Unable to re-setup Car Thing after Factory Reset

[fuse27]

Plan - Premium

Country - USA

Device - iPhone 13 Pro

Operating System - iOS 15.1

My Question or Issue

Received Car Thing yesterday and set it up in the afternoon. The process went very smoothly. I got in the car today and my iPhone wouldn't reconnect. I've rebooted the phone and Car Thing and still no progress. I've "forgotten" Car Thing in iOS Bluetooth settings and performed Car Thing's Factory Reset. It does not appear in "Other Devices" on iPhone when going through the set up process again. Perhaps Car Thing needs to be removed from my Spotify account - something that doesn't appear to be an option from the App.

So far, the initial experience has gone from good to painful. Not sure what else to try at this point as rebooting and trying again isn't really troubleshooting the BT connection directly. Help!

[MafeG]

Hi @fuse27,

Thank you for posting on the Community and welcome!

Just to make sure, have you followed these steps to set up your Car Thing again? If not, please give them a go.

If the issue persists and to better understand what's happening from your side, we'd like to confirm if you're stuck in the step where you need to pair your phone to the Car Thing via Bluetooth. If you could send us some screenshots to illustrate it, they could be very helpful.

Keep us posted.

[fuse27]

I've absolutely performed those steps. Like I said, the initial setup was effortless. Reconnecting today is where the whole process fell down. I tried the standard troubleshooting before going to the "nuclear option" of Factory Reset. The fact that the device never shows up in iOS Bluetooth "Other Devices" in order to reconnect is what bothers me. I could try with my wife's iPhone, but that doesn't really help me get mine connected.

[fuse27]

After several more restarts and another Factory Reset of the Car Thing (and around another 3 minutes of waiting for the device to be found), I was finally able to run through the setup process again. Ran an errand, went into a store for about 10 minutes, came back to the car only to find that the Car Thing won't reconnect. I restarted the Car Thing, toggled Bluetooth off and on on my phone - nothing works. Rather than sit in the parking lot and keep trying, I left Car Thing attempting to reconnect and drove home. My phone BT picked up hands-free systems is cars I passed and found an Echo as I passed a house in the neighborhood. Countless pairs of Bluetooth headphones and a Jambox all connect without issue. My car is typically the slowest thing to reconnect, but that's from the slow initialization of the MMI software.

I have zero reason to believe that the problem is on the phone's end. I don't believe that the Car Thing's BT radio is actually attempting to reconnect or pair. What's the process to exchange this thing for another attempt? So far this has been incredibly frustrating and I'd almost rather return than try again. But I suppose I'll give it one more shot.

[MafeG]

Hi @fuse27,

Thank you for keeping us in the loop.

The behavior you describe is odd but we're glad to know the Car Thing connected again to your phone.

In this case, if you encounter any issue further down the line, we suggest you contact our folks from the support team. Here is the link.

We'll be on the lookout!

[fuse27]

I was able to finally perform the setup process again and connect. Once. That solves only the setup problem. The Car Thing and my phone still continuously fail to re-pair, so that's an ongoing problem. Do I need to start another thread for that issue?

[Jeremy]

Hi there @fuse27,

Thank you for your reply and confirmation.

In this case we suggest that you start a new thread sine it's a different issue.

In the meantime we suggest that you perform a clean reinstall of the app. This will make sure there's no old cache files causing this.

We'll be on the lookout for your new thread.

Take care!

[Blinkinmyface]

I'm having this issue as well. iPhone shows the carthing is connected after pairing, and Spotify automatically opens. The carthing continues to show the pairing code. The carthing isn’t registering Bluetooth connections. 

[BjornRoth]

@fuse27: do you still experience connectivity issues?

@Blinkinmyface: does the pairing issue linger after you've powered off/on Car Thing?

In general:
- if you perform a factory reset on Car Thing and want to set it up again on the same phone, you need to unpair Car Thing from the phone (and sometimes toggle Bluetooth on/off on the phone), otherwise it can't be rediscovered

- if you re-pair with a Car Thing that was previously paired to a phone without removing the pairing from Car Thing (or performing a factory reset), sometimes Car Thing cannot tell if the pairing succeeded and will continue to show the pairing code. Car Thing should still connect and this should not negatively impact future connections to the phone.

[fuse27]

As far as I was able to tell, my issue ended up being related to a non-Car Thing magnetic mount I had been using previously with my phone. As soon as I disconnected Car Thing from that mount, the connectivity issues went away. Super-odd, in that I didn't have any problems with 2 or 3 different phones that have been used with that mount over the years.

[Jeremy]

We can confirm that Car Thing is designed to work with the mounts it ships with. Any third party mounts might cause interference and connection issues.

@Blinkinmyface - can you let us know if you're using any special mounts? If not it would be great if you can check if anything else is causing interference and also ensure that only one device is paired with the Car Thing.

Keep us posted.

Take care!

[Srossi211]

Bumping this as I have been experiencing a similar issue. Been using Car Thing problem free for about 4 months, but about a month ago the device started to fail to connect to my phone on start-up ("Phone Disconnected" dialogue would appear, when I selected my phone in the connect menu the device would loop infinitely to connect but never succeed). I ended up having to frequently Forget both devices from both sides (remove Car Thing from phone's bluetooth menu, and remove phone from Car Thing menu) and re-add them both to fix this. This week, the same issue occurred but the fix didn't work, so I opted for a factory reset. Since then I have not been able to complete the setup process.

Things  I have tried per other support tickets that have not worked:

• Removing and re-adding car thing on bluetooth phone menu
• Trying to set up car thing on another phone logged into the same Spotify account
• Fully reinstalling Spotify app on phone (removing app, clearing storage, deleting internal files as per the link @Jeremy posted above.

Nothing has worked. The setup process gets to the pairing stage, then the Car Thing setup dialogue on the app closes itself, leaving the Car Thing not connected and displaying a pairing code. Factory Resets have not changed the issue. 

I had my suspicions that this issue might be related to the magnetic mount problem that @fuse27 mentioned, as I had recently installed a magnetic MagSafe adapter onto my phone case, but even after removing the magnet case these steps have not resulted in a successful connection. I am now only using the included Car Thing mount but it does not work.

[Eni]

Hey there @Srossi211, 

Thanks for reaching out about this here in the Community.

It might be that the Car Thing is malfunctioning, maybe due to being exposed to magnets as it's not designed to be used with those. 

However, we suggest reaching out to our support team through any of these channels, so they can further look into any options.

If you need a hand with anything else, the Community is here for you.