Bluetooth won't stay connected, affecting safety

[Mach-Lee]

FYI there are two separate Bluetooth connections to the Mach-E on your phone:

"nnnnn MACH E" is for PAAK only (n's are last 5 digits of your VIN)
-This will be active when the car is off and you are nearby it

"Mustang Mach-E" or similar is the SYNC Bluetooth connection for handsfree
-This will only be active when the car is on, and if AA or CarPlay isn't being used

If wireless AA or CarPlay is in use, that runs through a WiFi connection to the phone instead of Bluetooth.

Interference can affect one or more of the above connections and cause disconnects.

I know that when Im listening to something on my AirPods on my iPhone and I walk up to my Mach E, it’s takes more than a couple of seconds for the car to recognize the phone. Just try to rule things out via trial and error as most have mentioned.

Use of other Bluetooth devices or 2.4 GHz on your phone at the same time will reduce PAAK performance because the phone radio is busy serving multiple connections. PAAK needs a fast response (<40 ms) and will refuse late replies. This is why PAAK takes longer if you are listening to music while trying to get in.

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[Ford Motor Company]

Having similar issue with Samsung S20+. Phone keeps disconnecting and reconnecting in both wired and wireless mode. Disconnect seems to occur when I get a notification, email, on the phone. I've tried the do not disturb option on phone but same thing. I've tried most common suggestions, but still figuring it out.

Hello! Send us a private message with your VIN and the name and location of your local Ford dealer. I’d be happy to see what I can do to assist with this Bluetooth concern. Thanks!

 

[Ride_the_lightning]

This is sarcasm right? Bluetooth is used widely in the medical industry, from Blood Oxygen Monitors, EKG monitors, Blood Pressure Monitors, Diabetic Monitors, Fall Detection devices... the list goes on. Heck, if you have an Apple/Android watch it uses BT for those and more. Just because one thing wasn't originally designed for something doesn't mean it can't be used for it. Aspirin was developed for non-life threatening arthritis and is now used for life threatening cardiovascular diseases.

@MirandaH -

I wouldn't reset your phone as some suggest. That sounds like advice from a tech support agent reading a script and should be a last resort measure. Especially for something as trivial as BT since the firmware version on the radio won't change with a reset.

How many active BT connections do you have going on when the disconnect happens? Phones support between 5-7 active connections at a time.

Wireless Android Auto only uses BT to establish the connection and then it's handed off to WiFi on the 5ghz frequency. I don't think it has anything to do with AA.

Is the connection issue with FordPass and the car or is it with just phone calls? There's multiple BT connections created between the car and the phone. You mention it's mostly during phone calls so I would assume that FordPass and PaaK work fine?

Like others have stated, it's most likely the phone and not the car. Testing with another family members phone (as mentioned by others) would rule out the phone or the car and is a great first step. If you decide to re-establish the connection between the phone and the car, be sure to remove the device in the car, reset PaaK from the car and remove the old BT connections from the phone before re-establishing them.

Do you have any idea what you are talking about? Have you ever worked on vital control systems? It really concerns me if Bluetooth is used for actual medical devices, outside consumer grade stuff like Apple Watch. Maybe the newer BLE spec can support that, but my experience says otherwise. Certainly the implementation on consumer grade phones is not intended for that.

 

[DevSecOps]

Do you have any idea what you are talking about? Have you ever worked on vital control systems? It really concerns me if Bluetooth is used for actual medical devices, outside consumer grade stuff like Apple Watch. Maybe the newer BLE spec can support that, but my experience says otherwise. Certainly the implementation on consumer grade phones is not intended for that.

Yes I do. Bluetooth has the lowest power consumption of any wireless technology and is widely used in healthcare. Bluetooth is also the least vulnerable technology in the 2.4 GHz spectrum due to adaptive frequency hopping and 40 MHz of channel availability. There are many hospital grade devices that use Bluetooth for vital sign monitoring including glucose monitors, defibrillators and Abbott even has pacemakers using BLE, just to name a few.

Our APs in hospitals have BT scanning beacons. We routinely monitor all BT devices within the building. We can even tell where and who is in the hospital through BT as it picks up all devices with BT enabled.

In general there's many myths and lack of knowledge around Bluetooth (such as being limited to 30 feet - it can actually achieve ranges over 1/2 of a mile). BT can also be very secure with two security modes and 4 security levels, with upper levels meeting federal security compliance. It's one of the most useful and diverse wireless technologies we have but often gets a bad rep due to cheap devices using old standards.

 

[Ride_the_lightning]

Yes I do. Bluetooth has the lowest power consumption of any wireless technology and is widely used in healthcare. Bluetooth is also the least vulnerable technology in the 2.4 GHz spectrum due to adaptive frequency hopping and 40 MHz of channel availability. There are many hospital grade devices that use Bluetooth for vital sign monitoring including glucose monitors, defibrillators and Abbott even has pacemakers using BLE, just to name a few.

Our APs in hospitals have BT scanning beacons. We routinely monitor all BT devices within the building. We can even tell where and who is in the hospital through BT as it picks up all devices with BT enabled.

In general there's many myths and lack of knowledge around Bluetooth (such as being limited to 30 feet - it can actually achieve ranges over 1/2 of a mile). BT can also be very secure with two security modes and 4 security levels, with upper levels meeting federal security compliance. It's one of the most useful and diverse wireless technologies we have but often gets a bad rep due to cheap devices using old standards.

I stand corrected. The protocol has come a long way. Thanks for educating me. I stand by what I said about not relying on iPhone or Android phone Bluetooth connections though.

 

[MirandaH]

try:
- UNINSTALLING Fordpass from phone
- unpairing MME on phone (both BT pairings for regular BT and PAAK)
- delete phone from MME
- reset PAAK, delete backup code
- download/install fresh FordPass on phone
- re-configure PAAK in MME
- add 'regular' BT pairing after PAAK and backup code are set up again

https://www.macheforum.com/site/thr...-uninstall-re-configure-of-fp-and-paak.21759/

Problem solved! I walked through the troubleshooting provided by dtbaker61 and my Bluetooth has only disconnected once in the 3 hours that I've driven since (verses what would have been 15-20 times). Thank you so much! Thanks, folks, for the inputs!

For anyone else who has this issue, try the following:

- UNINSTALLING Fordpass from phone
- unpairing MME on phone (both BT pairings for regular BT and PAAK)
- delete phone from MME
- reset PAAK, delete backup code
- download/install fresh FordPass on phone
- re-configure PAAK in MME
- add 'regular' BT pairing after PAAK and backup code are set up again

 

[MichiganMatt]

Just in case anyone else comes across this more recently, I had this exact problem in my 2022 and my S21+ phone.

Following these steps resolved my Bluetooth BT connection dropping issues. (copied from above)

- UNINSTALLING Ford App from phone
- unpairing MME on phone (I only had 1 BT pairing, original notes have regular BT and PAAK)
- delete phone from MME
- reset PAAK, delete backup code
- download/install fresh Ford App on phone
- re-configure PAAK in MME
- add 'regular' BT pairing after PAAK and backup code are set up again

When you go to your car to do this, be sure to bring your physical key, as you'll need it to re-do the PAAK.

 

[Mike G]

Wasn't there somebody on here who had a problem with BT and later discovered it was something to do with an Apple Airtag that was in the car? I never did hear about how that turned out. Or maybe I misunderstood what was going on there....dunno.

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