Hacker News Reader

Comment by skorpeon87 | Hacker News Reader

How do these cell systems respond to the network no longer existing? Do they continue trying to ping towers that no longer exist? Do they give up eventually and turn themselves off forever?

View on HN

Probably try forever. The last head unit firmware added a deep sleep so it doesn't drain the battery and polled much less frequently (this was before 3g shut down and made the telematics much less useful anyway). Might have just been parked in an underground garage or driving through tunnels everywhere. I really should pull the fuse though.

The classic "my phone just munched 35% of its battery on a short subway ride frantically thrashing the radio in a search for signal" scenario.

When the 2G networks were sunset, Nissan offered a voluntary service campaign for some of their cars with 2G modems: either pay $200 to get a replacement telematics unit with a 3G modem, or they'll disable the 2G modem for free so it doesn't drain your battery trying to connect to a non-existent network 24/7.

But did Nissan disable the "we're collecting data and sending it off to the homeland: OK/Cancel" startup screen? No. So now every time I drive the thing, I have to push a button that does nothing so that I can see the screen.

One of but many little duck bites that has us firmly in the "never buy another Nissan" camp.

On Volkswagens, nag screens like that (and "menu disabled while vehicle is in motion" lockouts, and a million other things) can be tweaked with cheap dongles that let you change settings using your phone or laptop. Maybe there's something similar for Nissan?

Ya know, now that you mention it, there are apparently dongles of some sort (perhaps OBDC? It's been a while...) that give all kinds of extra info, maybe there's something like you mention. It's been a while since I've been over to mynissanleaf.com, perhaps it's time to go pay a visit for a search.

Thanks for the prompting.

EDIT: though it does not look like the tool will disable the nag screen, LeafSpy Pro does a lot of other things Leaf owners might find handy, such as change the backup warning tone, door unlock/lock behavior, et. al.

OBD2 / OBDII refers to generic powertrain diagnostics (engine, emissions, etc) for all vehicles. Plenty of dongles for that. But I mean something that emulates the tool a dealership would have for specific makes of vehicle, which goes far beyond just the engine, extending into every module, possibly like what you found. Although usually it would be for a family of makes, not just a family of models.

For VW/Audi/Skoda/Seat the popular ones are VCDS and OBDeleven (the name of the latter being a play on OBDII, confusingly, being that I am trying to differentiate actual OBDII... ugh).

OBD, yes, of course. I spent a lot of time with ODBC years ago, and I can’t seem to keep the letters straight in my head.

> door unlock/lock behavior

I just imagined the wireless unlock button sequentially stepping through the 16 lock/unlock states for a 4-door vehicle. "The car is locked. 13 quick clicks later, both front doors are unlocked and both back doors are locked."

I went from a Nissan LEAF to a VW ID4. Now I have to press "OK" to confirm a driving profile instead of a legal agreement every time I turn on the car, and my app has even fewer features than NissanConnect EV had. The grass is always greener on the other side, as they say.

My Volvo has had this happen. I have no idea if it still pings anything but the app access has been shut down.

Annoyingly every so often the car gives me a warning that the Volvo service has expired. I’d love to turn that off. But it must still be trying to connect to something.

Yeah, I still get the warning every so often that Ford has access to my GPS for trip tracking... I think if I factory reset the headunit, that'll go away, but then I lose my presets. If I had thought about it, I could have deassociated while the modem was online. :(

Reply on news.ycombinator.com