My wife got her Austral on Monday (Techno Esprit Alpine - Iron Blue / Black roof). I was the one who got to drive it back and once home I spent some time going through setting up our separate driver profiles.
Getting the Renault account activated repeatedly failed (I still need to check whether she's done it or not) but most of the profile setup seemed to go reasonably well.
One problem I have ran into though that I don't seem to be able to resolve is getting the USB audio working satisfactorily.
On the first profile I'll select the audio source as USB and then select a folder (playlist) and track and the audio functions all work fine. You then switch to the 2nd profile and select USB as the audio source and it doesn't recognise that the USB stick is there. If you remove and reinsert it finds it and again you can play audio.
The problem is that if you go back to the first profile again it now doesn't recognise the USB stick is inserted unless you remove and reinsert again. At that point you are then back to square one again on the second profile and it's a vicious circle.
My wife also complained the other day that the audio wasn't detected by default when she got in the car even though it was already set in her profile (in fairness though this could have been a legacy of me having been messing around before she used it on that occasion).
I've never known anything so messed up. Every other car we've ever used USB audio in has just worked regardless of whether the stick has been removed or not. Mine even continues from where it was in a track after I've removed the stick and added more tracks to the folder it was playing from.
Has anyone else had anything similar? I did see someone post the same issue elsewhere but without any replies although they claimed they had got it to work for a while once.
At the moment I'm just copying some playlists to another stick in the hope that maybe having 2 sticks in at the same time will allow us to use one for each profile. Heck of a waste of a USB slot though.
USB audio shared across profiles
Can confirm from trying it today that having 2 USB sticks in (1 for each profile) didn't work - not as I really expected it to.
Also, experienced the other issue of the USB audio being lost between drives even if the profile wasn't changed.
Almost hoping ours is one of those identified as needing to be recalled as per Uvox2's other thread regarding speed sign detection / HUD issues.
My wife's car is through the Motobility scheme so hopefully that will make any potential dealings a little easier if contact with the dealer gets 'awkward.
Also, experienced the other issue of the USB audio being lost between drives even if the profile wasn't changed.
Almost hoping ours is one of those identified as needing to be recalled as per Uvox2's other thread regarding speed sign detection / HUD issues.
My wife's car is through the Motobility scheme so hopefully that will make any potential dealings a little easier if contact with the dealer gets 'awkward.
Having done an extremely long drive yesterday I was able to gather a bit more information regarding USB audio.
Between stops the system only automatically detected the USB was present around 30% of the time. However, except for once, when the stick was reinserted it carried on playing from the point it was previously at. This behaviour was all without changing profiles though as it was only me driving. Once we got home and I set the profile back to my wife's I again had to reinsert the USB stick and, although the folders came back instantly, it didn't detect which folder / track she had previously been listening to.
The other thing we noticed was that with shuffle on we suddenly started getting lots of the same tracks playing again on the latter parts of the journey. Given the folder/playlist we were playing from has over 1700 tracks in that was a little surprising. I'd also noticed earlier on the drive that most of the tracks played seemed to start with titles that began with the letter A or B. It therefore came as no surprise when I examined the tracks in each folder and could see that they weren't all displayed. Further analysis today confirmed that it is limiting how many tracks it's reading from each folder but I was surprised when I discovered that number was only 200! Both my wife's old car and my car have no problem handling folders with over a thousand tracks in them and although I never reached a limit I suspect that either could likely handle 5k or 10k maybe per folder or absolute limit. Now a few years ago I wouldn't have been surprised if a car limited the number of tracks in a folder to 99, or maybe even 1000 across all of the folders, but 200 seems like a very small number per folder for a new car and particularly so when it's powered by an Android based system.
Talking of Android, I also noticed when viewing the memory stick in the computer that the car has added lots of additional folders to the stick as well. The folders that the car adds can be seen in the attached picture. Moving the music folders from the root of the stick to inside the 'system added' Music folder made no difference to the 200 track limit btw.
Couple of things for me to try next are switching the file format from FAT32 to NTFS and also trying to insert a blank stick into the car so that it creates it's own folders etc. first before adding the music to it. I'm not hopeful of either working tbh but would be interested to know if anyone else has a USB stick inserted for music and if they are also seeing a track limit of 200 per folder.
Between stops the system only automatically detected the USB was present around 30% of the time. However, except for once, when the stick was reinserted it carried on playing from the point it was previously at. This behaviour was all without changing profiles though as it was only me driving. Once we got home and I set the profile back to my wife's I again had to reinsert the USB stick and, although the folders came back instantly, it didn't detect which folder / track she had previously been listening to.
The other thing we noticed was that with shuffle on we suddenly started getting lots of the same tracks playing again on the latter parts of the journey. Given the folder/playlist we were playing from has over 1700 tracks in that was a little surprising. I'd also noticed earlier on the drive that most of the tracks played seemed to start with titles that began with the letter A or B. It therefore came as no surprise when I examined the tracks in each folder and could see that they weren't all displayed. Further analysis today confirmed that it is limiting how many tracks it's reading from each folder but I was surprised when I discovered that number was only 200! Both my wife's old car and my car have no problem handling folders with over a thousand tracks in them and although I never reached a limit I suspect that either could likely handle 5k or 10k maybe per folder or absolute limit. Now a few years ago I wouldn't have been surprised if a car limited the number of tracks in a folder to 99, or maybe even 1000 across all of the folders, but 200 seems like a very small number per folder for a new car and particularly so when it's powered by an Android based system.
Talking of Android, I also noticed when viewing the memory stick in the computer that the car has added lots of additional folders to the stick as well. The folders that the car adds can be seen in the attached picture. Moving the music folders from the root of the stick to inside the 'system added' Music folder made no difference to the 200 track limit btw.
Couple of things for me to try next are switching the file format from FAT32 to NTFS and also trying to insert a blank stick into the car so that it creates it's own folders etc. first before adding the music to it. I'm not hopeful of either working tbh but would be interested to know if anyone else has a USB stick inserted for music and if they are also seeing a track limit of 200 per folder.
Initially I also had problems attempting to activate my Renault account. What I noticed was that I had created additional profiles for which the activation was not available. However, when I switched back to the very first profile, which is the "admin" profile, I succeeded to activate the Renault account.
Not sure if I understand the link to the Renault account, but is it just one account relating to the car and not separate accounts per user? I know the Google accounts are per user.
Yes, the Renault account is just one account set under the main (admin) driver profile which is the link to the connected services / subscriptions. That is shared across all of the other driver profiles so effectively belongs to 'the car'.
Thanks, glad I wasn't mistaken and did it the activation correctly
Ours is still being a complete git in terms of having to remove and replace the USB stick virtually every time you start the car just to get it to recognise the audio files on there.
Is anybody else using a USB stick for their audio and do you also have issues?
The other thing I was able to ascertain from doing some digging is that the limit on the number of tracks that can be inside a playlist seems to be a 'feature' of Android Auto that of course is present in Android Automotive. I was looking at some of the Google docs relating to the code configuration and it seems there isn't any manufacturer specific options available (in fact they seem to have removed some playlist options in later builds) although various people on various forums seem to report different numbers for the track limit at times.
I was thinking I'd just move over to using Spotify or something but I can never get it to login on the car and when I was digging around for info on the playlist track limit it seems that this is not tied to the source as there were people complaining that such limits also get applied if they were streaming playlists from other sources like Spotify as well.
Maybe I'm in the exception with the number of tracks I add to playlists but 200 does seem like a pretty low number really. I like to have several thousand so that I get a nice random selection of tracks that I enjoy, especially as most of my proper journeys are 3 hrs+ in duration.
Is anybody else using a USB stick for their audio and do you also have issues?
The other thing I was able to ascertain from doing some digging is that the limit on the number of tracks that can be inside a playlist seems to be a 'feature' of Android Auto that of course is present in Android Automotive. I was looking at some of the Google docs relating to the code configuration and it seems there isn't any manufacturer specific options available (in fact they seem to have removed some playlist options in later builds) although various people on various forums seem to report different numbers for the track limit at times.
I was thinking I'd just move over to using Spotify or something but I can never get it to login on the car and when I was digging around for info on the playlist track limit it seems that this is not tied to the source as there were people complaining that such limits also get applied if they were streaming playlists from other sources like Spotify as well.
Maybe I'm in the exception with the number of tracks I add to playlists but 200 does seem like a pretty low number really. I like to have several thousand so that I get a nice random selection of tracks that I enjoy, especially as most of my proper journeys are 3 hrs+ in duration.
I haven't tried USB devices across multiple profiles but I do have numerous USB issues, which is a pain 'cos I use it a lot. Namely:
USB stick errors as soon as plugged in. Messages: “You may need to reformat the device. Tap to eject.” on notification screen and when car is turned off. If the device source is selected when turning car on, I get the message “Unexpected error. Try again.” in the widget or the widget is blank. Changing sources from/back to the USB source enables playback but I have to reselect album/track again manually.
No voice control over USB music, it all has to be done manually!
If the USB device does work (play) when turning the car on, it does not often auto play from last position, I have to reselect album, track etc., or it will be paused and I have to press the Play button.
NB: I have tried 3 different USB stick make/model/size (16GB, 32GB and 64GB) with all types of formatting (FAT, ex-FAT, NTFS) and used 2 USB A devices with an adapter and a native USB C device which I purchased specifically to test. No errors on devices when running scans on laptop and they all work in other Renault cars.
I have also reset the App Permissions too in “Vehicle => Settings => System => reinitialisation option => reset application preferences” to no avail.
Spent 3 months with the multimedia team and no resolution. Its now been referred to the dealer.
Renault 'recommend' formating with FAT32 but thats not easily achievebale on USB sticks over 32gb as Windows will default to Ex-Fat and not give the FAT32 option. Not that it seems to make any difference whatsoever! However, I formatted a 16GB device in FAT32 with nothing on it, and that still fails, so it does not seem to be a file corruption issue.
For your issues, have you ever been asked to 'authorise' the USB stick when you put it in? You should be on first insertion. Maybe - just maybe - a reset of app permissions may help your issues. It might need to be done in both profiles.
There is also a limit of the system only being able to display 200 album icons (as I discovered when my 64GB stick had over 300 albums!), so the 'missing' playlist tracks may be the same issue?
Never had these issues with ANY car I've owned before or my wifes Captur now! So much wrong with this car software-wise.
USB stick errors as soon as plugged in. Messages: “You may need to reformat the device. Tap to eject.” on notification screen and when car is turned off. If the device source is selected when turning car on, I get the message “Unexpected error. Try again.” in the widget or the widget is blank. Changing sources from/back to the USB source enables playback but I have to reselect album/track again manually.
No voice control over USB music, it all has to be done manually!
If the USB device does work (play) when turning the car on, it does not often auto play from last position, I have to reselect album, track etc., or it will be paused and I have to press the Play button.
NB: I have tried 3 different USB stick make/model/size (16GB, 32GB and 64GB) with all types of formatting (FAT, ex-FAT, NTFS) and used 2 USB A devices with an adapter and a native USB C device which I purchased specifically to test. No errors on devices when running scans on laptop and they all work in other Renault cars.
I have also reset the App Permissions too in “Vehicle => Settings => System => reinitialisation option => reset application preferences” to no avail.
Spent 3 months with the multimedia team and no resolution. Its now been referred to the dealer.
Renault 'recommend' formating with FAT32 but thats not easily achievebale on USB sticks over 32gb as Windows will default to Ex-Fat and not give the FAT32 option. Not that it seems to make any difference whatsoever! However, I formatted a 16GB device in FAT32 with nothing on it, and that still fails, so it does not seem to be a file corruption issue.
For your issues, have you ever been asked to 'authorise' the USB stick when you put it in? You should be on first insertion. Maybe - just maybe - a reset of app permissions may help your issues. It might need to be done in both profiles.
There is also a limit of the system only being able to display 200 album icons (as I discovered when my 64GB stick had over 300 albums!), so the 'missing' playlist tracks may be the same issue?
Never had these issues with ANY car I've owned before or my wifes Captur now! So much wrong with this car software-wise.
