OTA Updates via WIFI not working- Need address for Pi-Hole

[AHoss75]

So every time I take my MME out for an overnight trip, I end up getting updates.. This has happened 3 out of 4 overnight trips so far. I don't believe I've recieved a single update while at home. I'm suspecting that possibly my ad-blocker or something is blocking the connection when I'm at home on WIFI. Does anyone know what address it uses to call home to the mother ship for updates?

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[Sikkun]

Majority of OTA come over the cellular network. So you probably don’t have good AT&T coverage at home.

 

[HuntingPudel]

Additionally, updates come to your VIN whenever they're queued. There's no real rhyme or reason to the queueing. Some VINs get a rash of OTAs in a couple of weeks. Some VINs have gotten nothing for a year. ?‍?

It does sound like your VIN is getting queued though. As @Sikkun said, you probably have a poor AT&T signal at home. Otherwise, you may have too low a State of Charge on your 12V battery to apply updates at home. If your SoC is under 80% most OTAs will not apply themselves. In that case, you can try leaving your car turned on for a few hours to charge up the 12V and hopefully get around the low SoC possibility. ??

 

[Kmp14]

What has been already said, plus, updates are checked for and downloaded when the car is running. The time that you set in the settings for updates is when the updates that have been downloaded get installed. It is odd that Ford wants you connected to wi-fi, as mentioned in the manual, when updates rarely seem to download unless the car is running, i.e. you are out for a drive.

 

[AHoss75]

Interesting. What's the point of connecting to my home WIFI then? I do not have a good AT&T signal.

 

[Kmp14]

Interesting. What's the point of connecting to my home WIFI then? I do not have a good AT&T signal.

Good question. I do not have the answer to that.

 

[Snakebitten]

Interesting. What's the point of connecting to my home WIFI then? I do not have a good AT&T signal.

Well there has been 2 updates that were tagged by the Ford cloud as Wi-Fi eligible. So it's not never.

Also, I think some gurus have inspected their router logging very closely and there's plenty of evidence that WiFi certainly is used, if available, for vehicle communication with the mothership. That exchange of data/information is how Ford harvests the information the members here with PTS/FDRS are seeing about our vehicles.
For example, what DTCs are present on the vehicle currently.

 

[Kmp14]

@Hoss75 maybe a good strategy is to start your car while connected to Wi-Fi and don't leave. Let it run, then it will have time download any updates, if there are some, via Wi-Fi.

 

[AHoss75]

OK, shortly after i made this post I decided to try turning off my pi-hole and I've since received two updates while at home. Pretty convincing. Just need to determine what address the car is trying to phone home too so i can unblock it.

 

[Track9979]

It talks to quite a bit of things across multiple domains. I have pihole on my home network but have a separate IOT/whatever SSID and VLAN for things that don't need access to anything on the home network, and use internet nameservers for that. That said, you can also see what's blocked by client in pihole and unblock it manually, or just create a separate group, put the mache in there and do not assign any blocklists so that group.

This may or may not be your problem though. As mentioned already, updates are kind of all over the place. I've been getting them once a week or once every 2 weeks, with multiples every so often. and almost caught up on my 23.

 

[SonicBlue]

Interesting. What's the point of connecting to my home WIFI then? I do not have a good AT&T signal.

So you can sit in your car, in your garage, and play YouTube and sing karaoke. Duh.

 

[SonicBlue]

OK, shortly after i made this post I decided to try turning off my pi-hole and I've since received two updates while at home. Pretty convincing. Just need to determine what address the car is trying to phone home too so i can unblock it.

Yeah… I don’t think it can be dismissed out of hand that WiFi isn’t somehow interfering with cellular downloads. Seems like a plausible partial explanation of why driving seems to be needed to pull updates.

I have never once received an update overnight in my garage. And I have received at least a couple dozen updates over the years with my 2021. Saying that driving was needed to get my LVB to an acceptable SOC seems like a bigger stretch to me than the idea that home WiFi might be interfering.

I’m going to disconnect my WiFi from the car. It’s useless anyway.

 

[Jerrytball]

OK, shortly after i made this post I decided to try turning off my pi-hole and I've since received two updates while at home. Pretty convincing. Just need to determine what address the car is trying to phone home too so i can unblock it.

Never heard of pi hole, So guessing that was some type of a VPN or firewall blocker? I was an IT guy for 20 years and I didn’t use a lot of Linux so I’m guessing maybe that platform?

 

[kdonnel]

Never heard of pi hole, So guessing that was some type of a VPN or firewall blocker? I was an IT guy for 20 years and I didn’t use a lot of Linux so I’m guessing maybe that platform?

It is a DNS based ad blocker.

https://pi-hole.net/

 

[hartmms]

OK, shortly after i made this post I decided to try turning off my pi-hole and I've since received two updates while at home. Pretty convincing. Just need to determine what address the car is trying to phone home too so i can unblock it.

I too have a pi-hole and don't have a problem getting updates. I too live in an area with poor cell signal (valley between hills). However, 1 mile away there is fantastic signal strength. So maybe my updates were always via cell network when I do an errand or what not.

I do know that my pi-hole does block critical Fordpass app comms when setting up and deleting phone as a key. Since the dealer was not able to get that setup in their lot and all the posts here about how bad the car software was, I was convinced the problem was on Ford side. App kept crashing on my Android half way through PAAK setup. It took me quite a while before I figured I would try to turn off pi-hole for 5 min. No more crash and clean PAAK setup.

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