Carplay + WiFi Hotspot

[nixietube]

This is more of a rant than anything but maybe someone knows about this issue changing in the future.

The first thing I did was connect Wireless Carplay. I've loved Carplay for years and it's an important feature I look for in a car, but wireless (+wireless charging) is just magical. Super convenient and just works. Now, I have a pretty cheap wireless plan but use a lot of data so the Wifi hotspot plan is a good deal for me.

Lo and behold, it turns out that you can't have Wireless Carplay and WiFi on at the same time since "projection" uses Wifi. Doh! This seems like a pretty big catch 22 and so now I'm having to decide whether I should just upgrade my wireless plan and skip the hotspot. Pretty annoying.

Anyhow, I'd you didn't know, now you do. If you folks know how they plan to fix this (if at all, since the answer might just be "use 5G"), let me know.

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[generaltso]

Is the hotspot plan in the MME cheaper than upgrading your phone plan?

 

[available_username2]

why do you need to use your wifi hotspot while driving? Worst case you can do wired car play in those situations

 

[methorian]

This is more of a rant than anything but maybe someone knows about this issue changing in the future.

The first thing I did was connect Wireless Carplay. I've loved Carplay for years and it's an important feature I look for in a car, but wireless (+wireless charging) is just magical. Super convenient and just works. Now, I have a pretty cheap wireless plan but use a lot of data so the Wifi hotspot plan is a good deal for me.

Lo and behold, it turns out that you can't have Wireless Carplay and WiFi on at the same time since "projection" uses Wifi. Doh! This seems like a pretty big catch 22 and so now I'm having to decide whether I should just upgrade my wireless plan and skip the hotspot. Pretty annoying.

Anyhow, I'd you didn't know, now you do. If you folks know how they plan to fix this (if at all, since the answer might just be "use 5G"), let me know.

Slim chance of a "fix" since it's just the way Wireless Carplay/Android Auto works. In order to wirelessly project it requires much more bandwidth than Bluetooth can offer, so Wifi direct is used.

One could argue that you can theoretically use 5Ghz wifi for projection and still maintain 2.4Ghz wifi for data, but I'm not sure that's possible with the radio's/software in most phones. (I know some phones already do this when using their built-in hotspot feature. If you're connected to Wifi you can actually end up using your phone as a Wifi "repeater" by turning the hotspot on.)

Recommendation would be to upgrade your cellular plan - that way you'd also benefit even when not in your Mach-E.

 

[ChasingCoral]

Slim chance of a "fix" since it's just the way Wireless Carplay/Android Auto works. In order to wirelessly project it requires much more bandwidth than Bluetooth can offer, so Wifi direct is used.

One could argue that you can theoretically use 5Ghz wifi for projection and still maintain 2.4Ghz wifi for data, but I'm not sure that's possible with the radio's/software in most phones. (I know some phones already do this when using their built-in hotspot feature. If you're connected to Wifi you can actually end up using your phone as a Wifi "repeater" by turning the hotspot on.)

Recommendation would be to upgrade your cellular plan - that way you'd also benefit even when not in your Mach-E.

Ah ha! That explains what I was seeing. I hadn't tried to figure it out yet but I was seeing this odd second SSID and sign-in during CarPlay.

I had thought about using the car's hotspot for my laptop when I was a passenger on my upcoming road trip. However, that will mean using wired CarPlay. Of course, the other option is wireless tethering to the phone as a hotspot.

With that in mind, I see real limitations to paying for the car hotpot after the 3-month free trial is over.

 

[Stang68]

I don’t know, I feel like a car hotspot is a silly thing these days when every phone can now be a hotspot.

 

[GoGoGadgetMachE]

I don’t know, I feel like a car hotspot is a silly thing these days when every phone can now be a hotspot.

one very specific edge use case I can see is if you live in an area where you have strong non-AT&T and thus have your plan with that carrier (e.g. T-Mobile) but travel a lot to a place with AT&T (car hotspot provider) but not your provider... so you could do even things like wi-fi calling and such through the car even though your provider's cell signal is weak.

another specific use case is you have kids in the back seat a lot or whatever with wi-fi-only tablets and you don't want to mess with turning on your phone's battery-draining hotspot all the time. this is I think the more common of the two use cases I list.

 

[Stang68]

one very specific edge use case I can see is if you live in an area where you have strong non-AT&T and thus have your plan with that carrier (e.g. T-Mobile) but travel a lot to a place with AT&T (car hotspot provider) but not your provider... so you could do even things like wi-fi calling and such through the car even though your provider's cell signal is weak.

another specific use case is you have kids in the back seat a lot or whatever with wi-fi-only tablets and you don't want to mess with turning on your phone's battery-draining hotspot all the time. this is I think the more common of the two use cases I list.

Yeah I could see the second one being the main use case for sure. But come on, just throw your kids some War and Peace or Moby Dick and they'll be fine ?

 

[methorian]

Cross posting to this thread as well from another:

Alrighty - Wanted to clear some things up here since some may be confused.

You can absolutely use the Mach-E's built-in hotspot feature while using wireless Apple Carplay. You can NOT however use wifi on your phone (to connect to the Mach-E's wifi hotspot, or any other Wifi network) while using wireless Carplay, this is because your phones Wifi is being used to connect directly to your Mach-E to project Carplay.

I tested this just now myself. iPhone 12 Pro connected and Wireless Carplay active:

Car's wifi hotspot active:

Surface connected to Mach-E's wifi hotspot, while Carplay is still active from my phone:

Also wanted to show that my Mach-E has no issues connecting to my home's 5Ghz network, whose SSID contains hyphens.... (It also has no issue with my 2.4Ghz network either. All Ubiquiti Unifi equipment.)

 

[Maquis]

Yeah I could see the second one being the main use case for sure. But come on, just throw your kids some War and Peace or Moby Dick and they'll be fine ?

I think Great Expectations is a better tome for kids!

 

[nixietube]

Cost wise, $15 (Xfinity mobile) plan for 1 GB then $20 unlimited in Car, which is where I use 90% of my data. $35 is really cheap for unlimited data.

The hope was to have mobile wifi for passengers as well and WarnerMedia Ride seems pretty good. My problem is I stream Apple Music so I could use just Bluetooth for audio, but... come on, 2021 and $60k car, what a silly choice to have to make.

Getting a better phone plan seems like the best option until Apple adds a second WiFi modem (ha).

 

[Jbb2112]

I am one of those who wanted to use WiFi Hotspot (from the MME) to run CarPlay. I do fall into the category alluded to above (T-Mobile on iPhone, AT&T works better in many places...but T-Mobile is superior abroad), but there is also a technical reason: when the iPhone is in the wireless charge position it is effectively buried in the bowels of the car. LTE is a line-of-site broadcast band. Using the WiFi Hotspot is simply more reliable because it has an outside antenna and that combined with AT&T coverage makes it a strong desirable alternative to T-Mobile on the Interstates. Does CarPlay work with the hotspot IF the iPhone is plugged in to USB? PS: I did not realize that this was an Apple designed-in limitation; I thought this was a faux pas on Ford's part. I get lots of hiccups playing music stored on my iPhone using the PROJ connection...many more than when streaming from a cloud.

 

[nixietube]

I am one of those who wanted to use WiFi Hotspot (from the MME) to run CarPlay. I do fall into the category alluded to above (T-Mobile on iPhone, AT&T works better in many places...but T-Mobile is superior abroad), but there is also a technical reason: when the iPhone is in the wireless charge position it is effectively buried in the bowels of the car. LTE is a line-of-site broadcast band. Using the WiFi Hotspot is simply more reliable because it has an outside antenna and that combined with AT&T coverage makes it a strong desirable alternative to T-Mobile on the Interstates. Does CarPlay work with the hotspot IF the iPhone is plugged in to USB? PS: I did not realize that this was an Apple designed-in limitation; I thought this was a faux pas on Ford's part. I get lots of hiccups playing music stored on my iPhone using the PROJ connection...many more than when streaming from a cloud.

Yes it does work with the phone plugged in.

Very good point about the external antenna and signal strength. I ended up ditching their Wifi plan and just improving the one on my phone and it works good enough, but in certain areas I'm sure the signal is likely to kick out as the phone doesn't have full LoS to the outside.

The CarPlay project thing probably seemed like a reasonable compromise at the time (when Bluetooth did not have enough bandwidth to stream full video + audio), but I think it's a legacy problem at this point. I hope they fix that one day or add a secondary dedicated Wifi radio, though I think that is very unlikely. Alternatively, the Wifi standard is fixed to allow for multiple simultaneous connections (similar to what they do to increase bandwidth on routers that support it). I wouldn't hold my breath on that one either, though.

All the best.

 

[Jimrpa]

So, I haven't tried this because frankly, I don't care, but if my phone is connected via wi-fi to the car so it can project CarPlay and someone absolutely wants to use my phone as a hotspot, can't they connect to my phone via Bluetooth? I seem to recall using a Bluetooth data connection a long time ago?

Tbh, the use case that troubles me more is that when my phone is connected to wireless CarPlay, it has no Bluetooth connection to Sync 4, which renders emergency 911 calling from the car inoperable. Given a choice between displaying Apple Maps on the big screen or having the capability for the car to call emergency services if I can't, I'll take the emergency services calling for $1000 please, Alex. I want to live

 

[Awmustang]

So, I haven't tried this because frankly, I don't care, but if my phone is connected via wi-fi to the car so it can project CarPlay and someone absolutely wants to use my phone as a hotspot, can't they connect to my phone via Bluetooth? I seem to recall using a Bluetooth data connection a long time ago?

Tbh, the use case that troubles me more is that when my phone is connected to wireless CarPlay, it has no Bluetooth connection to Sync 4, which renders emergency 911 calling from the car inoperable. Given a choice between displaying Apple Maps on the big screen or having the capability for the car to call emergency services if I can't, I'll take the emergency services calling for $1000 please, Alex. I want to live

Considering Sync 3 will try to connect to every phone that's in it's connection list in the event of an accident (in case the one connected at the time of the crash is damaged but another one is in the car), I find it very hard to believe that Ford didn't program Sync 4 to kill the CarPlay connection and dial 911 that way.

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