ntrlsur

Is there any word on when the new version of SYNC is coming out and if it will avaialable by download from the website or if you have to wait to receive the USB in the mail.

 

I am currently having problems with my clock constantly resetting itself and hour ahead or behind. Of course, I also experience the lags in the rear view camera and voice controls as well as the almost weekly black screen and system maintenance.

According to the facebook for Touch they are not looking at releasing any software updates until after the new Taurus gets released to the public. Sometime this spring. Check out https://www.facebook.com/#!/fordedge on facebook. A bunch of people complaining about the same things we are complaining about.

Thought I would share this with you.

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2011/11/07/ford-bows-to-pressure-revamps-highly-criticized-infotainment-system/

Hopefully its the new OS as well as a touch update..

I have 2.8 and my index speed was OK. I get the same thing when restarting the car: Same song but 1 of playlist. That doesn't bother me at all,as it is in shuffle mode and will get through them all eventually anyway.

 

I am documenting problems and from what the dealer has said, iPods are causing problems. This seems to be the case as I have not had iPod touch connected in a few days and have had no problems. What i may do is connect iPod through audio inputs, not USB so it does not respond to voice commands and does not really use MFT resources like a USB connection

I typically do a shuffle too. Drives my wife crazy how I can go from country to pop. At least I am not the only one seeing this problem.

Wondering if anyone else has seen this.. I got the 2.8 install a few weeks ago. I always keep my ipod connected. When first connected it will index the music and then build the media commands. But it seems like it never finishes building the media commands. I keep about 3 gigs of music on my ipod it indexed pretty fast but here we are 2 weeks later and its still building media commands. I also notice that when I turn the car off come back later while the song resumes where it left off it starts my playlist over again. IE if i was listing to song 34 of 680 when i start the car back up its the display shows song 1 of 680. Its a bit wierd. Has anyone else seen this type of behavior with the 2.8?

They should be able to get it to work with those specs. While my phone is way faster, Sync/MFT doesn't have the burden of fancy animations nor 720p video. Don't get me wrong, a stronger more modern chip would be great and wouldn't have cost much more at this scale.

Not sure I agree there. I am a systems admin for a video game company that is very frugal so I am use to having to make do. While i would have no problem using a 600mhz processor with 512 of ram in a server that handles 100's of users aday there is no way I would run a GUI on it. The overhead for that would be a killer in such a system. The slowness as reported by alot of sync users is due to that proc being over worked. Its not a stand alone video processor so all the work that gets done and is reported back to the end user (changing music tracks moving back and forth between modules) is coming from the CPU in addition to the processing work that the commands require. Hell a 1gig P4 would have been the better choice and cheaper.

Not saying that you are wrong in your post just a disagreement from the sharp edge of the sword.

I've been where they're at on large software projects so I guess I have a little more empathy than most.

I have been there myself on large projects software and hardware and ford or at least one of there many consultants should have warned them that building a user interface system from flash of this scope was just plain stupid. Java would have been the better choice.

The hardware specs alone should have given them a moment of pause.

Core CPU: ARM Cortex A8 @ 600 mHz (most of the phones you are connecting to sync are faster)

2D/3D graphics controller

512MB RAM

2GB NAND flash memory

these specs would have been fine if it was a background system that had no GUI and just did background processing but for front line work its a bit weak.

I have had a few problems (APIM replaced, address book issues) But nothing really killer. Altho I agree for 40k I expect something a bit better. I also took the risk of buying first model year but for me it was the edge or the new explorer and when i bought in November they didn't have a release date on the explorer.

But how does Ford know who is having problems and who isn't and why would they want to send multiple update notices to people like choff1138 who is perfectly happy?

 

How is this any different than TSBs? Should Ford notify every owner every time a TSB comes out? Of course not (although I'm sure some people think that).

 

If you're having problems report them to the dealer. The dealer knows when and if a new version is available and whether it's applicable to your symptoms. If yours is working then there is nothing to be done.

 

Ford may still do a "service campaign" to notify owners once they get to a "final" version of the software but we're not anywhere close to that point yet.

While I agree with most of what you are saying But the dealers themselves have been a bit shady when its come to the mytouch systems. I have switched dealers because my purchasing dealer with jerking me around and lying to my face. Telling me they don't have the right equipment and then telling me that the updates are not available when I know for a fact they are. I have a buddy that use to be a ford tech and he has been providing me with the ford documentation.

If the dealers service depts. learn to actually provide good service and explain to the end user what's going on then maybe you don't need that kind of over-site from Mamma and Pappa Ford. But until they do you have to keep the customers in the loop. I am not saying a mailing to each and every customer but at least give a notice on the ford sync website.

Anyone know what this TSB is specifically for? I was told that there would be something coming out to fix the clock/calendar issue.

I will shoot an email to my guy and see if he can get me a copy of the TSB.

I found out Monday that yet another TSB (11-3-15) was issued for MFT updates last Friday, 3/11. While I'm in absolute full favor of code fixes and updates, what I cannot friggin' believe is that this is another one that MUST BE INSTALLED BY THE DEALER!! Why in the world has Ford designed a process for owner's to update software themselves, but yet the majority of code updates to date have required dealer installs? Huh? Why?

 

I was waiting and checking syncmyride to see if this update became available for a self-install. Not yet. (Could be it doesn't or won't apply to my particular vehicle.) Does Ford think all owners have to do is drive back and forth to their dealer to get updates? Absolutely insane. No difference whatsoever than requiring an iPod be taken to an Apple store to get a version update. It's SOFTWARE, not a head gasket.

 

Anyone know if BMW, Audi, Saab, Acura, Infiniti, any other automobile manufacurer requires multiple visits to dealers for software updates? Has this become the norm? Geez, Consumer Reports was right (but maybe not for the correct reason). If it's too complicated, rip the damn crap outa the car and go back to knobs and switches. I'm quickly losing patience and respect for anything MFT.

 

Some 2011 Edge, MKX and Explorer vehicles equipped with MyFord Touch and MyLincoln Touch may experience various concerns in the following areas: Clock intermittently displays incorrect time, voice recognition, voice recognition when using SYNC services, phone pairing, USB device detection, Travel Link download time.

Can you attach the latest TSB or do you not have access to it?

Also, aren't we supposed to be able to down load our songs into the computers hard drive rather then having to play them via BT? I can't get my photo's from my phone book to download or ringtones either. My Driver 1 seat selection was working but now it's not. I have spent hours setting things up and still have these small things to iron out but I LOVE MY CAR!!

There is no more hard drive based storage for the sync system. You can either hook up an mp3 player to one of the usb ports, burn mp3 cds, use a sd card, or use a usb device in addition to to bluetooth streaming to your sync system.

On the photos from the phonebook only a hand full of phones support the bluetooth protocol for that function. Check my other reply to your question to look at the compatibility list.

I just bought a new Edge. I haven't even had it a week. Some of my features are not working such as text messaging read aloud, cover art, etc. How can I tell if I need an upgrade or if my car already has it?

not all features will work with all phones. I know that text messages being read aloud only works with like 3 diffrent phones that no one has. Check out http://www.nsapp.fordtechservice.dealerconnection.com/sync/usEN/sync_us_EN_iop_1_30.pdf its a chart of what features work with which phone.

Feel stupid for asking, but what is an APIM? Did the tecs @ Ford Sync tell you to take it in to the dealer to get this update after you started having this problem? Did they first tell you to try a soft cell phone reboot and master reset first and it did not work? After you got the update, did everything work correctly again? The support for this stuff just isn't there is it, especially for dealers.....

The APIM is the brain of the sync unit. I actually took the problem to them. I got a buddy who use to be a ford tech and he still have his login to there technical website and I was talking to him about the problems I had and he looked it up for me and gave me the TSB that references the problem. The dealer I purchased the car from was clueless so I ended up taking it another dealer and they got me squared away in about 3 hours. almost 2 weeks to the day of getting the update then my APIM died, basically the screen never powered on and I could not access any thing that the touch buttons controlled so they replaced that for me. Took 2 days since I brought it in at the end of a business day.

Will do! Thanks! Do you know about how long it takes a dealer to download/install the update?

That is a great question. The answer can be anywhere from 3 to 4 hours to 3 days depending on if they fry your APIM while doing the upgrade. If they don't break anything in the process then its 4 hours for the update.

It says I have Sync Version Gen2 V-1.8

 

It says confirmed installations:

 

BT4T-14D545-BA

BT4T-14D546-AD

BT4T-14F496-AD

BT4T-14F497-AD

The newest version is Gen 2 - V2.4 give your dealer a buzz about getting the software update..

How do I find ot what software version I am running? On the MySync website? Or in the vehicle screen itself? Do you know what menu commands i use or go to to find out? Thank you!

The easiest way to check it would be through mysync website.

Hi all........i got my 2011 Edge on Oct. 29, 2010.........everything has worked fine until the last week or so.......I have one problem............when I do the my Sync turn by turn directions, it asks me of course for the city, state, and address, which I give and it takes fine..............then, it starts to download, and before the download of the directions is complete, it disconnects and says unable to download, would you like to retry? I say yes, it tries again, and fails again. I chatted online with a Ford Sync rep. and he suggested I do a Master Reset and Soft Reset on my cell phone. I tried this, but got the same results. FYI, I have a Blackberry Bold 9700 and my carrier is AT&T.............can anyone help? Do I need to get some kind of an update from the dealer? Or is there another way? Any help would be appreciated....thanks!

I had the same thing happen to me right before my APIM died on me. Check your installed version and see what software version you are running..

That's kinda funny that Apple works better on Microsoft than Microsoft does.

 

Can't do it, though. Too much DRM on the "I" products.

If you purchase music through Itunes or Amazon you can download DRM free mp3s now for the most part. I still buy CD's and import them into my collection unless its a hard to find CD then i buy from Itunes or amazon.

5600 in my collection, and yes, it's very painful. I used Media Player (ver 12.0.xxx) that comes with Windows 7. Has more features than the version on XP. Gets album art from the internet.....ONE SONG AT A TIME. But, when you're done, it works fine....on the computer. The same stuff doesn't work in the car. Even editing the text of the song and artist was a chore because for some reason, SYNC doesn't look at the file name, nor does it look at the meta tags (in properties). It goes to some unknown location to get this information and can only be edited in Media Player. Lots of songs had all caps or all lower case and it was driving me crazy to figure out why. I'm not saying that it can't be done with a third party program, but I was just trying to use stock Microsoft software. (Since SYNC was a MS product)

 

I wish ntrlsur would elaborate on just how you embed the album art in the mp3 file. That's what I'm trying to do, buy maybe just going about it the wrong way. When you use your external mp3 player, can you still use voice commands to select tracks and artists? Does the album art still show on the touch screen?

 

I think what's pissing me off the most here is that although I'm complaining about some trivial issues, there's no place to turn for a definative answer. There's no instructions how to use some of this crap and when something doesn't work, there's no troubleshooting guides. The dealers have no clue how any of this stuff works and there's no motivation for them to learn. They just want to make a sale. And lots of people on this forum have significantly larger issues than I do. I can only imagine their frustration.

 

Bottom line, new cars shouldn't outta be like this.

Check out http://lifehacker.com/#!397258/find-and-embed-album-art-in-your-mp3-collection It is a nice write up of how to embed album art into the mp3 file itself. I use my ipod nano and SYNC picks up the album art from the ipod database. Once indexing is done then everything works great voice commands and browsing from the touch screen. It has taken me weeks to organize my music collection properly. I have about 120K tracks total in my collection and all the diffrent naming was driving me nuts. I used a program called picard to update the metadata of music files. I did it for piece of mind so when i am searching for files the naming convention is all the same..

OK, now that I'm done venting, hopefully, here's some useful information. The problem with the USB and the AV not showing up in the infotainment display to the right of the speedometer can be fixed by just hitting the left button and then going back with the right button ( on the steering wheel).

 

I was also having problem getting album art to display when playing mp3's from a memory stick. After a lot of testing it appears the only way to do it is to create a separate folder for each artist. Place your music in the corresponding folder along with the album art. Then you have to re-name the album art in each folder to "folder.jpg". Unfortunately, this means that even though you may have songs from multilple albums, you can only dislplay one picture for each artist. But I guess it's better than nothing.

 

If anybody knows of a better, or different way to get this done, I'd appreciate hearing about it. Is there a place to actually get help from Ford or Lincoln about smaller matters like this?

You can embed the album art in the mp3 file. Not sure if that would work but it might help. I picked up an 8 gig ipod nano from a local pawn shop for 60 bucks and i let itunes manage the album art. It works nicely..

Just wanted to share some observations with you all....

 

I am convinced that this is a "Not for Prime Time" system that Ford released. It's hard to believe that a $49,000 vehicle takes over 40 seconds before the radio will turn on. That said, I've noticed that this system really does act like an old computer. If you try to input anything before it's ready, it will either significantly slow down or hang. This problem is more pronounced when using blue tooth and especially USB devices. A large stick (4 gig or greater) takes a lot of resources. Indexing takes up to 5 minutes and then it goes into creating a command list...another 2 or 3 minutes.

 

The other night, I input a command while a thumb drive was indexing and the system hung up and stopped playing music from it. The screen locked up with what was playing when it happened. I was able to change devices and play the radio and Sirius, but the screen was still frozen. I figured I'd just turn off the ignition and open the door to reset it, but when I opened the door, the radio continued to play. Not much more I could do, so I just left it and went in the house. About 10 minutes later, I heard the alarm going off from the car. Went out and shut it off. Turned on the car and a big red star showed up saying 911 service is unavailable. Another notice came up saying the fuel system has been shut off and I needed to contact the dealer for a reset. Apparently, the computer thought I had been in an accident. I can only guess that I may have made a call to 911 had I stayed in the car, assuming my phone worked, which it occasionally does. I reset the fuel system and things are back to normal.

 

The system is a great ideal and when it works, it is really cool. Unfortunately, Microsoft seems to have set a precedence to release products as soon as possible and fix them as they go along. It seems that this could be what's happening with this product. I don't mean to beat this down too much, because I still like the car and even the MLT, but you would think that a system that controls so many aspects of a vehicle would be more reliable than what this one is. I'm sure we'll eventually get to that point, but we should have already been there when we paid for the car. I've only had mine a little more than a week, so I'm just venting a little here.

Blame Ford not Microsoft. The underlying system which is a version of Windows CE is very stable. Its the ford software application that is causing the issues.. The underlying software has been running huge retail businesses POS terminals for at least 15 years almost. Ford did a crap job of writing the software. They used Java for alot of it and they should have been using C# or the .net framework.

Plenty of places are trying to download directly to the car -

Could be why the failure rate is so high.

I got my baby back yesterday! :hyper: Luckily the new APIM module came in yesterday morning fully updated! They installed it in my Edge and now everything is working great!

 

The service manager told me that the problem is the download speed from FORD and that when the download takes so long it sometimes fries the APIM module.

 

I hate that my Edge was in the shop for 3 days for what should have been a couple hour update... but I'm glad it's now fixed and everything is working great.

 

I finally have all the Sirius travel link features that I should have had all along... and my Sirius subscription runs out March 11. Now I'm trying to decided if I want to pay to extend it.

The service manager is lying to you. They do not download directly to the APIM. It gets downloaded to a USB stick and they have to use the ford program tool to upload it to your car.

If you pulled the fuse 29 inside the vehicle next to your left foot, keep it out and run the vehicle a few miles. Now re-installl it and it should boot up. Good luck . It worked every time for me. Fuse 29 is a yellow 20 amp fuse.

No fuse pulling was going to help my situation. It was dead to the world. I am lucky enough to have a dealer 1 mile from my house and another that is .5 miles from my office. Being that i paid for the car and the extended warrenty when its not performing up to my expectaions i take to the dealer get a loaner and be on my way. Its a bit irritating but the upside is i put miles on there car and not mine..

New 2011 Edge Limited, have had for 10 days and last night while out of town the entire MFT screen refuses to turn on at all when I got in and started the vehicle. Therefore, no audio, no phone, no sync, limited climate control, etc. I have read through here and seen others have suggested pulling fuse 29 to cause a reboot but tried that and it doesn't seem to make any difference?

 

Am I missing something in terms of getting this to reboot? Or when the whole thing refuses to start / turn on is it a bigger problem that I won't be able to resolve pulling the fuse. I've got a six hour drive home tonight, with below zero temps, and would really like to at least have a working radio versus sitting just singing to myself.

 

Confirmed Installations

SYNC Version

Gen2 - V2.4 BT4T-14D546-AG

BT4T-14F496-AG

BT4T-14F497-AG

 

Name Version Description Status Date

BT4T-14D544-BE Gen2 - V2.4 SYNC GEN 2 IMAGE CI 12/6/2010

BT4T-14D544-BE Gen2 - V2.4 SYNC GEN 2 IMAGE CI 12/3/2010

 

Thanks, Mike

Rochester, MN

Had the same thing happen to me. They had to replace the APIM which is basically the brain of the system. min 2 days at the dealer.. Sorry...

Ugh. The Edge went into the dealer for the second time today to apply the TSB. Not only did I not get the TSB applied to fix my rebooting MFT, my touch screen no longer works whatsoever. No navigation, not heated seats, not climate control, no back up camera, nothing! Apparently I need a new APIM module with no ETA on when they'll get it in. Not impressed.

I had the same thing happen to me. Dropped it off at 530 in the evening. They called me the next day saying they had to order a new APIM. It came in the following day and was ready by noon of the 2nd day. Wasn't too bad..