

 

[PianoAl]

It worked fine after it was in a good-coverage area. I watched as my wife drove home—phenomenal!

 

[Deslah]

I've recently experienced similar with my iPhone 8 and XS with my Model 3. App stays greyed out but I have some or all of the in-app button functionality. The issue definitely isn't cellular coverage. I'm thinking it's either device- or app-related rather than vehicle-related. Sometimes a full reboot of the phone gets things going properly again.

 

[PianoAl]

Interesting. I guess it could be that the app feels the coverage is enough to send a "honk the horn" message, but not enough to send GPS position data.

 

[PianoAl]

Here's an observation that suggests it's not just a coverage issue:

1. In the morning, in the house, I open the Tesla app on my tablet. It says Waking up, and fails to connect.
2. In the house, I open the Tesla app on my phone. It says the same thing. It doesn't connect.
3. Neither device will connect, even though I wait a long time.
4. I take the phone to the car and open the door. The phone now connects.
5. I go back into the house and see that the tablet has also connected.

Since coverage has not changed, only the state of the car, I concluded that the spotty coverage is not an issue.

I can speculate that this is the problem: The car can't get the signal to wake up when it's in a deep sleep (?) and coverage is bad, but once it has woken up, it is able to communicate with the devices.

I have another experiment to try tomorrow that may shed some more light on this.

 

[Deslah]

An extra datapoint:

In the last few days, when the Tesla app would not fully connect (a portion was greyed out), I opened Safari and visited any webpage and then let the page load onto my phone. I did this on four occasions in two days. Then, when going back to the Tesla app, the app was no longer greyed out on three of the occasions. Forcing the data usage on Safari somehow forced the Tesla app to use the data connection fully and properly.

 

[PianoAl]

Today, I was going to try tapping "unlock" to see if that would wake things up, but every time I opened the app, it connected fine.

I think there's a good chance the problem just happens randomly, and it's fooling me into thinking something I'm doing makes a difference.

 

[PianoAl]

BREAKTHROUGH!

Here's what I did this morning:

1. I opened the app, and got the message "Waking up" but it didn't connect. Like this:

2. After two minutes, I got a "Vehicle connection error" message at the bottom of the screen.
3. I told it to try again.
4. After another two minutes, it again said "Vehicle connection error."
5. At this point, it had been trying for four minutes to wake the car without success.
6. I tapped the "lock/unlock" icon, and it changed to an open padlock.
7. The car immediately woke up!

Conclusion: If the car won't wake up, unlock it (or send it some other command), and it will immediately wake up.

Let me know if that works for you.

 

[MapGuy]

BREAKTHROUGH!

Here's what I did this morning:

1. I opened the app, and got the message "Waking up" but it didn't connect. Like this:

View attachment 499593
2. After two minutes, I got a "Vehicle connection error" message at the bottom of the screen.
3. I told it to try again.
4. After another two minutes, it again said "Vehicle connection error."
5. At this point, it had been trying for four minutes to wake the car without success.
6. I tapped the "lock/unlock" icon, and it changed to an open padlock.
7. The car immediately woke up!

Conclusion: If the car won't wake up, unlock it (or send it some other command), and it will immediately wake up.

Let me know if that works for you.

Thank you for posting this and for your perseverance in trying to find an answer. What I find peculiar about the screen shot of your phone is that the Frunk and Lock/Unlock commands are not greyed out. (Currently, I cannot wake my car, and all commands on the app are greyed out - not surprising since the car is many miles away in a friends garage and there is sketchy cell service.) Seems to me that if you are able to unlock your doors, you may be within bluetooth range? Could this also explain why your tablet sometimes connects when your phone does not.
Would it be worthwhile conducting a test?
A - Turn off cellular data and wifi on your phone. Check where and how the car responds to your phone on Bluetooth.
B - Turn off cellular data and Bluetooth. See how it responds using Wifi (Assuming you have Wifi in your garage).
C - Turn off Wifi and Bluetooth and check the response over the cellular network.
Breaking it down into segments might help you get a clearer picture. Best of luck!

 

[PianoAl]

Good ideas, MapGuy. Yes, my kitchen is within Bluetooth range.

Let's see:

A. My tablet doesn't have cellular data. If I turn off Wifi, I can still unlock and lock, but it doesn't connect. Also, the climate control is grayed out.

B. I got some inconsistent results when I turned off Bluetooth, and I don't want to play around with that further because I had some trouble reconnecting.

C. I'll try that with the phone later.

Also, my trick failed when I tried it in the car with the phone, recently.

 

[jinnko]

Have you tried removing and re-installing the app on your phone? It's a long shot, but I've found other apps can occasionally get their local config in a twist and this would resolve it. This suggest this because your tablet seems to work more reliably.