For a month or so (now on ARC build 100295) I am experiencing issues with ARC not redrawing the screen on AA display. It is either blank, or there is the animation display, or today I've seen the blue equalizer moving, just no song title/time etc. Music playback can usually be controlled using ARC on mobile phone, yet the AA screen does not redraw and stays in one of the above three states. Most often this happens for the second time car is started (example is driving to go shopping: on a way to shopping center everything works, than car is turned off, this aborts music quite abruptly, on a way back ARC will not work). Force stopping ARC on mobile phone and starting ARC again fixes the problem, it just is not possible to use mobile phone while driving in a country where I live. So obvious workaround is force stopping ARC before entering the car. Than everything is fine. When the issue manifests, restarting the car AA unit does not help. A month ago or so (definitely at June 7 at time of other ticket I've created) I had zero issues with ARC and AA.
On 8/25/2024 this happened at 22:50 (driving back home from shopping). The AA screen was blank and there was no playback. At roughly 22:53 I've managed to pull over and start playback using ARC on the mobile phone (something from Anathema), the music started playing through car speakers, yet the screen was still blank. I've experienced the same issues around 12:12, too. Forced ARC restart. During the drive I've started digital radio and was not able to stop it, as Roon was showing it is playing music from ARC, yet what I heard was the radio station. Unfortunately I don't know exact times - it happened during the drive between 12:12 and 12:33 - I believe that at 12:33, the Roon playback was not playing although the screen was showing it is and instead radio was playing. Generally this "feels" like some stale connection state, as it very often happens after first, working connection is interrupted. Other than that I don't have issues at home or with ARC alone, just AA experience is very bad.
Describe your network setup
WAN is symmetrical 1gb optics from T-Mobile, router is Sagemcom 5670v2, ROCK is running in a Proxmox VM on Ryzen 9 7940HS, wired connection to the router, mobile phone Xperia V 1, AA unit is Seat Cupra from before 2020 + AAWireless.
Hi, there could be those potentially audio playing apps running in the background at any time - Roon, Roon ARC, Reddit, Firefox, YouTube, Steam. Not using much more else. I am sure they were not playing - except possibly for ARC, as I use it to select what should play and pause it, so it appears on the car screen. I’ll be using car more this weekend, so I’ll try to reproduce.
The issue reproduced today (Aug 30) at 13:33. I’ve tried to start playing on mobile device, but ARC was completely black when brought to foreground, so I’ve just stopped it and started it again and both AA display and mobile ARC were fine. At the time there were three applications on my phone in the background - Firefox, Maps and ARC.
Not sure if it can be related, but as I am experiencing this issue when coming back to the car, I am wondering if it can be because Android connection is being repeatedly connected and lost, eg. after I am done shopping, I need to load the car, than need to get rid of the cart and during this time, I see the phone looking/connecting/losing connection to Android auto. At 13:33, I was loading the car with some food for vacation, so I was going from house to car repeatedly so I guess the connection to AA was opened/lost few times.
On Saturday (Aug 31) I’ve experienced an issue that had slightly different manifestation: ARC was showing it is playing a song, I am not sure if playtime was being updated, but there was no audio and when I tried to increase volume on car’s head unit, nothing happened. The volume meter was redrawn only when volume was decreased. So I tried standard DAB radio, it started to play, switching to ARC did not stop the radio playing and there was still the stale ARC song on display that was not playing. This happened at 13:12 and 19:35 (both times when I returned to car and started it up). Force restarting ARC fixed that. It looks like another manifestation of a stale connection but this time, it was not completely blank.
Thanks for the fresh report! Our team will take a closer look into your Arc diagnostics for additional information.
As another test in troubleshooting, when you fall into this issue state: you have returned to the car and have reconnected to AA, what happens if you temporarily disable cellular connection to the device (setting it to airplane mode essentially) and then re-establish network connection? Does the same issue occur?
Can you provide a more detailed step-by-step process on how you re-establish connection from your Android device to AA in your car?
I hope to have additional information to share after our team investigates further.
Hi, the AA connection is opened automatically. I believe there needs to be car bluetooth detected by phone and when so, it connects to the AA wifi.
From time to time I experience issue with AA headunit not being able to connect with phone, but this can be solved by restarting the head unit and is rare.
The ARC issue, on the other hand, happens only after phone is successfully connected to AA and restart of the head unit does not change anything. I see other apps working, eg. maps are fine. Force stopping ARC and than just starting it from head unit or phone makes ARC work.
Sure, I will try the airplane mode trick when the issue manifests.
We have a fix for an issue matching these symptoms that should go live with the next Early Access release. From there, it will release to the public within the next several updates. Thanks!
Hi, that is a great news! I’ve moved to earlyaccess and today, had a pretty juicy experience:
22:17: ARC on car screen was blank. Switched to airplane mode, waited for AA to notice, switched back from airplane mode
22:19: something is playing (can hear that) but the screen is blank. Paused playback on phone. Cycled airplane mode again
22:21: screen is blank, force stopped ARC on mobile phone as I’ve concluded airplane mode does not fix the issue
22:22: screen is no longer blank, there is playback window, time meter is moving, but no sound can be heard. Volume meter on screen goes only down, moving volume up does not update the meter. I’ve started thinking what to restart… and did another force stop of ARC on mobile phone
22:24: screen is no longer blank, started playback from mobile screen, no issues
stopped the car, left it
for the record, at 23:08 I’ve come back to the car, started it and everything connected/played smoothly as it should
Thanks @Rp1984, we’ve captured the sequence in diagnostics and are investigating further with development.
Logs indicate that ARC was struggling with connectivity prior to engaged airplane mode at 22:17 - did you have a period of poor cell service, or switch between network connections, in the thirty minutes prior to this sequence of events with AA?
Actually, there had to be like three network changes quite close before I used airplane mode switch:
Leaving home WiFi
Walking to the underground garage on 5G
Starting car, connecting to AA WiFi
Leaving the garage
Car did not connect with the phone, so restarting the AA head unit using long press of the volume button, the phone had lost connection to AA Wifi, connected second time (I see maps etc working fine, yet ARC is stuck loading - this was quite close to 22:17, during this time I was on a way out from the garage)
Stopping outside on a side, car is still running so no network change, trying first airplane mode at 22:17. At this time I was on 5G again.
There is a poor signal reception in the garage. I don’t know exactly how poor, just know that once I was dealing with the operational stuff there and we needed to check something on the Internet and it didn’t went well as the phone was on Edge or something like that. Yet it is not totally out, sometimes it works and plays fine. But if there could have been network struggles - on mobile phone, there just always are, people are not able to keep them connected to single network
Hi, on Saturday I’ve got a great experience without any issues with the latest build:
at around 21:00 went to the garage. In car, tried to refresh a page in mobile browser, it failed, although the phone was reporting 5G connection.
started a car, on AA split screen there were two apps, ARC said it is loading. The loading stopped and ARC widget got replaced by a list of podcasts - I guess that is some default AA behavior
on a way from the garage, I’ve clicked ARC icon on AA screen and it correctly loaded and started playback of Tenebre.
later left car outside, when I came back to it again, all worked
I’ll for sure do this experiment few more times, but it the issue is fixed, thank you very much!
