Walk away door lock mystery

[drtimhill]

So I have a little walk away door lock mystery. I have the walk away to exclude home and it works everywhere except my in-laws house. They live a quarter of mile away from me (yes, I know, it's like Everyone Loves Raymond here). Anyway, when I park in their driveway or near their house, the walk away lock doesn't lock. Yet, if I park on our block 100 feet from my house, the walk away works. Of course, the walk away exclusion works normally in my driveway and garage. The addresses for our house and their house are listed correctly under the app. Their house is not set as a work or home address, but it is listed under favorites. This has been occurring since we took delivery in May. Any ideas?

There are a few things to check here:

It might be a BT issue, but that’s less likely given it works elsewhere. Try this:
— Disable WiFi on your phone. This leaves BT as the only way the phone app can contact the car (well, there is NFC as well but that isnt an issue here).
— Try using the phone app to manually lock/unlock the car and see if it works and at what distance. (Getting the cat to beep can help with this).
— Try this at home and at your in-laws.
This will confirm BT connectivity at both locations, and eliminate (or incriminate) BT depending on the results. (And dont forget to turn on WiFi again on your phone after you have finished messing around!)

It might also be because you have (as others note) a favorite for the your in-laws location and you have disabled walk-away lock for favorites.

Finally, you could be looking at a GPS issue .. your in-laws may be in a GPS “shadow” and the car is confused about the location. This is less likely, and is compounded by the car using dead-reckoning when it has to, and I would not consider it likely, but its possible. Sadly, if it is this there is no easy solution (get your in-laws to move???).

 

[GtiMart]

it's not just GPS errors. I might not have been clear in my previous post so let me go at it again. Tesla knows your home address not by a gps location. It knows it because you typed the actual address to navigate to it, and then marked it as "home". That goes through a geolocation service, much like when you type an address in google maps. That geolocation service returns a coordinate which is sometimes wrong. I believe it is that returned location that is the center of the circle.
After that, your GPS might also have an error of its own, not quite seeing you exactly where you are. GPS have a varying degree of precision, it can be many meters away from the correct location.
Those errors are part of the reason why the circle isn't small.

 

[iamnid]

I recall an old thread on same topic and some one worked out that the circle is ~500ft/200m.

Yeah, I recall that too. I just don't know why the car can be smart enough to tell precisely what address it's parked at but still do this for the "at home" setting.

 

[AlexHung]

Yeah, I recall that too. I just don't know why the car can be smart enough to tell precisely what address it's parked at but still do this for the "at home" setting.

Depending on the address, it may be inside the 500m radius of your home address coordinates. That’s one possibility.

Another possibility is that the coordinates of your home or inlaw home is incorrectly set by the geolocating service (OpenMap? Google? Who knows?) and that coordinates falls with the radius.

 

[iamnid]

Depending on the address, it may be inside the 500m radius of your home address coordinates. That’s one possibility.

Another possibility is that the coordinates of your home or inlaw home is incorrectly set by the geolocating service (OpenMap? Google? Who knows?) and that coordinates falls with the radius.

Maybe I'm not being clear. When you go to the app and it shows under "location" a street address (if you're parked), it will show my exact street address when parked at my house -- cool -- well done. When I'm parked at my inlaws, it shows the exact street address of their house in the app, street name, house number etc. So, what I'm saying is -- I'm all for a small radius, but when the car obviously knows you're at a different house, maybe don't keep the doors unlocked. OR, allow us to adjust the sensitivity of the walk away lock exclusion.

 

[Trourou]

OP, did you solve the issue? I have a similar issue, worked fine at home with no lock and everywhere auto lock except our community swimming pool, which is about half miles away from my house. Looked everything in the car settings, searched internet, but no luck to the solution.

 

[101dals]

OP, did you solve the issue? I have a similar issue, worked fine at home with no lock and everywhere auto lock except our community swimming pool, which is about half miles away from my house. Looked everything in the car settings, searched internet, but no luck to the solution.

I never solved the mystery and it is still doing it. I turned off the Wi-Fi. I turned off the cellular. I turned off the Bluetooth. I tried the solutions proposed here. Walk away still doesn’t work at my in-laws house. I just have to remember to lock the doors again or else I’ll have an expensive homeless shelter.

Someone suggested that it had to do with GPS mapping but we are a half a mile away from their house. I don’t think it is interference at their house. Everyone on that block is 70+ years old in the row houses. Technology is not their forte. the walk away does work down the street from us. Very strange. It’s the only place that walk away doesn’t work.

 

[Teleforce]

The attached note is from the Owner's Manual under Sentry Mode. From my experience, the same distance applies to Walk-Away Door Lock. And it's 500 meters as the crow flies, not as you would drive.