Hi,
I’ve connected AutoPi to my BMW 3 and the car disconnected the OBD port over night due to unexpected battery drain.
I am not sure if there is any solution, but if there is, please let me know. Otherwise I have one AutoPi for sale ;-(
Thanks,
Max
Hi @Max_Millian,
Hmm, that doesn’t sound right.
The AutoPi shouldn’t be able to drain your battery because of the build in power safe feature. The device will automatically power completely down when in critical state, so something is off.
So as you say this is something that is build into your BMW, to ensure that external devices doesn’t drain the battery. Does the AutoPi power up again when you turn on your vehicle or is it permanently off? What year is your BMW?
br
Peter
Hi Peter,
the year is 2009 and this seems to be built-in as the car reported that something was using the battery while stationary (during the night) and powered off all the equipment so the computer clock and some other features were reset during the night.
I’ve disconnected the AutoPi in the morning and did not have a chance to play with it today, but I can try to connect it back tomorrow when the engine will be on and I will be outside the garage with the mobile reception.
Thanks, Max
Hi @Max_Millian
Okay, while you are at it, can I get you to run the following command from the terminal:
power.status
Please run the command while engine off and while engine on. What we are looking for is the stn/battery/voltage section. I want to check the status of your battery when off.
br
Peter
Hi Peter,
the device does power on again, but the car computer is reset with the warning I’ve described before. It is some kind of a protection against short-circuit or battery going flat I assume.
I’ve connected to the device and did “power.status” in terminal, but received “An error occurred. Received Unknown Error from server” - did I do something wrong? The device was not connected to the mobile network at the time if that’s a problem.
Thanks, Max
Hi @Max_Millian
If you run the command from my.autopi.io, then the device need to be online.
If you run it through the local terminal, then it doesn’t need to be online.
If you still have an error locally, then bring the device online and run it from the Cloud.
I’m suspecting that you battery may be a little low, becase the feature built into your BMW is only something that will be active if the battery is in critical condition. But the command will tell us.
br
Peter
Hi,
i have the same problem, with a Mini Cooper S from 2014(F56), but only over night.
I tried the power.status command you suggested:
as you see also the power.help command is not working.
BR
Hi @BubbleRep,
Okay, lets see if we cant sort this out.
Try running the command from the Cloud terminal instead of the local terminal. Your device needs to be online of course.
Please send your findings to support@autopi.io, they will be able to investigate the results.
Br
Peter
Im running my autopi on a BMW 335 F30, 2012, and to me it seems like the autopi loses power every time I turn off the engine, even though nothing indicates I have a low battery voltage.
Hi @Kenneth_Ekman,
Yes we have had other users report this, but only on BMW. It seems that BMW has a built in system to prevent power drain from the OBD port.
Do you know if there is a setting in the menu to disable this?
best
Peter
I will check again, but if there was one, I think I would have noticed it already…
Are you using pin 4 and 16 to power the autopi?
https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/23047/obd-ii-power-when-key-not-in-ignition
Yesterday I plugged in a Bluetooth OBD-II dongle and checked a little (together with my phone). It seems when I had just unlocked the car it did have power, but only 12.0-12.4 Volts. To me it seemed like some interfaces was alive and some were not, since some requests seemed to get a timeout on the app. When starting the car everything worked fine, and a few minutes after turning off the ignition. However, after a couple of minutes it turned off the lights on the dashboard, and after that I am not sure that the OBD-II port did have any power. More tests are needed to verify the exact behavior.
Edit: If there was a “technical OBD-II Android app” which could help me debug / get a grip on which interfaces was alive and which were not I would be happy to install it.
We do use pin 4 and 16 to power the AutoPi. This is the only way to get power from the battery all the time.
About what you are seeing. The AutoPi will power itself down about 5-10 minutes after the engine has stopped. This is to save power on your battery. If the battery power is below 12.2 it will power down immediately. This is to ensure that your battery will never drain.
How does that correspond to what you are seeing?
best
Peter
I checked the event log and there is no indication there that it shuts down. Last events just tells me battery voltage is between 14.5 and 15 Volts (which probably indicates the engine is on and charging the battery).
Would I see it in the event log in both the above cases, or is the low-voltage shutdown done in hardware, so the software doesn’t notice?
Is it possible to adjust the voltage where it shuts down?
Edit: Is changed shutdown voltage or added delay time before cutting power possible?
Hi @Kenneth_Ekman,
You wont necessarily see anything in the event logs about it shutting down. This is mostly handled in hardware, but right now the events is just not populated (something for us to do). But when its online, you can check the power status by running this command:
power.status
This will tell you about what caused the AutoPi to go down and what triggered it to go up again. It will also tell you the current configuration of your power triggers.
It is possible to change the voltage settings, but I wont recommend it because it could alter the setup so much that draining of your battery is possible. But use this command to investigate the power configuration:
power.help
Best
Peter
Hi, I’m new to Autopi. I just purchased one for my BMW 7. Before connecting and playing with it, I would like to know if alle power related issues are solved and issues with resetting car system internals like click etc.
Looking forward to hearing for you,
Best regards,
Pravin
Hi Pravin
It seems that the configuration does need a little tweaking, to make sure the voltage levels are correct.
We are working on making it possible to change a lot of the configuration on my.autopi.io including the intervals that decides how often and for how long it should wake up. Increasing this interval would make it sleep for longer and thus not use as much power. So that could help solve the issues we have seen on BMW.
This will be available in the next few weeks.
And as mentioned above, it is possible today to tweak the voltage triggers that wakes up the device, so if the device wakes up at the wrong times, it can be reconfigured so that waking up only happens at the right time ie. on the configured intervals, or when the engine is started.
But as mentioned before every car is different, and for that reason I unfortunately can’t give you any absolute guarantees 
Just to clear up (if) any misunderstandings, the reset of the clock seems to not be due to the device being connected to the car via OBD ie. no wrong commands etc, but instead because the car is configured to react in a specific way if something is drawing power when the car is not running, in this case it just turns off all power, to prevent anything from draining the battery (which the autopi dongle won’t do anyway, as it has it’s own battery protection features).
I hope this answers at least some of your questions, if you have anything further, please let us know 
Best regards
/Malte
Hi,
First of all thanks for your quick response. Since you stated the following:
“And as mentioned above, it is possible today to tweak the voltage triggers that wakes up the device, so if the device wakes up at the wrong times, it can be reconfigured so that waking up only happens at the right time ie. on the configured intervals, or when the engine is started.”
Does this mean that GPS location and 4G location pinning is not realtime since there is no constant power supply?
Also do you recommend to wait for the update before I install the autopi in my BMW?
Looking forward hearing from you,
Best regards,
Pravin