Is Carwings glitchy for you?

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FalconFour

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 19, 2012
Messages
326
Location
San Jose, CA
-- UPDATE from Nissan at the End of the World (12/21/12 :) ) --
UPDATE for Nissan LEAF Owners: CARWINGS Restored
Code and configuration updates have sucessfully returned LEAF CARWINGS service connectivity to normal and we have seen no issue recurrence over the last 14 hours. Customers should be able to use all services normally. Our technical teams will continue to closely monitor systems and service performance to ensure you are able to fully enjoy all your CARWINGS services, and we will continue to troubleshoot and work to improve our service performance and stability. Thank you all for your patience and feedback. We apologize for an inconvenience this may have caused you.
- Nissan Social + Nissan Vehicle Connected Services
http://www.facebook.com/nissanleaf/posts/10151600344747796" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

-- UPDATE from Nissan - 12/20/12 --
We'd like to take this opportunity to share the status of the CARWINGS connectivity issue we shared with our LEAF owners yesterday afternoon. A cross-company team has worked throughout the night and has been able to identify a problem which has contributed to latency and error conditions our owners are experiencing. Tuning changes and a code correction have reduced but not eliminated failures. Our team continues to investigate and we will provide updates via this thread as they develop. Thank you for your all your comments and feedback!
– Nissan Social + Nissan Vehicle Connected Services
http://www.facebook.com/nissanleaf/posts/10151596859342796?comment_id=30032419&offset=0&total_comments=48" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

-- UPDATE - 12/20/12 --
Not that it'll matter tomorrow anyway :lol: but Nissan seems to have put some people on the job and it's a little more usable now, but still about 50% failure rate for me. Haven't seen much buzz in the thread this morning so maybe it's a bit more reliable, either that or everyone's already posted in the thread. Not yet had a single confirmation of "it's been working for me this whole time", so it's a fair bet that this is affecting all LEAF owners. Also still no word from Nissan that the issue's been fixed. We'll see...

-- UPDATE and THREAD SUMMARY - 12/19/12 --
Nissan has finally acknowledged a problem with CARWINGS (I guess that's the proper stylizing, so I'll use that). https://twitter.com/NissanLEAF/status/281497673863950336" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

-- UPDATE and THREAD SUMMARY - 12/18/12 --
This is definitely a system-wide issue, confirmed to be "still spotty" by a Nissan social rep, but as of this time, still not resolved.

Summary of past 7 pages of replies: "Yep, it's messed up for me too." :lol:

It's:
  • not related to geography
  • not resolved by resetting the car's TCU (telemetrics communications(?) unit)
  • not a problem with the app, phone, or the browser
  • kind of a huge pain in the rear

Please continue to post your findings as Nissan is said to be monitoring this thread for information on the problem. Personally, I think it's a server-on-fire problem: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=10936&start=10#p250535" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; - and another post on the problem: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=10936&start=70#p251402" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

-- ORIGINAL POST --

Lately, seems like ever since I moved (to another area in the dead center of the city), I can't get Carwings to work for a crap. Whenever I request an update while at home, it's almost a 25% chance it'll actually go through, and a 75% chance I'm going to sit around for 5 minutes waiting for the request to fail and have to try it again.* That defeats the purpose. This morning I spent 10 minutes trying to remote-activate climate control, and I gave up since I was running late trying to get the function to work.

Who could I even contact to report this issue? I don't think Nissan could bend AT&T's arm to come out here and fix the defective tower that's causing this, if that's the case...

Anyone else have the same experience? I'm guessing it's just me, since Google sure doesn't know what "carwings request failed" means...

* - side note. Let's assume Carwings operates on an SMS-based system, where Carwings sends a text message to the car's AT&T modem, which is how the telemetrics operates - receives requests via SMS, replies via web or SMS reply. So why is this a difficult thing to accomplish? If it fails to respond in a certain number of seconds, try again - and a sequence number would rule out duplicate commands if a "burst" of repeated commands is received. Not that effing hard. As for replying, that could be made quicker by always responding via web, since SMS is sent out on tower control signals, establishing a connection to reply would be quicker than sending another SMS on the next signal and waiting for the Carwings server to get the SMS. Much room to improve, for sure...
 

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FalconFour said:
Lately, seems like ever since I moved (to another area in the dead center of the city), I can't get Carwings to work for a crap. Whenever I request an update while at home, it's almost a 25% chance it'll actually go through, and a 75% chance I'm going to sit around for 5 minutes waiting for the request to fail and have to try it again.* That defeats the purpose.
While the "odds" of a successful result change day-to-day, I will agree that using Carwings is often a crapshoot with the five-minute wait being the equivalent of snake eyes, only much more frequent.
FalconFour said:
This morning I spent 10 minutes trying to remote-activate climate control, and I gave up since I was running late trying to get the function to work.
This morning was particularly bad. After about 7:00AM EST yesterday morning (December 14) the system seemed to entirely lose the ability to communicate with the car, with the result that every request turned into a five-minute wait. The last update I have received was at 6:20AM EST 14 December 2012.
FalconFour said:
Who could I even contact to report this issue? I don't think Nissan could bend AT&T's arm to come out here and fix the defective tower that's causing this, if that's the case...
I have no idea what to do about it other than to live with it. I can bring this up as part of the advisory board, but that is not functioning, yet. I hope I put something into our JD Powers feedback about Carwings!
FalconFour said:
Anyone else have the same experience? I'm guessing it's just me, since Google sure doesn't know what "carwings request failed" means...
Yep, pretty much the same experiences here.
FalconFour said:
* - side note. Let's assume Carwings operates on an SMS-based system, where Carwings sends a text message to the car's AT&T modem, which is how the telemetrics operates - receives requests via SMS, replies via web or SMS reply. So why is this a difficult thing to accomplish? If it fails to respond in a certain number of seconds, try again - and a sequence number would rule out duplicate commands if a "burst" of repeated commands is received. Not that effing hard. As for replying, that could be made quicker by always responding via web, since SMS is sent out on tower control signals, establishing a connection to reply would be quicker than sending another SMS on the next signal and waiting for the Carwings server to get the SMS. Much room to improve, for sure...
IMO it would have been much better if the system had immediately reported that it was down since the server side was still taking requests.
 
Same here. Really annoying. It took me twenty minutes to get the AC going on Friday. It would have been much faster to walk out to the garage and turn it on manually.
 
Oh my god, I'm not alone. Wow. OK, this is like a nationwide failure on Nissan's part, to let this problem continue all day...

Maybe a job opportunity for an unemployed IT geek that could've had these problems solved before the system even went live two years ago? :lol:

I'm totally calling Nissan later about this. This is the most statistically-valid response I've seen to a thread of mine in a *really* long time... rare that something I run into is encountered by others, let alone every one of them... :lol:
 
It's probably as much, if not more, AT&T's fault as it is Nissan's...

FalconFour said:
Oh my god, I'm not alone. Wow. OK, this is like a nationwide failure on Nissan's part, to let this problem continue all day...
 
Mine worked fine this morning, only taking a minute or so to update, but yesterday it took several tries to get the climate control going. It gave me the fail screen every time, but one of the attempts worked because the climate control was running when I got into the car.

By the way, I have AT&T for my cell phone provider, and I have full signal strength on my cell phone, although my carwings doesn't work for crap. I don't think the problem is signal strength.
 
TomT said:
It's probably as much, if not more, AT&T's fault as it is Nissan's...]

Nah, I think it's a Nissan problem. I couldn't log into the portal on my iPhone on Wendesday afternoon at all. I could log in on the web, but it wouldn't active the climate control. Things seemed better on Thursay morning in that I could use the iPhone app again, but it still seemed to take forever before the cc started working. Then it wouldn't stop remotely. This morning I didn't get a Charging Complete text or email. So...

Edit: Just tried the iPhone app for a vehicle update and it worked fine.
 
Carwings has always been soooooooooooo sloooooooooooooooow. Just lately it's gotten soooooooooooo sloooooooooooooow that even it's server can't stand it. :D
 
A multi-day problem like this would typically spell death for internet-based companies like eBay, Google, etc... even something smaller like the MNL forum would be pretty devastated by a multi-day issue like this that affects everyone...

It's a fairly safe guess that we're all seeing the same problem: it works, but only about 15-25% of the time, and when it does work, it takes a very long time to respond. This is typically indicative of a hung server, managing to process only a small percentage of the flood of discarded requests it gets. Or a boot-looping hardware-damaged intermediate server that handles the requests, but only in a few-minute window before it goes down and reboots again (for 2-4 minutes), constantly. Since everyone is noticing the problem, it's certainly not an AT&T or signal problem, nor a problem with the cars - none of the "users" are to blame.

Worst part is, it's a small system (<1m unique users; <1m requests/hour, I'm sure), so there's really no excuse for Nissan to be screwing this up. A system that processes small bits of data like this - handling the web<->vehicle interface (not storing the databases, statistics, etc., but just handling the car-web interface) could be as basic as a simple single machine running the interface code. That way, just like the Carwings website, the interface for sending commands and checking vehicle status could be independent of the machine crunching statistics and managing the database. It's a fair guess they're both on the same system, which is what causes the slowdowns by running sluggish statistics code when people look at their history info or when the system crunches daily reports. So when you send a climate control update, it's competing with those statistics and reporting processes as well, which means... yeah, good luck getting climate control turned on.

[/geekrant]

At least it's not the car's fault. :lol:
 
DanBaldwin said:
Mine worked fine this morning, only taking a minute or so to update, but yesterday it took several tries to get the climate control going. It gave me the fail screen every time, but one of the attempts worked because the climate control was running when I got into the car.
For the record, I tried sending the climate control command several times yesterday in hopes that the car was receiving the commands but was not able to respond. Unfortunately, when I checked on the car, climate control was not on.
FalconFour said:
It's a fairly safe guess that we're all seeing the same problem: it works, but only about 15-25% of the time, and when it does work, it takes a very long time to respond.
I don't think that is the case here. It simply has not worked since very early yesterday morning. The system accepts the commands saying they have been sent, but there is never an update nor do any other commands ever get executed.

Edit: Of course, right after posting this my iPad reported that the status has been updated successfully! All is working fine now.
 
So, my $0.02 from mid-America.

Like the rest of this thread's posters, I've had the same problem with Carwings over the last few days. I use both the Nissan app and Leaf Link on my iPhones (Wi-Fi and cellular), iPads (Wi-Fi only), and iPad mini (Wi-Fi only). Some interesting results over Wi-Fi:

1- LEAF Link is always faster than the Nissan app, by at least 20 seconds worst case.
2- This morning, LEAF Link took about 40 seconds, Nissan app over 90 and then timed out

I have a strong AT&T signal at home and AT&T turned on LTE last month in our area. Speeds are quite impressive compared to AT&T's previous wireless data services.

All that said, I wonder if the process of CARWINGS authentication is bogging things down. CARWINGS presumably has to verify the calling device is legit and authorized. It has to find, ping, and authenticate the vehicle itself. It probably verifies the user has an active CARWINGS subscription at some point in the process in preparation for the days after the 3-year freebie expires, and likely a bunch of other things. Latency is also affected by how much of all of this is done on a Nissan server farm vs. being routed to 3rd-parties for the intermediate steps like account verification. Lastly, since this is an international system, is there a really weak link in terms of bandwidth between all of us and the Nissan servers.

I (perhaps obviously) don't know what REALLY happens for all of this, and I agree with everyone else that this will have to become more reliable and much, much faster. I am happy, however, that at least I'm not activating someone else's LEAF systems, nor does anyone else appear to be playing with my LEAF. For now, I view the existing situation as just one of the annoyances of early adopter-ship, out-weighed by how much I am enjoying the LEAF. But it does need to be fixed.
 
And they expect people to pay for this service next year (three years after service began)? Gudy in December 2013...me in March 2014. There is no way I'd pay for this. It is barely useful as a free service.
 
I would still pay $5 per month. I do find it convenient and although there have been some glitches during the year I'd estimate it's done what I wanted about 95% reliably. My main complaint is how slow it is.
 
bowthom said:
Hi Folks,
Thought I would add my voice to this. CW has been spotty since Thursday (12/13) for me.
Same here, although I think the spottiness started a few days earlier ... ?12/10? ...
 
Everyone, based on scronce's recent comment it might be worth to try power cycle the TCU. Last time I spoke to a Nissan engineer about CarWings latency, he mentioned that the server was located in Japan, and all requests had to cross the Pacific twice. I'm not entirely certain if it explained the recent bout of problems, but I believe the understanding was that even if the service was operating normally, it would be far from instantaneous. Perhaps they have changed this arrangement, and I would suggest logging customer service tickets to highlight the importance of this issue.

Pull the fuse marked in the image below. Please turn the car off, pull the fuse for a bit, and replace it. Drive the car around the block, and give it a few minutes to sync with CarWings. This helped me twice when data transmission became unreliable in the wake of a service outage.

tcufuse
1
troubleshootmnl
 
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