MG4 iSmart loses car while charging

Tigger

Tigger

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I did a scheduled charge last night on my home Pod Point. Before I went to bed, the iSmart app could see the car data, state of charge, etc. When I tried the app again this morning, it no longer saw any data from the car. The charge was finished, and the cable was still connected.

In this state, the Vehicle Status scan on the app just hung, ditto the battery state of charge screen, so I didn't know if my charge had been successful - all I got was the 'Command is failed' message. It struggled to get the GPS location, but after a few tries, this came through.

I unlocked the car, removed the charging cable, locked the car again -- and suddenly the iSmart app started to work, and I found my charge had been successful. This is the only time this has happened to me, anyone else experienced it?
 
IMHO it doesn't lose the iSmart connection due to the charge, I can view mine during charging without any issues, it loses the connection due to sleep/timeout when the car has been inactive for a period of time and has been covered in several other posts. Unlocking the car will "wake" it from the sleep/timeout and therefore you will be able to connect via iSmart again. Sometimes iSmart cannot get a connection regardless, this seems to be mainly in the morning when everyone is trying to pre-heat their vehicle and the server (in Sweden?) cannot cope with the number of simultaneous connection requests, this usually clears a bit later.
 
Okay, I did a search on 'timeout' and found the old thread MG iSMART issues - very helpful. As you say, the message seems to be that unlocking the car wakes up the app. Next time it happens, I'll try it. (You have to unlock the car with the remote key, of course - you can't use the app, because it's asleep!)

I question whether this is a straightforward timeout problem. It has never happened to me before, and I have left the car unused for days at a time, and the app stays awake. Also last night I got up at 4am to go to the loo, and the app was already asleep - looks like a glitch!
 
I think it is more that the car periodically polls the MG server, and if it doesn't get a response (or a series of responses) then it goes to "sleep". Using the key "wakes" it up and it tries polling the server again - which it can then get a response from. (IMHO).
 
The car goes into what is colloquially referred to as zombie mode everything except for the immobilizer, locking system and modem turn off to prevent 12v battery drain, the modem stays in a low power mode to essentially be able to be reactivated by a server request if needed, akin to wake on lan on computers.
 
I am not in an MG4 yet, but my current Hyundai experiences the same. This is compounded by being in a garage overnight I suspect. The car responds, but some data can be missing (charge % etc) until I refresh once or twice more.
So sleep state plus connection strength.
 
Ayoull said:
The car does it automatically, from what I've read after 18hrs of inactivity
Click to expand...
Yes, interesting. To test this, I left the car locked, and the iSmart app off on my phone, for 30 hours.. I then started up the app, tried to access the car, and it was indeed in the zombie state, saying variously:
The status checking is failed
The remote control instruction execution has failed
Unable to get the vehicle's GPS

After unlocking then re-locking the car with the remote key (from inside the house), the app sprang into life, confirming that this de-zombyfies the car.

I have now turned the app off again, and will re-test after a shorter time, closer to Ayoull's 18 hours.
 
Even more interesting: For the next test I left the car locked and iSmart app off for 19 hours, fired up the app, and the car was awake! No zombie state, and it is still awake at 21 hours (so well over Ayoull's 18 hours).

I will carry on testing, but is it possible that the act of accessing the car with the app while the car is awake resets the timeout countdown? In which case, if I keep checking with the app, the car will never go to sleep.
 
Tigger said:
Even more interesting: For the next test I left the car locked and iSmart app off for 19 hours, fired up the app, and the car was awake! No zombie state, and it is still awake at 21 hours (so well over Ayoull's 18 hours).

I will carry on testing, but is it possible that the act of accessing the car with the app while the car is awake resets the timeout countdown? In which case, if I keep checking with the app, the car will never go to sleep.
Click to expand...
It was through other people's experiences and reports that it appeared to be 18hrs I use my car everyday so will never reach the required time to enter zombie mode
 
I carried on with the 19 hours test, right up to 30 hours, regularly testing the car with the app, finishing this morning - the car stayed awake throughout. I think this confirms my earlier hypothesis that using the app to check on the car resets the zombie timeout - unsurprising, I think.

Going back to the case where you have parked your car at the airport for 2 weeks, this means that if you keep checking the car with the app (to see if has moved, if someone is joyriding in it etc), then the car will stay awake, and may never enter the zombie state.
 
Okay, got a bit more zombie testing done at the weekend. I have now done five tests, each of different durations to find out when the zombie state cuts in. These are the durations I checked:
19 22 24 25 30 Hours

After the first three tests, the car was still awake. After the last two, it was in a zombie state. So it looks like it requires 25 hours of (total) inactivity to become zombified.

Caveat: this is obviously a software setting, so other cars may be different.
Second caveat: In posts #1 and #3 of this thread, I reported being zombified at 4 am. I had set the scheduled charging in the car during the previous day, so much less than 25 hours earlier. I cannot explain this (but it has not happened again, so looks like a glitch).

I would welcome other tests - remember you mustn't check on the car with the app until the end of the test, because this resets the timeout, as does locking or unlocking.
 
siteguru said:
My car was last unlocked/locked (or app checked) about 3 days ago ... I've just tried the app and it scanned OK. 🤷‍♂️
Click to expand...
Thought I'd try mine again this morning after being off for 33 hours, and the car woke up with the app (although it took a few seconds to do so). No consistency here.

I wonder if there is an equivalent Forum to this one in China? SAIC's engineers might post to it, and explain what's really going on . . .
 
Next zombie test: I went away for two weeks, and when I got back, the car was in the zombie state - so far so good. I unlocked it with the remote, the lights flashed and everything, but I didn't get in. After I locked it again, I found it was still a zombie - the iSmart app couldn't access it. Interesting . . .

So I unlocked it again, got in, and waited till it was in the ready state, then got out and locked it. It was no longer a zombie - the iSmart app worked! Presumably this procedure caused the car to communicate with the server, and it became accessible.
 

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