SYNC software version 2

[GolferChris68]

My local dealership completed the upgrade today, and things are good, except... all of my "Sync Services" are gone. No "Vehicle Health", no "Traffic, Directions and Information", and no "911 Assist". They're just gone from the Information panel. So, needless to say, I'll be calling my dealership tomorrow. I want all this stuff enabled, as it should be.

[AXCL]

Anyone know yet how long it takes, or have you just been dropping off your Edges?

[guthman]

Anyone know yet how long it takes, or have you just been dropping off your Edges?

 

It only takes an hour or so, but the Ford deployment servers have been hit so hard, it took my dealer 5 hours just to get it started :-(

[GolferChris68]

After having the update installed by the dealer, did anyone else lose their "Sync Services" like "Vehicle Health" and "Traffic, Directions and Information" applications? Those are completely gone now. Where the Sync Services used to be, I now get just the Information tab with button to install Sync applications.

[guthman]

After having the update installed by the dealer, did anyone else lose their "Sync Services" like "Vehicle Health" and "Traffic, Directions and Information" applications? Those are completely gone now. Where the Sync Services used to be, I now get just the Information tab with button to install Sync applications.

 

Yup, mine is gone... as well as my Navigation system... entirely.... There was a place listed under "Software Licenses" that I was pretty sure had something listed and nw is blank as well. I called Ford and they it's back to the Dealer for me as there is nothing that can be done.... most likely a "glitch" in the loading process as the servers were so hammered that maybe it didn't load all the packages. All I can suggest to folks is to look at all the options, at least the major ones, before leaving the dealer after the upgrade. On the upside, the starting and rebooting issues do indeed seem fixed... :UGH:

[Chiller10]

I took my 2011 Edge in for the update yesterday morning. The dealership had already tried on five other 2011's with no luck so I guess I'm asking why they started on mine. I was not aware the update was failing. After a couple of hours, I called them and they gave me the back news: The update didn't load. I picked the car up and to my surprise I now have:

No Navigation

No bass or treble adjustment

No rear view camera

No seat heaters

No changes to the ambient light setting

No i next to the home button on the bottom of the screen

No compass

No 911 services

No clock setting by the GPS satellites - otherwise it resets to 6:00 everytime I start the car.

 

I would have thought they would be able to roll it back, but no, once they start down the path there is no going back. As others have said, the dealer made some remarks about the Ford servers going down. I can still drive the it, but none of the 'fun stuff' works. If I wanted to drive a boring car, I would have gotten a Chevy Impala! No word on when it will be fixed. I have a pretty high hassle factor level, but they are getting close to passing it. When they get it fixed, I expect not only everything to work, but some enhancements (Pandora) as well. The dealership is very apologetic, but they are my only route to Ford so I am starting there. They tell me Ford has 'all hands on deck' but is that just another 14 year old computer geek? Not having a lot of confidence in Ford now. The rest of the car is great!

 

My advise is to wait for the update until people start saying it is working before you take your Edge to the dealership.

[guthman]

My list of post-update causalities:

 

Navigation: Gone completely with both the TeleNav and SYNC turn-by-turn being dead / System Settings show it and the MAP Database as not being loaded in the version list under SYSTEM SETTINGS and also nothing shows up in the LIST SOFTWARE LICENSE.

 

Ambient Lighting: Can select and turn on and off, but does not control the actual lighting

 

SYNC APPS: Gone / Traffic, Directions and Information (TDI)

- No "i" on the home screen because of this

- No 911 assist because of the above

 

No GPS Clock adjustment: Holding time and GPS is working with "Where am I" menu option

 

Everything else seems to be unaffected and no more spontaneous reboots or cold start issues. Guess it is easier to start when half the things aren't loading? :-/ Also "seems" much better with voice commands and bluetooth operations, but this could be the placebo effect?

[GolferChris68]

I took my 2011 Edge in for the update yesterday morning. The dealership had already tried on five other 2011's with no luck so I guess I'm asking why they started on mine. I was not aware the update was failing. After a couple of hours, I called them and they gave me the back news: The update didn't load. I picked the car up and to my surprise I now have:

No Navigation

No bass or treble adjustment

No rear view camera

No seat heaters

No changes to the ambient light setting

No i next to the home button on the bottom of the screen

No compass

No 911 services

No clock setting by the GPS satellites - otherwise it resets to 6:00 everytime I start the car.

 

Hmmm... I may just live without the turn-by-turn and vehicle health reports for a little while, since everything else seems to be working well on my vehicle. Bugs me that those things are gone, but at least everything else is working correctly. The tech at my dealership seems pretty good, and was able to work through a lot of the issues, but the biggest problem seems to be the Ford servers getting hammered and continuously going down.

Edited December 10, 2010 by GolferChris68

[AXCL]

Am I hearing all of this right? Too many people are hearing the "Ford Servers are down" speech. Are these updates actually being run off of the main ford servers over an internet connection? Its not something the Dealer downloads once and installs local? Is Ford running MS Cloud Car maintenance apps now?

[guthman]

Am I hearing all of this right? Too many people are hearing the "Ford Servers are down" speech. Are these updates actually being run off of the main ford servers over an internet connection? Its not something the Dealer downloads once and installs local? Is Ford running MS Cloud Car maintenance apps now?

 

I can't speak to the actual mechanism other than what I read in the TSB that I was given that included in the procedures. I "think" Ford controls this upgrade process through it's infrastructure and when the dealer does the upgrade, they actually hook up your car to the download / install process via a PC and not any kind of USB thumb drive process like we do for small patches. I assume this in place so that the total load can be provisioned baed on what VIN is being loaded and what options are available for a give make and model etc. I asked the same question directly from the dealer who said they had an awful time getting it to work before mine. It seemed like they could have just saved off the file and upgraded all the other ones, but that ain't how it works :-( I'm not sure I care so much, but they sure should have made the backend a LOT more robust because they surely knew that people were waiting on this to fix a lot of issues.... which it did... and now caused more....

[AXCL]

I can't speak to the actual mechanism other than what I read in the TSB that I was given that included in the procedures. I "think" Ford controls this upgrade process through it's infrastructure and when the dealer does the upgrade, they actually hook up your car to the download / install process via a PC and not any kind of USB thumb drive process like we do for small patches. I assume this in place so that the total load can be provisioned baed on what VIN is being loaded and what options are available for a give make and model etc. I asked the same question directly from the dealer who said they had an awful time getting it to work before mine. It seemed like they could have just saved off the file and upgraded all the other ones, but that ain't how it works :-( I'm not sure I care so much, but they sure should have made the backend a LOT more robust because they surely knew that people were waiting on this to fix a lot of issues.... which it did... and now caused more....

 

 

I had assumed this would be all key based. Most proprietary apps today are. It makes distribution that much easier. All services are in the software, they just get unlocked based on a key that is entered. i.e. Ford has a key that encrypts your VIN that states what you have. This way it's unique to your vehicle so it can't be shared/copied, but all installs are identical. One copy of the software, the key just turns on NAV etc. Oh well! Not the way I would have designed it, but I guess Ford is new to the software world. It just doesn't seem very efficient to me, but I guess I don't know the whole story either!

[iphonesrk]

OK. The upgrade to v2 was finally completed.

 

I tried the device and one thing immediately appeared to be "fixed" and that is bluetooth streaming from my iPhone4 seemed to work fine now. Granted, album art and song/album text didn't appear, but that was no deal breaker anyway. I still couldn't "browse" the iPhone4 music and playlists, but I could open the iPhone, pick a playlist manually from the phone, start it playing, after which the steering wheel controls would allow skipping forward and backward. Since in the older version of sync, bluetooth from the iPhone4 gave me nothing except a screen showing that something should be playing but no actual audio, I was pleased at this one small step.

 

Then, I also plugged the iPhone4 into a USB port and things seemed to work wonderfully. Of course all the playlists showed up, all the album art, the song titles and album titles, etc. I was happy to see this. And, even after the sync finished indexing the device, the steering wheel controls maintained the skipping of songs forward, backward along with the volume.

 

So far, so good. Wonderful.

 

Then, I got an incoming call to my iPhone4. The song paused, I answered the call, when it was finished and the call ended message sounded, the song "resumed", but NO sound came from the speakers. I could presumably pause, skip forward or back, etc, etc, but still no sound came from the speakers. I then unplugged and replugged in the iPhone4 USB cable and sound began again. So, a slight problem?

 

In the previous (1.3) version of the sync software, after a phone call finished, the sound of the interrupted audio was never affected; at least, not for me.

 

Next thing I tried: remove iPhone USB cable and plug in a 32GB thumbdrive into the other USB port. The thumbdrive has about an 8GB library and some play lists. Sync sees the device! Says it's indexing it. I wait quite a couple minutes, and then try to browse the device. In the previous version I was able to see things on the device after about a minute. This time, after hitting browse I get a panel to push that says explore device. I hit that control and I get a "Playlist empty" message. Huh? What's with that? I waited many minutes and still that's all I would get. I figured the device must have been corrupted from the previous sync version so I rebuilt the entire drive along with M3U playlists. Same thing.

 

So that was a real step backwards.

 

The only other experience so far (I've only tried some things while trying to actually do my job today) is that at one point I was trying to adjust the volume using the steering wheel control and it didn't seem to be controlling anything. So, I switched to the knob on the dash. It too seemed to have no control. But then, the volume began varying wildly and, as if I had no control (I didn't) it went so high I was afraid it would blow the speakers. It was then I realized that I did have control, it was just taking a Loooooooong time for the system to recognize and act on it so the extreme lengths I was turning the knob back and forth was taking time to be recognized and acted upon.

 

Do any of you have any thoughts as to whether or not whatever processor they've chosen for this device is in some way very underpowered? I see MANY long delays in action from pressing the panel to seeing results. Anyone else seeing these things?

 

I have more detailed testing to do on other facets of this "upgrade" but that's what I've seen so far. I have no navigation capability so I can't comment on that. Sorry.

[Wilsons66604]

I had assumed this would be all key based. Most proprietary apps today are. It makes distribution that much easier. All services are in the software, they just get unlocked based on a key that is entered. i.e. Ford has a key that encrypts your VIN that states what you have. This way it's unique to your vehicle so it can't be shared/copied, but all installs are identical. One copy of the software, the key just turns on NAV etc. Oh well! Not the way I would have designed it, but I guess Ford is new to the software world. It just doesn't seem very efficient to me, but I guess I don't know the whole story either!

That's the way Microsoft does Windows 7. You have the full install but need the key to unlock the version you bought.

[Wilsons66604]

OK. The upgrade to v2 was finally completed.

 

I tried the device and one thing immediately appeared to be "fixed" and that is bluetooth streaming from my iPhone4 seemed to work fine now. Granted, album art and song/album text didn't appear, but that was no deal breaker anyway. I still couldn't "browse" the iPhone4 music and playlists, but I could open the iPhone, pick a playlist manually from the phone, start it playing, after which the steering wheel controls would allow skipping forward and backward. Since in the older version of sync, bluetooth from the iPhone4 gave me nothing except a screen showing that something should be playing but no actual audio, I was pleased at this one small step.

 

Then, I also plugged the iPhone4 into a USB port and things seemed to work wonderfully. Of course all the playlists showed up, all the album art, the song titles and album titles, etc. I was happy to see this. And, even after the sync finished indexing the device, the steering wheel controls maintained the skipping of songs forward, backward along with the volume.

 

So far, so good. Wonderful.

 

Then, I got an incoming call to my iPhone4. The song paused, I answered the call, when it was finished and the call ended message sounded, the song "resumed", but NO sound came from the speakers. I could presumably pause, skip forward or back, etc, etc, but still no sound came from the speakers. I then unplugged and replugged in the iPhone4 USB cable and sound began again. So, a slight problem?

 

In the previous (1.3) version of the sync software, after a phone call finished, the sound of the interrupted audio was never affected; at least, not for me.

 

Next thing I tried: remove iPhone USB cable and plug in a 32GB thumbdrive into the other USB port. The thumbdrive has about an 8GB library and some play lists. Sync sees the device! Says it's indexing it. I wait quite a couple minutes, and then try to browse the device. In the previous version I was able to see things on the device after about a minute. This time, after hitting browse I get a panel to push that says explore device. I hit that control and I get a "Playlist empty" message. Huh? What's with that? I waited many minutes and still that's all I would get. I figured the device must have been corrupted from the previous sync version so I rebuilt the entire drive along with M3U playlists. Same thing.

 

So that was a real step backwards.

 

The only other experience so far (I've only tried some things while trying to actually do my job today) is that at one point I was trying to adjust the volume using the steering wheel control and it didn't seem to be controlling anything. So, I switched to the knob on the dash. It too seemed to have no control. But then, the volume began varying wildly and, as if I had no control (I didn't) it went so high I was afraid it would blow the speakers. It was then I realized that I did have control, it was just taking a Loooooooong time for the system to recognize and act on it so the extreme lengths I was turning the knob back and forth was taking time to be recognized and acted upon.

 

Do any of you have any thoughts as to whether or not whatever processor they've chosen for this device is in some way very underpowered? I see MANY long delays in action from pressing the panel to seeing results. Anyone else seeing these things?

 

I have more detailed testing to do on other facets of this "upgrade" but that's what I've seen so far. I have no navigation capability so I can't comment on that. Sorry.

Sounds like you didn't get any kind of an upgrade. Those are all symptoms that exist on my original version.

have you checked the SyncMyride website for installed versions

[oneandonlysimon]

I Just bought the 2011 Edge with the new update 2 days ago. I've faced numerous problems regarding BT streaming audio, connection to phone, and just last night my volume got stuck and would not change no matter what I did like turning the vehicle off, etc... I'm quite nervous as this point because I kind of feel as though i've made a mistake on my purchase. Another thing thats pissing me off is that none of my album art, phone pictures are displaying. I love the concept of this whole vehicle yet a lot of these small issues are starting to change my outlook on the new MyTouch. My sister's 2010 Fusion-Sync has none of these issues with BT or Sirius or just anything of this sort.

[curlysir]

After having the update installed by the dealer, did anyone else lose their "Sync Services" like "Vehicle Health" and "Traffic, Directions and Information" applications? Those are completely gone now. Where the Sync Services used to be, I now get just the Information tab with button to install Sync applications.

 

I have lost all functionally of the SYNC system after the attempt to do the upgrade. The upgrade did not work and I have basically a non functional system. The only control I have over the climate system, radio, phone is what is available by the steering wheel controls. Also no Navigational system or backup camera. The dealer doesn't know what to do as they have not been able to successfully update any 2011 Edges with the upgrade to date. They will be contacting Ford Monday and let me know what is next. I am impatiently waiting.

[curlysir]

I took my 2011 Edge in for the update yesterday morning. The dealership had already tried on five other 2011's with no luck so I guess I'm asking why they started on mine. I was not aware the update was failing. After a couple of hours, I called them and they gave me the back news: The update didn't load. I picked the car up and to my surprise I now have:

No Navigation

No bass or treble adjustment

No rear view camera

No seat heaters

No changes to the ambient light setting

No i next to the home button on the bottom of the screen

No compass

No 911 services

No clock setting by the GPS satellites - otherwise it resets to 6:00 everytime I start the car.

 

I would have thought they would be able to roll it back, but no, once they start down the path there is no going back. As others have said, the dealer made some remarks about the Ford servers going down. I can still drive the it, but none of the 'fun stuff' works. If I wanted to drive a boring car, I would have gotten a Chevy Impala! No word on when it will be fixed. I have a pretty high hassle factor level, but they are getting close to passing it. When they get it fixed, I expect not only everything to work, but some enhancements (Pandora) as well. The dealership is very apologetic, but they are my only route to Ford so I am starting there. They tell me Ford has 'all hands on deck' but is that just another 14 year old computer geek? Not having a lot of confidence in Ford now. The rest of the car is great!

 

My advise is to wait for the update until people start saying it is working before you take your Edge to the dealership.

 

I have the same situation as you, anything that worked by SYNC or My Ford Touch is hosed after the attempt at an upgrade. Does your radio work? Mine won't shut off even when the vehicle is shut off and the doors open. I have to lock the doors with the remote and wait for about 10 seconds for the radio to shut off. It will not shut off if I don't lock the doors.

[Wilsons66604]

For those folks having trouble after the upgrade,

Have you tried pulling Fuse 29 to have the system reboot?

 

It may help to clear it's throat after the trauma of the upgrade.

[guthman]

For those folks having trouble after the upgrade,

Have you tried pulling Fuse 29 to have the system reboot?

 

It may help to clear it's throat after the trauma of the upgrade.

 

Tried that... no good.... My dealer "assumes" that the given all the connection problems to the Ford servers, that the transfer got corrupt or didn't complete. I'm supposed to check back and see how they did with the other car they tried and still have there with the same issues... missing Nav, Synch Apps etc.

[jskinder]

After reading these issues with the update they are now doing I am alittle worried but going for it and will see what happens. May the force be with you

[curlysir]

After reading these issues with the update they are now doing I am alittle worried but going for it and will see what happens. May the force be with you

 

Good luck, as long as you are going in with both eyes open and aware of what may happen. I knew I was taking a chance my being one of the first "beta" testers for the new upgrade so I was not totally surprised when it failed. Hopefully they can get the procedure working this next week. The Edge ain't much fun to drive without Sync and the other stuff it controls.

 

And I have pulled fuse 29 and damn these new low profile fuses, I dropped mine behind the lower cover when I was putting it back in and had to use the spare. The fuse panel is in a terrible position for quick access.

[curlysir]

For those folks having trouble after the upgrade,

Have you tried pulling Fuse 29 to have the system reboot?

 

It may help to clear it's throat after the trauma of the upgrade.

 

No such luck, I also tried a master reset but no luck. And these new (at least to me) Low Profile Mini Fuses are a pain in the rear. I dropped mine when I went to put it back in and in went behind the lower cover, I had to pull the spare and use it. I started looking for a fuse to replace the spare when I discovered all my stock of fuses are the standard Mini fuse not the low profile. So I head off to the parts store to buy some and discover that the low profile fuses are not as well stocked as the standard mini. I ended up buying an assortment package with one each of the 6 normally used sizes. The parts store did have a five pack of the 20 so I picked it up also. So you may want to pick up some spares next time you are at a parts store just in case. Just remember they are the Low Profile Mini fuses not just Mini fuses.

[Chiller10]

I have the same situation as you, anything that worked by SYNC or My Ford Touch is hosed after the attempt at an upgrade. Does your radio work? Mine won't shut off even when the vehicle is shut off and the doors open. I have to lock the doors with the remote and wait for about 10 seconds for the radio to shut off. It will not shut off if I don't lock the doors.

 

My radio works as does the phone and basic climate. I will give them a couple of weekdays to figure it out and then try it again. From what I read on another post, even if the upgrade is successful, it seems like it is a step backwards from what I had. Volume control issues, very sluggish response from the system. I have read several other posts that suggested the processing unit may not be fast enough for this latest upgrade. Either they will need to provide (at no cost) a faster processor, or get some programmers to optimize the code so it will run better. I am waiting patiently, for now.

[Ctrl-z]

Tried that... no good.... My dealer "assumes" that the given all the connection problems to the Ford servers, that the transfer got corrupt or didn't complete. I'm supposed to check back and see how they did with the other car they tried and still have there with the same issues... missing Nav, Synch Apps etc.

 

Now that Ford is in the software development business for the first time, I'm guessing they are learning as they go. But it is almost inconceivable that a complex and potentially ruinous software update is allowed when the installer has no idea if the update they are installing is intact or corrupt. It should have been mandatory for data integrity checks on a local (dealer) device that contains the entire update (not one that is being transferred across a network, let alone a grossly unreliable network).

 

I had read warnings about Ford's lack of software development competence since before the 2011 Edge and MKX were even available for sale. I should have paid them more attention.

[iphonesrk]

Now that Ford is in the software development business for the first time, I'm guessing they are learning as they go. But it is almost inconceivable that a complex and potentially ruinous software update is allowed when the installer has no idea if the update they are installing is intact or corrupt. It should have been mandatory for data integrity checks on a local (dealer) device that contains the entire update (not one that is being transferred across a network, let alone a grossly unreliable network).

 

I had read warnings about Ford's lack of software development competence since before the 2011 Edge and MKX were even available for sale. I should have paid them more attention.

 

In all fairness, although I'm pretty disappointed in this SYNC implementation software, I think Ford is using Microsoft software. It's further complicated by the fact that other factions are involved including those who programmed your cellphone and media device and what functionality they provide to the SYNC. E.g., I have an iPhone4 with 'issues' but some of them are because the iPhone, designed and supported by APPLE, has a reduced capability with Bluetooth. Meanwhile, Ford is really caught in the middle when the customer complains. That's not to say Ford is in any way blameless, only that they are not the only player.

 

I'm actually quite pleased with my 2011 Edge SEL but the SYNC is driving me crazy. I mean, it DOES control a lot of funtionality of the vehicle and its deployment has been less than satisfactory, so in that regard Ford did drop the ball. Sometimes I really wonder whether a scenario in which, for example, Ford, Apple, and Microsoft have to get along can ever happen. And, I wonder how many times I'll have to pull over my Edge and "reboot" it. And, the talk of the end user having to "pull the fuse" is absolutely unacceptable.

 

Just my 2 cents.