Telematics/Carwings service is down?!? - FIXED

As of mid day yesterday my Telematics/Carwings service has not been working. When I access any of the Carwings menus in the car the car icon with an antenna above it (in the upper right of the screen) is now has a line through it; indicating that it is not connected on the AT&T network. I contacted EV support this morning and they said that they show the system is having outages and to give it 12 hours or so for the system to come back online. This is only annoying as I usually turn the climate control on from inside the house when I am within 15 minutes of leaving for work. I ran the auto diagnostic in the nav system menu and it did not indicate any issues with any of the systems associated with this.

Is anyone else without Telematics/Carwings/remote access?

Update: See the last post for how I got it back working again.

It worked at 4:45am Pacific time this morning to turn on my climate control and my car just updated a second ago.


Perhaps its....(looking left and right conspiritorally) just you!

:twisted:

Outage Possibilities:
1. Car hardware & Software
2. Local AT&T Cell Phone coverage at car's location
3. AT&T Data Service
4. AT&T Internet Connection
5. DNS & Routing to Carwings
6. Carwings ISP
7. Carwings Website Host Hardware
8. Carwings Software

Debugging:
1. Eliminate most of 5 and 6, 7, and 8 by connecting to the Carwings website via a PC.

2. Try connecting to the Carwings website with a smart-phone's browser (not the LEAF app).

3. Try connecting to Cawrings with the phone's LEAF-app.

Questions:
1. The no-connection icon in the car:
Does it mean no AT&T connection, or no Carwings response?

2. Is there any indication in the LEAF of the AT&T cell signal strength?

garygid said:

Outage Possibilities:
1. Car hardware & Software - Did a system check and not that, everything in the car is working fine.
2. Local AT&T Cell Phone coverage at car's location - I have an AT&T 3G phone for work and it was showing a strong signal in the 4 locations I have tried to access Carwings.
3. AT&T Data Service - That is also working on my work AT&T Phone
4. AT&T Internet Connection - That is also working on my work AT&T Phone
5. DNS & Routing to Carwings - The website works for me and EV Support seemed to have no clue.
6. Carwings ISP - Working from any computer I try along with my Android smartphone (Sprint)
7. Carwings Website Host Hardware - See above
8. Carwings Software - See above

Debugging:
1. Eliminate most of 5 and 6, 7, and 8 by connecting to the Carwings website via a PC. - Done

2. Try connecting to the Carwings website with a smart-phone's browser (not the LEAF app). - Done - I have Android so I use the web app to begin with.

3. Try connecting to Cawrings with the phone's LEAF-app. - I am on Android - one does not exist yet.

Questions:
1. The no-connection icon in the car:
Does it mean no AT&T connection, or no Carwings response? - It means no connection over the AT&T network. A no Carwings response would still show the connection icon it would just time out and give an on-screen message stating so.

2. Is there any indication in the LEAF of the AT&T cell signal strength? - None that I can find and I am comparing it to my work phone at the time. All of these locations I tired yesterday have all worked numerous times in the past.

Click to expand...

Thanks for those questions as it also gives me a line of diagnostics already completed when I am discussing it with tech support. If and when it comes back online I will let you all know; and hopefully know what was causing the issue.

Perhaps the "phone" in the LEAF has a terrible antenna arrangement.

Others have said that they hear "junk" noise when the LEAF communicates outbound.

The antenna being too-close to other wiring MIGHT be soaking up the inbound signal as well, making the car unable to connect when your handheld will still work fine.

That fits your symptoms:
1. LEAF self-check OK (apparently does not check the ability to connect)
2. The No-Connection icon is showing

Depending upon which frequency and antenna your car phone was assigned (on your local cell tower), your local signal (for the LEAF's "phone") could be stronger or weaker (I think, but I am guessing). It could even still be "assigned" to a slightly more-distant tower.

Since the LEAF's phone (apparently) is never OFF, the cell-phone system might never search and re-aquire using the "better" tower?

So, totally guessing, but the connected tower might vary depending upon which direction you came from when last returning home?

garygid said:

Perhaps the "phone" in the LEAF has a terrible antenna arrangement.

Others have said that they hear "junk" noise when the LEAF communicates outbound.

The antenna being too-close to other wiring MIGHT be soaking up the inbound signal as well, making the car unable to connect when your handheld will still work fine.

Click to expand...

The Telematics module is under the upper dash, to the right and towards the driver from the upper speed display; that could be the case.

See my update 2 posts up.

garygid,

Very good points. And the fact that there is no reboot procedure for the cell system may just get it pushed further down the priority list connection to cell tower wise. I may unhook 12V and force a reboot of that system, no different than you have to reboot your cell phone to gain a better signal... might be worth reprogramming everything afterwards in order to test if that works.

Most (but what) setup parms are likely stored in non-volatile memory.

If you do the experiment, be sure to leave the car OFF and unplugged.

Then you might disconnect from the 12v for 15 minutes or so, perhaps giving backup capacitors time to discharge.

Please note (for us) what parameters "stick" and which had to be reset.

Note: Is there a "User-Backup/Restore" function that writes all your "stuff" to a USB drive, or the 3nd SD card.

Presumably there should be, since mechanics would "need" such a function to properly repair your car and return it to you fully functional.

If there is, do the backup first.

If the Restore actually works, it might be best to make a Backup before leaving your LEAF in somebody else's hands.

CAUTION:
Many of the car's components are still powered even when the car is OFF and unplugged.

Does the owner or service manual give any shut-down instructions for BEFORE removing the 12v power?

Check FIRST, even call your dealer's Service Department?

I will look into the back-up/restore thing but I have not seen that one yet.

And in the service manual it states to unhook the 12V ground before starting any electrical servicing; with no other steps before that. I am not concerned about damaging anything.

Skywagon said:

I may unhook 12V and force a reboot of that system, no different than you have to reboot your cell phone to gain a better signal... might be worth reprogramming everything afterwards in order to test if that works

Click to expand...

Skywagon, before you disconnect the 12V, you can buy one of those battery backups that plugs into your DC receptacle and it will save your settings.

I'd try the 12v disconnect, just to see if a reboot is helpful.

Other than that, does anyone know where the telematics unit is physically located? Is it easy to get to? If so, yanking the power directly from that unit would be even better.

I'm also curious to know if the SIM card is accessible.

Someone with an AT&T phone could compare signal reception in their car too.
Might even be interesting to get a GoPhone (pay as you go) and never use it -- just look at the signal strength meter.

Well, I now have the system working by pulling the negative terminal on the 12V battery for 5 minutes. In the process I lost all of my cumulative times, average miles/kWH, settings, etc. but I did regain Telematics/Carwings access. Like was discussed before I feel that the Telematics AT&T interface just needed to be rebooted.

The best part is the system is back working. I hope this thread helps anyone else that sees this issue in the future.

How long did you have the 12v OFF?

You should call Nissan LEAF CS and report the symptoms and your "cure" to the LEAF Task Force so that they can implement a fix to the problem.

If it really requires an occasional OFF of the car's "phone", they should implement that without having to lose all the settings. Initialy, if a new software function cannot turn it OFF and ON, maybe a fuse can be pulled and re-inserted.

If you had used one of those inexpensive 12V battery backups that goes into the cigarette lighter, you wouldn't have lost all your settings. I hope this helps the next person that needs to disconnect the aux battery.

LEAFfan said:

If you had used one of those inexpensive 12V battery backups that goes into the cigarette lighter, you wouldn't have lost all your settings. I hope this helps the next person that needs to disconnect the aux battery.

Click to expand...

That would not have removed power from the circuit I was trying to do so to. That would not have fixed the issue.

garygid, as I replied above I left it disconnected for 5 minutes. And yes, I reported it to CS... but I don't know what that truly does.

Sky...,
Thanks, I missed the "5", sorry!

Getting the info to the "Task Force" would be the goal.

Maybe I need to call CS and ask how we can best get such info to the Task Force folks.

keeping settings in not possible otherwise there is no reason to disconnect battery. i would venture to say that disconnecting for 20-30 seconds would have been more than enough time.

i wonder if we can just store all that stuff on an SD card, do the battery reset, plug the card in and restore?

then again, that would be too easy. there would be nothing left for me to do.

i guess i am too used to my Zenn. 12,500 miles of "hassleful" driving. every single mile gained thru blood sweat and tears.

this Leaf thing; unplug and drive... dont know if i can handle this much tranquility