Preventing audio auto-play

[pgiralt]

I have this problem but I think it is a problem with iPhone automatically playing not the car?

In my case it's playing Slacker, not from my phone.

 

[jgs]

So... some people here are annoyed that audio plays automatically and others are annoyed that it doesn't.

But seriously, other systems have a way to satisfy both groups. It's called an "on-off switch". I'm pretty sure the patents are available for Tesla to license on a royalty-free basis.

- - - Updated - - -

By the way, I turned off energy-saving and turned on always on mode, and I still have the problem.

 

[brianman]

But seriously, other systems have a way to satisfy both groups. It's called an "on-off switch". I'm pretty sure the patents are available for Tesla to license on a royalty-free basis.

For the record, before 6.2 Tesla had that switch too -- the setting of pause/play was remembered when your rentered the car.

[A] If you want "auto-play", don't pause when leaving the vehicle.
If you don't want "auto-play", then pause when you leave the vehicle.

appears to be broken by 6.2 and that's what the OP is complaining about. The bluetooth/phone issue is something different, perhaps worthy of its own thread.

 

[mibaro2]

For the record, before 6.2 Tesla had that switch too -- the setting of pause/play was remembered when your rentered the car.

[A] If you want "auto-play", don't pause when leaving the vehicle.
If you don't want "auto-play", then pause when you leave the vehicle.

appears to be broken by 6.2 and that's what the OP is complaining about. The bluetooth/phone issue is something different, perhaps worthy of its own thread.

But that will only work on Slacker. There is no way to pause the radio.
I just tested playing slacker, pausing it, leaving the car for 5 minutes so the car goes off, and going back in. Slacker was still paused.
I'm on 6.2 ver .188

 

[mibaro2]

Went out to the car today after keeping slacker paused all night. As I got in, a message briefly popped up saying that slacker couldn't play (despite good 3G signal strength), then slacker switched to another song and automatically played.
I have "always connect" on and "energy saving" off.

Wouldn't have known about this bug without reading this thread.

 

[jgs]

By the way, I turned off energy-saving and turned on always on mode, and I still have the problem.

Actually, this is only semi-true. It appears that regardless of the energy-saving setting, the car goes into energy-saving mode during "the night-time hours" (this is confirmed both by the car's behavior and by the help text for the energy-saving control). So, the bug recurs the first time I go to the car in the morning, but not when I drive it subsequently during the day.

(As an aside, it seems kind of arbitrary to have the car go into energy-saving during "the night-time hours", whatever that means. Are there no Model S owners who are night owls?)

 

[Andyw2100]

Can I get an Amen! And now that sending feedback to [email protected] is pointless, I guess this is our only voice.

I'm not sure if you meant that it was pointless because the address doesn't work any longer, or because you believe there's a lack of meaningful responses from the correct address. But in case it's the first, or for those that do want to write, the correct address, in North America, is now [email protected].

For the record, before 6.2 Tesla had that switch too -- the setting of pause/play was remembered when your rentered the car.

[A] If you want "auto-play", don't pause when leaving the vehicle.
If you don't want "auto-play", then pause when you leave the vehicle.

But this wasn't really an on/off solution. In my view, this too was a work-around for the fact that the Model S does not have simple on/off ability for the audio system. One reason "pause" was not equivalent to "off" is that if you have the audio displaying on the dash or the 17" display, it will still be displaying in those places when paused. Personally, I'd prefer true on/off ability, though this is, admittedly, low on my list of things the car doesn't do that I'd like it to do.

One way that does really get the audio to "off" is to be playing from a bluetooth source, and to remove that source. I normally have audio as the dash's left display option. My wife drives home from work, listening to books on tape, stored on her phone. If I drive the car next, the spot where the audio would ordinarily be displayed on the dash is blank, and the audio is really and truly "off."

I imagine that playing from a bluetooth source and then disabling bluetooth on that source would accomplish the same thing--true audio off.

 

[KurtR]

The audio software seems to have problem when resuming from sleep mode - such as the auto-play feature mentioned here, or in losing the position or file of files being played.

I've been having this issue, but since I just got the car a couple weeks ago I had assumed that someone at Tesla just didn't think it through and programmed the USB music interface to start again at the beginning of a song after waking up again, rather than preserving the position within a track. It's really annoying for me when I listen to classical music. Since many classical pieces move seamlessly from one track to another I recorded whole symphonies etc. as single tracks. I always listen to them in their entirety, anyways, and browsing through classical music is a pain if every movement is recorded as a separate file. With the Tesla, however, I can't seem to get to the end of many of the pieces because they can last up to about an hour long, but they keep resetting when I leave the car for an extended period of time. I drive to work, and when I get in the car to leave for home, the piece starts all over again. It's not finished by the time I get home, so in the morning it starts all over again.

I'm not understanding why this behavior should at all be related to sleep mode, though. Obviously the car saves some settings in memory until written over. For example, the touchscreen display won't reset to a default display overnight, but instead it looks just the way you left it. As long as you keep the same USB stick in, why can't the car just write the track number and time position of the track into memory whenever you leave the car and the music turns off? Every head unit I've bought does this and retains the position of the songs even when the ignition is off for weeks or months. You don't need power from the car to retain data stored in flash memory, which I presume the Tesla has somewhere, so why does the sleep cycle of the car have anything to do with songs resetting when the car wakes up?

 

[gregincal]

I'm not sure if you meant that it was pointless because the address doesn't work any longer, or because you believe there's a lack of meaningful responses from the correct address. But in case it's the first, or for those that do want to write, the correct address, in North America, is now [email protected].




But this wasn't really an on/off solution. In my view, this too was a work-around for the fact that the Model S does not have simple on/off ability for the audio system. One reason "pause" was not equivalent to "off" is that if you have the audio displaying on the dash or the 17" display, it will still be displaying in those places when paused. Personally, I'd prefer true on/off ability, though this is, admittedly, low on my list of things the car doesn't do that I'd like it to do.

One way that does really get the audio to "off" is to be playing from a bluetooth source, and to remove that source. I normally have audio as the dash's left display option. My wife drives home from work, listening to books on tape, stored on her phone. If I drive the car next, the spot where the audio would ordinarily be displayed on the dash is blank, and the audio is really and truly "off."

I imagine that playing from a bluetooth source and then disabling bluetooth on that source would accomplish the same thing--true audio off.

I really couldn't care less about "true audio off" and don't really get why people obsess over it. If it isn't making sound, it's off. However, if it wasn't making sound when I left the car, I don't want it to be making sound when I get back in.

 

[Sparrow]

Has anyone also noted that the USB drive music continues to advance the music despite being paused while the car is off. Not only does paused music start up when opening the door, but the song being played may be a few tracks or even many tracks later in the playlist than it was when you paused it.

 

[Andyw2100]

I really couldn't care less about "true audio off" and don't really get why people obsess over it. If it isn't making sound, it's off. However, if it wasn't making sound when I left the car, I don't want it to be making sound when I get back in.

I don't know that anyone is obsessing over it. I'm certainly not. I just disagree with your assessment that "if it isn't making sound, it's off." If there's a big picture prominently displayed on my dash, indicating my music is paused, it's paused (and on). When that big picture is replaced with blank space, it's off.

 

[gregincal]

I don't know that anyone is obsessing over it. I'm certainly not. I just disagree with your assessment that "if it isn't making sound, it's off." If there's a big picture prominently displayed on my dash, indicating my music is paused, it's paused (and on). When that big picture is replaced with blank space, it's off.

What if it showed the last thing you were listening to, but said underneath "But it's turned off now" :wink: You can easily switch it to display something else if it bothers you.

 

[Andyw2100]

What if it showed the last thing you were listening to, but said underneath "But it's turned off now" :wink: You can easily switch it to display something else if it bothers you.

As you pointed out, it's really not that big of a deal. It's just odd that there's not a simple "off" option, which would make everyone happy. (I get my "true-off", and you get your music to play or not play, as you want it to.) I don't like to mess around with what displays on my dash too much. I really don't change those unless there's a compelling reason to. There's just something about seeing music paused, when I don't want it playing at all, that rubs me the wrong way a little bit. It's as if the car is showing me there's something I have to go back and deal with--business I've left unfinished. Give me an off switch, and let me have closure!

 

[Pilot_51]

I had been listening to a podcast on USB for months. I would pause before getting out and it would be paused at the same position when I got back in. Only a few times did I notice it wasn't where I left it. Very little issue playing from USB.

After I caught up on all the seasons of that podcast a couple weeks ago, I started listening to other podcasts on TuneIn. That's when I noticed it would start playing automatically nearly half the time when I got in, sometimes starting a different episode down the list or otherwise appearing to have been playing without me. If I leave it for a while, probably through two sleeps, it would completely lose the media (blank in the dash) and I need to select the episode again on the touchscreen. The behavior seems rather inconsistent, though I haven't been paying close attention to when these issues occur.

I'm still on 6.1 (2.2.115).

 

[AndreN]

Has anyone also noted that the USB drive music continues to advance the music despite being paused while the car is off. Not only does paused music start up when opening the door, but the song being played may be a few tracks or even many tracks later in the playlist than it was when you paused it.

Yes, I'm seeing the same issue, though I don't pause the music when I get out, so it's always started playing for me when I get in. It's just that recently, as you say, it's on an entirely different track when I get in than when I left the car the night before. I'm going to send some email to Tesla about this.

 

[cschock]

Yes, I'm seeing the same issue, though I don't pause the music when I get out, so it's always started playing for me when I get in. It's just that recently, as you say, it's on an entirely different track when I get in than when I left the car the night before. I'm going to send some email to Tesla about this.

It's actually, I think, related to charging. I listen to albums from USB (and sometimes streaming from Slacker for my daughter) and I always pause the music when I exit the car. Since the latest firmware when I return to the car after it has charged over night it is ALWAYS on the last track of the album, like it was "whistling while it worked" to charge and thus played through the album. In the case of Slacker it will have played a bunch of tracks too (you can see which ones in Recently Played!)

This is a new and very much unwanted behavior for several reasons:

1. It's annoying for classical/album listeners that have to "go back" to where they were, not just hit play again.
2. It's SUPER annoying for podcast/audio book listeners that may have to hunt for where they were.
3. It could be EXPENSIVE for those that have metered internet and the car is set to use WIFI at home while charging (since you could be streaming for several hours each night over WIFI.)

I submitted this as a bug using the Customer Feedback on the Tesla web site.

 

[KurtR]

Since the latest firmware when I return to the car after it has charged over night it is ALWAYS on the last track of the album, like it was "whistling while it worked" to charge and thus played through the album.

I have the opposite happen to me. I leave the car to either charge overnight, go to work, eat, etc. and when I return the music is always on the same track I left it on, but more often than not it loses its place and simply starts from the beginning. A couple days ago I switched the display settings off of energy saver mode and for a day or so it seemed to fix that problem, but now its back to the old annoying behavior. Like you, this is a problem for classical tracks since I can never seem to get to the end of a symphony that lasts more than half an hour (I recorded all the pieces as single files to avoid the break between tracks). Beethoven's 9th, for example - I'd have to be driving for over an hour to get to the end. If I get out and go to work for the day I get back in and it just starts all over again.

Does anyone know whether Tesla's USB interface allows write capability? Seems to me all they need to do is create a temp file on the USB drive that records the number of the file playing and the time position in the song, so that is can resume from the same position, and then who cares whether the car is completely powered down?

 

[jgs]

Does anyone know whether Tesla's USB interface allows write capability? Seems to me all they need to do is create a temp file on the USB drive that records the number of the file playing and the time position in the song, so that is can resume from the same position, and then who cares whether the car is completely powered down?

For that matter, there's no need for them to write this to the external USB device. They've got plenty of internal storage to be able to write a few bytes of state information. It's just a bug.

 

[cschock]

I have the opposite happen to me. I leave the car to either charge overnight, go to work, eat, etc. and when I return the music is always on the same track I left it on, but more often than not it loses its place and simply starts from the beginning.?

What you're seeing is entirely consistent with the behavior I describe. Your "album" is one track long. It wakes up, continues playing and completes the entire track. It then stops (as the album is over) and when you get into the car it is "at the beginning" which is of course the same as at the end! You could test this by creating an album (via editing the MP3 track info or some other mechanism) with two tracks. One very long and one short. Leave the car with the long one on pause. When you come back the next morning, check your recently played list, it will show both tracks as played.

Either way, this is clearly a bug. I did get a response from Tesla customer care and they have forwarded the problem on to the developers. So with any luck it will be fixed in an upcoming firmware release.

 

[KurtR]

What you're seeing is entirely consistent with the behavior I describe. Your "album" is one track long. It wakes up, continues playing and completes the entire track. It then stops (as the album is over) and when you get into the car it is "at the beginning" which is of course the same as at the end!

I have no "albums" on the USB with my classical music. My "track" is one long file - no album at all specified in the metadata - and I selected the track through either the Artist or Genre tabs with the shuffle and repeat functions on, so if the song had played through to completion after the car mysteriously woke up, it should have moved randomly to another track from the same artist or within the same genre, for example. Why also, would it stop after playing that single track if the music was going while I was out of the car? Once this happened while I was eating at a restaurant for about 30 minutes after listening to a Rachmaninoff concerto at the time I got out of the car. There were probably about 12+ hours of more Rachmaninoff on the USB drive to get through, so had it treated the current Artist playlist the same as your "Album" playlist it would have been on another piece when I returned, and not at the beginning. There wasn't time to get through the rest of the songs to the end of the current playlist.

It seems to me that it simply loses its place in the track/playlist, which is why when the song does start playing again, there are no shuffle and repeat icons showing beneath the title of the song when I get back in, such that when the track does finish, the music just stops. (This behavior has also happened while listening to short songs from my Classic Rock/Blues USB).