Unreliable [music] USB mounting on startup after sleep?

[snovvman]

I have a genuine, fast Samsung USB 3 flash drive with a few thousand songs on it. Randomly, after the car sleeps, the USB does not show up on the list of available sources. I have to unplug the drive, plug it back in so that the USB source will show up.

I get the same results from two different USB 3 hubs in the glove box, one made by Sabrent, as well as a USB hub in the glove box. It is a whole replacement of the factory 2 USB-C set up that gives me more power for charging laptops.

I realize that the next troubleshooting step is to replace the center console hub with the factory USB-C and plug in directly, but I wanted to know if anyone else has seen this problem. The alternative is to put the music and dashcam/sentry on the same drive. Again, I would like to know if anyone else has seen this problem--USB source sometimes does not show up when the car starts up.

Thanks.

 

[jjrandorin]

There are a few different threads on what I believe is the same thing, like this one:

Intermittent loss of USB stick icon and playback/security until reboot

Starting in late November, I starting losing the USB icon under My Apps overnight, necessitating a 2-button reboot to get it back and to play music from the USB stick. Removing and reinserting the USB stick has no effect. My USB stick is a Sandisk microSD card reader with a 128gb microSD card...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[snovvman]

There are a few different threads on what I believe is the same thing, like this one:

Intermittent loss of USB stick icon and playback/security until reboot

Starting in late November, I starting losing the USB icon under My Apps overnight, necessitating a 2-button reboot to get it back and to play music from the USB stick. Removing and reinserting the USB stick has no effect. My USB stick is a Sandisk microSD card reader with a 128gb microSD card...

teslamotorsclub.com

Thank you, @jjrandorin. I did come across some of those posts but in my case, I *never* have to reboot. All I have to do is unplug the drive and plug it back in. The scenarios in the thread you linked is similar, but not exactly the same. I read that the folks in that thread have to reboot and just unplug/plug does not work. For me, unplug/plug works every time. Perhaps the underlying issue is related, but I'm still curious to know if my specific issue is seen by others.

 

[elambo]

This may not be related since my car doesn't seem to lose sight of the USB stick entirely, but about half the time when I get into the car I get the spinning wheel suggesting that it's searching through the USB to find media. I have to go to the song list and click one and then it's fine, but it's odd that it's only half the time. I wonder if these occurrences are after extended sits where the car slipped into a deeper sleep. Just theorizing, but it seems that Tesla still has some work to do when it comes to USB music.

 

[john8899]

I started the earliest thread on intermittent loss of USB after sleep after it suddenly started happening to my 2020 Model Y in November 2023. Plugging and unplugging the USB stick makes no difference, and both USB security and USB music are lost. The solution is either to wake up the car from a cell phone or to reboot once or sometimes twice if you forget to wake up the car in advance and USB happens to be gone.

Since USB worked flawlessly from August 2020 until November 2023, the problem may have originated in a firmware update last November that accelerated the startup sequence when the car is awakened from the door handle but not when the car is awakened from the cell phone. It's not happening to every Model Y. Someone suggested that the reason may be that cars with disappearing USB have a chip in the infotainment computer that isn't fast enough to keep up with updated firmware on door handle startup, while other cars of similar vintage have a slightly faster chip that works the same on everything else but can keep up with more recent firmware. Or perhaps it's the same chip in all Model Ys, but some individual chips are slower than spec. If that's the case, it would seem that the solution would be to restore the slower door handle startup routine in use before November 2023, not that I noticed any difference in startup time after disappearing USB began to happen.

This was reported to Tesla six months ago, and it has not been fixed.

 

[elambo]

I started the earliest thread on intermittent loss of USB after sleep after it suddenly started happening to my 2020 Model Y in November 2023. Plugging and unplugging the USB stick makes no difference, and both USB security and USB music are lost. The solution is either to wake up the car from a cell phone or to reboot once or sometimes twice if you forget to wake up the car in advance and USB happens to be gone.

Since USB worked flawlessly from August 2020 until November 2023, the problem may have originated in a firmware update last November that accelerated the startup sequence when the car is awakened from the door handle but not when the car is awakened from the cell phone. It's not happening to every Model Y. Someone suggested that the reason may be that cars with disappearing USB have a chip in the infotainment computer that isn't fast enough to keep up with updated firmware on door handle startup, while other cars of similar vintage have a slightly faster chip that works the same on everything else but can keep up with more recent firmware. Or perhaps it's the same chip in all Model Ys, but some individual chips are slower than spec. If that's the case, it would seem that the solution would be to restore the slower door handle startup routine in use before November 2023, not that I noticed any difference in startup time after disappearing USB began to happen.

This was reported to Tesla six months ago, and it has not been fixed.

Good info!

 

[Goobers]

This may not be related since my car doesn't seem to lose sight of the USB stick entirely, but about half the time when I get into the car I get the spinning wheel suggesting that it's searching through the USB to find media. I have to go to the song list and click one and then it's fine, but it's odd that it's only half the time. I wonder if these occurrences are after extended sits where the car slipped into a deeper sleep. Just theorizing, but it seems that Tesla still has some work to do when it comes to USB music.

I've mentioned this in other threads, but up until recently, I had to deal with this pretty much every day. One characteristic I noticed was that it would be 24+ hours between occurrences most of the time. Meaning if it happened at 4 pm today, then next day would occur on the first drive after 4 pm. etc. Of course, there were exceptions, a few times where it happened on every drive in one day.

I have Sentry mode on all the time, so it's unlikely to do with going to sleep, since Sentry supposedly prevents it from going to sleep (or deeper sleep, if you consider just screen off "light" sleep).

That being said... shortly before getting the 2024.14.6 update, I decided to immediately send a bug report about it after one of the times I got that spinning circle. I don't think I got it the next day, but I did end up getting the update. After the update, I do remember it didn't occur for one or two days, but then occurred later. After a few times, I send another bug report about it. And maybe a day or two later, it stopped occurring. So far, it has consistently started up just fine without needing to do anything.

P.S. its been mentioned on some threads, you can use voice command "switch USB" to get it to resume music playback.

 

[elambo]

One characteristic I noticed was that it would be 24+ hours between occurrences most of the time. Meaning if it happened at 4 pm today, then next day would occur on the first drive after 4 pm. etc.

That seems to be true here as well. If I jump back in the car two hours after my last trip it will resume playing, no problem. Something does occur after about 24 hrs. though.

 

[snovvman]

For those with issues that show up after 24 hours, I wonder if polling the car every 23 hours to cause it to wake up will be a workaround. Lots of ways to do that.

For me, it's only my USB with music that disappears and unplug/replug solves the problem. It does not seem to be tied to 24 hours. I have since removed the USB hub and partitioned the flash drive for dashcam/sentry and music. It's good so far, but I'm early in my testing.

 

[Goobers]

For those with issues that show up after 24 hours, I wonder if polling the car every 23 hours to cause it to wake up will be a workaround. Lots of ways to do that.

For me, it's only my USB with music that disappears and unplug/replug solves the problem. It does not seem to be tied to 24 hours. I have since removed the USB hub and partitioned the flash drive for dashcam/sentry and music. It's good so far, but I'm early in my testing.

It’s not because it isn’t being polled, it’s just that long between occurrences.

I do deliveries, so I drive on/off for about 4-5 hours. It can fail at the beginning of that time and fail 19-20 hours after the end of that time.

So your 23 hour poll won’t help.

Like I said near the end of my previous post, so far, with 2024.14.6, it has picked up music without issue. So it seems that whatever the cause was for me, it’s been taken care of so far.

Edit: as for hubs… I tried using a hub with my Samsung external drive… but I don’t know if it’s because of the multiple partitions or the hub, but that ended up with some very annoying lag input whenever I wanted to skip songs. I wanted to be able to add a Bluetooth dongle for wireless controllers (before Tesla added direct support). I haven’t bothered with it since.

Other than that, I can’t say it’s the cause of your issue, but who knows.

 

[snovvman]

It’s not because it isn’t being polled, it’s just that long between occurrences.

I do deliveries, so I drive on/off for about 4-5 hours. It can fail at the beginning of that time and fail 19-20 hours after the end of that time.

So your 23 hour poll won’t help.

Like I said near the end of my previous post, so far, with 2024.14.6, it has picked up music without issue. So it seems that whatever the cause was for me, it’s been taken care of so far.

Edit: as for hubs… I tried using a hub with my Samsung external drive… but I don’t know if it’s because of the multiple partitions or the hub, but that ended up with some very annoying lag input whenever I wanted to skip songs. I wanted to be able to add a Bluetooth dongle for wireless controllers (before Tesla added direct support). I haven’t bothered with it since.

Other than that, I can’t say it’s the cause of your issue, but who knows.

Are you saying that, prior to 2024.14.6, it fails around every 24 hours no matter how much you drive the car? For my issue, so long as the car is awake (e.g., Sentry on), the USB never disappears.

Regarding the use of hub, is the lag with a single drive/partitioned or when using a hub? I'm not seeing any lag either way.

 

[Goobers]

Are you saying that, prior to 2024.14.6, it fails around every 24 hours no matter how much you drive the car? For my issue, so long as the car is awake (e.g., Sentry on), the USB never disappears.

Yup.

Regarding the use of hub, is the lag with a single drive/partitioned or when using a hub? I'm not seeing any lag either way.

Lag with partitioned drive and hub combined. Just partitioned is fine. I didn't bother checking just hub, since I didn't want to go find another drive.

 

[C-Bus Y]

As mentioned above, I wake with my cell phone to avoid a reboot. Very annoying!!

 

[elambo]

so far, with 2024.14.6, it has picked up music without issue. So it seems that whatever the cause was for me, it’s been taken care of so far.

I'm glad to hear this, and now even more anxious to get an update (I'm on 2024.3.25) because 1 out of every 5 times that I get in the car it has lost the USB.