Wifi

[Jim Glass]

Hope I can esplain this. I have an iPhone 12 (I know, I know). I’ve got Ford pass and I works well. I’ve enabled Car Play and it shows up on the screen a basically works, Waze, messages, BT music(?). It works as PAAK no prob. What it doesn’t do is connect to the wifi hotspot. When I try to change fro Proxxxxxx on the phone to “hotspotxcdxc” a pop up says it will disconnect me from CarPlay? Ok. But it immediately kicks me back to the Proxxxx which I understand to actually be a Bluetooth network. Bottom line is I can’t connect my iPhone to wifi in the car. Now my wife gets in the car and her iPhone connects immediately to the “hotspotzxcc”! Is this an “Apple thing” or a Ford thing or is just me being stoopid?

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[generaltso]

Why are you trying to connect your phone to the hotspot? That’s typically for devices that don’t have their own cellular connectivity.

 

[BMT1071]

Hope I can esplain this. I have an iPhone 12 (I know, I know). I’ve got Ford pass and I works well. I’ve enabled Car Play and it shows up on the screen a basically works, Waze, messages, BT music(?). It works as PAAK no prob. What it doesn’t do is connect to the wifi hotspot. When I try to change fro Proxxxxxx on the phone to “hotspotxcdxc” a pop up says it will disconnect me from CarPlay? Ok. But it immediately kicks me back to the Proxxxx which I understand to actually be a Bluetooth network. Bottom line is I can’t connect my iPhone to wifi in the car. Now my wife gets in the car and her iPhone connects immediately to the “hotspotzxcc”! Is this an “Apple thing” or a Ford thing or is just me being stoopid?

AFAIK, wireless Car Play and AA use Wi-Fi to connect to the car. Since you can only have 1 connection at at time on your phone, you are unable to connect to the hotspot. Your wife's phone is not connecting to Sync, so it hooks right up with the hotspot.
At least that's my best guess.

 

[Accord07]

Don't have my own Mach-E yet so take what I say with a grain of salt. When running Android Auto and CarPlay, the phone communicate initially over Bluetooth with the head unit, then switch over to WiFi Direct connection on the 5GHz band, within the WiFi Direct connection there is no route to the Internet and the phone will have to rely on its own data plan (some may refuse to do so when WiFi is active and loses Internet connectivity completely). Complicating the matter further is that most hotspots in cars run at 2.4GHz only, even though some may have 5GHz capability (officially CarPlay and Android Auto operate on the 5GHz band only, so any head unit that claims to support them wirelessly must have that in the hardware).

I have a vehicle that supports Android Auto and CarPlay over USB cable only, but recently bought an aftermarket solution that allows me to use Android Auto wirelessly. It too has the same limitation, but the developer says an OTA update will allow both that device and the Android phone connect to the vehicle's WiFi 2.4GHz hotspot instead of using 5GHz WiFi Direct between the two - officially Android Auto operates on 5GHz only but evidently it can be made to work on 2.4GHz, there are probably some pitfalls of its own which is why they did not include the feature at initial launch of this product I bought.

I am pretty sure that when CarPlay is on the MAC address on the other side of the WiFi Direct connection is not the same one when CarPlay is off and you are connected to the vehicle hotspot, because they are different network interfaces.

If you don't have unlimited data on your phone and plan to subscribe to the unlimited data plan for the car, I can understand your frustration. But it is what it is.

 

[Jim Glass]

Don't have my own Mach-E yet so take what I say with a grain of salt. When running Android Auto and CarPlay, the phone communicate initially over Bluetooth with the head unit, then switch over to WiFi Direct connection on the 5GHz band, within the WiFi Direct connection there is no route to the Internet and the phone will have to rely on its own data plan (some may refuse to do so when WiFi is active and loses Internet connectivity completely). Complicating the matter further is that most hotspots in cars run at 2.4GHz only, even though some may have 5GHz capability (officially CarPlay and Android Auto operate on the 5GHz band only, so any head unit that claims to support them wirelessly must have that in the hardware).

I have a vehicle that supports Android Auto and CarPlay over USB cable only, but recently bought an aftermarket solution that allows me to use Android Auto wirelessly. It too has the same limitation, but the developer says an OTA update will allow both that device and the Android phone connect to the vehicle's WiFi 2.4GHz hotspot instead of using 5GHz WiFi Direct between the two - officially Android Auto operates on 5GHz only but evidently it can be made to work on 2.4GHz, there are probably some pitfalls of its own which is why they did not include the feature at initial launch of this product I bought.

I am pretty sure that when CarPlay is on the MAC address on the other side of the WiFi Direct connection is not the same one when CarPlay is off and you are connected to the vehicle hotspot, because they are different network interfaces.

If you don't have unlimited data on your phone and plan to subscribe to the unlimited data plan for the car, I can understand your frustration. But it is what it is.

That makes some sense... I suppose. The car has its own modem, SIM card and phone number. When I ask Siri to call someone, it works great. But is it calling from my cellular phone or from the car’s modem? I receive messages via CarPlay and respond, it must going over my phone? As for two connections, my phone is connected to WiFi at home but the Bluetooth is connected to my tv? Confused ?‍

 

[Accord07]

That makes some sense... I suppose. The car has its own modem, SIM card and phone number. When I ask Siri to call someone, it works great. But is it calling from my cellular phone or from the car’s modem? I receive messages via CarPlay and respond, it must going over my phone? As for two connections, my phone is connected to WiFi at home but the Bluetooth is connected to my tv? Confused ?‍

Whether a head unit has Internet connectivity (via a modem) is irrelevant to CarPlay (and Android Auto), in fact most vehicles on the road that support them either do not have a modem or the owners do not subscribe to a data plan. So the most straightforward way to establish the connection between a head unit and a phone is to use WiFi Direct, a peer-to-peer network that allows device-to-device communication without relying on an "infrastructure". The downside of that of course, is exactly what you are experiencing - no Internet access through the WiFi connection.

Bluetooth and WiFi are two different entities. Compared to WiFi, Bluetooth's data rates are very limited and it is mostly used for voice calls (Hands Free Profile, HFP) and audio playback (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile, A2DP) in the context of mobile phones. In a car that does not support CarPlay, the Bluetooth connection is used for both voice calls and music playback; in a car that works with a phone through CarPlay, only HFP is enabled while A2DP is disabled, voice calls are handled by the phone using its own cellular connection, while utilizing the car's microphone and speakers for input/output, and music playback is not through Bluetooth at all.

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