Driving to one of my favorite Austrian restaurants, Caf? Steinhof (yes, that?s really its name), my Voice Command was acting funny.

Actually, it wasn?t acting at all - it turned out it could not hear any of my commands (although it prompted me correctly). This was not limited to making calls via my mobile, I tried normal satnav commands and also called BMW Assist.

I pulled over and turned the car off for a few minutes before continuing. No change.

I rebooted the CCC - no change.

I continued to Caf? Steinhof and enjoyed my meal (they have G?sser Bier on tap).

When I came back to the car, everything worked.

So, is it the mic, the CCC, or something else.

 

Anyone?

 

The nav was most likely muted. When you are in the navigation map screen, on the very top-left hand corner you will see a volume icon. If the icon has a slash through it, then the entire system is muted....aside from the radio, cd, ipod etc. hope this helped.

 

Microsoft and Intel inside

Needs booting but could be a connection failure, too.

 

Thanks for the reply but it wasn't muted. It simply couldn't hear my spoken commands.

 

Ja, no MSFT in iDrive here... actually I don't think there are Intel processors either but I'm not 100% sure.

I hate spurious problems.

 

I am thinking TCU and/or software. I have seen enough strange interactions between software and TCU resulting in somewhat similar - although not stated exactly the same (that could be attributed to the individuals knowledge and throughness in testing) - issues. Seems as though some strange message may get to TCU on a temporary basis causing it to more or less shut down. May later clear and then again, may not. If/when TCU gets into this mode that it does not clear, it may have to be reprogrammed (and of course it is what ever the dealer has on the shelf at the moment - does not appear to be a specific long term fix yet identified. Worse case would be replacement of TCU

Of courses could be something entirely different but this unusual software/TCU interaction seems to be a growing trend I have noticed in a wide variety of BMW models.

 

Dave, that's along the lines I was thinking - which means it's really hard to troubleshoot.

I was hoping it was just a dead mic but that's obviously not it and the connection for the mic was good and tight.

My SA is out sick today but I'll see if the head of the BMW Assist program has any ideas (maybe he'll give me a new TCU that supports GSM)

 

I agree that it's not likely related to the hardware mic since the problem is intermittent. Sounds like the car needed a good sleep to reset whatever wasn't working.

I think this will be one of those typical "update the progman and see if it goes away" issues before they start throwing parts at it.

(BTW, when I first started reading your thread, I thought you were back in Europe and I was trying to figure out what car you were driving... )

 

well i only got back from Germany 2 weeks ago and leave in 11 days for Austria so you were close