Google street view

[gbjk]

Anyone got this working?

I've gone to a 3d google earth view of the exact place in the manual (munchen, odeonplaza or something) and still I don't get the icon of a man to click on next to the 30 yard symbol.

Thanks

Gareth

[shabazmo]

I am not sure what you mean. Are you expecting to be able to get street view because I don't think this is available as I don't have this on my A7.

[gbjk]

Exactly. Page ... 64 (from memory) of the a6 manual describes it and shows what it should look like.

[Timothy Nathan]

In mine it's p100 of the MMI manual. That says (referring to p106) that NAV>Settings>Additional Info must be on.

[gbjk]

Yes, I read that too ... but: Does it actually work for you?

Thanks

[Timothy Nathan]

I haven't tried. I have only played with most of the data services (lead me to a pizza restaurant near here, etc), not used them in anger.

[nealeb]

After the experimenting with phone/SIM settings that I tried the other day, I was more than a little surprised to see a (presumably Google Street View) photograph pop up on the screen as I was approaching home. As I was using my company SIM that is not supposed to be used for data I then had to find out how to disable data use again:) I guess that it could be a useful feature to help identify your destination if you've never been there before. Slightly less useful when it shows a picture of your own front door! Well, the door of a near neighbour, actually, as I never put my own address into the system...

[gbjk]

I would hazard that this may have been the panoramia (or whatever) pictures.

I've got wiki, reviews, and photos all working fine, and they come up under additional info or when you approach the route, or tap them on the touch pad.

But no street view :o(

If you *did* get street view, please let me know how!

Gareth

[aurora7]

nealeb, don't forget that the google maps data is cached for a while, so even with WLAN switched off you can still display google data if you have downloaded it whilst connected (and if the map display is still set to google rather than standard). I'm sure we turned off WLAN for your work sim??

[gbjk]

aurora,

Maybe I'm crazy, but what's wlan got to do with it?

WLAN is the car providing a wifi hotspot for devices in the car, and the car doesn't use it as it's own access point to the internet ever, right?

G

[Timothy Nathan]

Gareth,

In answer to your question, yes, I see the little yellow man, but when I scroll below 30yds Google Map crashes and resets.

Also, Heisenberg's cat keeps mewing a plaintive mew, in that whenever I try to film it, it doesn't happen :zx11:

[aurora7]

Gareth,

No you're not crazy, I was multitasking and being sloppy in the process.... not a good move. I didn't mean WLAN, which of course has nothing to do with it. I meant the data connection.

I did mean the bit about google caching maps data, so it would still be temporarily available even with no data connection.

Appreciate none of this helps you with your little man, nor Timothy with his mewing cat (think I shall have a lie down now).

[gbjk]

Timothy ... huh ... I can't scroll below 30yds!
We may have to get together to see this.
Though I'm going in to audi for them to look at it soon.

Aurora, No problem. Just thought I was going crazy!

[Timothy Nathan]

No, you can't scroll below 30yds. My reading of the book is that you scroll anti-clockwise to 30yds and then a further click takes you into Street View.

It doesn't though.

You are welcome to come here and play. I'll see your zebra and raise you a luke warm cornish pasty.

[gbjk]

Timothy,

Will see what we get out of crawley audi, but if you can't get yours to work either, then there's nothing to be gained. :o)

I try to avoid court unless I've done something wrong ;o)

[Timothy Nathan]

But it sounds like they fail in different ways. I see a little yellow man, sometimes with a hula hoop turning around him, but Google Maps resets, whereas you don't get to see the little man at all.

[nealeb]

I was following this conversation about as far as the pasties (assuming that any have been left by marauding politicians showing that they are men of the people) and I probably know about Heisenberg, but what's all this hula-hoop business? Is it an option on the S-Line? Do you get 19" and 20" variants?

I suppose that the picture I saw unexpectedly on my car might have been cached from when we played with Google Something with my house as the destination but apart from that one brief episode, I have never turned on data connections. As I remember, it looked like a Street View-style image rather than Google Earth but it hasn't done it since, presumably because I went through and checked that data connections were turned off. Still, I might have used a few forbidden bytes of my company SIM data bandwidth. Ah well, another slapped wrist from my manager...

What's more concerning is that my Galaxy S2 only seems to connect to the car once a day. For example, it connected fine when I went out earlier, but having stopped briefly and restarted, the car and phone did not seem to see each other. That is a very common phenomenon, I'm finding - stop for fuel and for the rest of the journey there's no phone available. I'm still trying to track down what's happening here, although stopping and restarting Bluetooth on the phone seems to fix it. Not exactly a user-friendly thing to have to do, though.

[Timothy Nathan]

You know how hourglasses are so 2005, and now we have to have circular turning symbols telling us to wait (thus using more CPU power on the symbol and less on what we are waiting for)?

Well, it would seem that when the car knows that there is a Street View view available, but hasn't quite worked out how or what to show you, the little yellow man is surrounded by a turning circle. It's obviously not a halo, or it would just go round his head, so I can only assume it's a hula hoop. But you do understand that we are in the world of Victorian playthings, not potato confectionery snacks?

[nealeb]

...and the little yellow man is a icon representing a politician after a surfeit of Greggs's pies?

I presume that it's something familiar to Street View users and therefore something of a mystery to me. As is so much of today's technology.

[Timothy Nathan]

Well, I got the bar steward Heisenberg licked and managed to video the behaviour I have seen.

I didn't make a commentary as I don't like the sound of my own voice, but I think it's fairly clear what I am doing.

Notice that the appearance of little yellow man is inconsistent and apparently random, I have no idea how and when he knows to come out of hiding.

Nealeb will see several fine examples of yellow man hula hooping.

Notice that each time Google Maps crashes, you can see it reboot in the bottom right as the word Google fills out from left to right.

http://youtu.be/qYdIARpZMa8

[MFGF]

Sigh. I hoped that after experiencing so many software issues when MMI 3G was new, I would have earned enough brownie points with the gods of onboard software stability to have no similar tribulations the next time around with MMI 3G+. It seems the Audi software developers must have forgotten to check the brownie point register when adding "negative undocumented features" just prior to releasing the code, and went berserk with them (again). I am going to raise a case with the brownie point ombudsman! What's the use in allowing you to earn brownie points if you can't cash them in? Harrumph!

;)

MF.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[gbjk]

Yep, I don't even get that far.
I wonder if, being presumably the newest car, mine has a newer release of software, and streetview is disabled because it's not currently stable?

As for Galaxy S2 - I tested this yesterday, and found it no more stable than my iphone using rsap, either.

[Timothy Nathan]

I suspect that rSAP really means Nokia.

When the gnomes of Ingolstadt looked at the market when they were first deciding how to do this, Nokia was predominant, so they got back in their holes and wrote software to support Nokia.

When, years later, they came out blinking into the sunlight, they found that Nokia was history and there were new things like iPhones and Galaxies but, owing to their Waterfall approach, there was no way back.

I imagine that it is very hard for a motor manufacturer, who must make €b decisions for 15 year investments on the hardware, to adopt modern, need-driven Agile software development. Not only is it counter cultural, but also a reflection of the fact that they must reasonably expect a certain proportion of the underlying hardware to be around for 20 or 30 years - way beyond the product life cycle of most consumer electronics and software.

[gbjk]

Went to audi to check it out, and it worked first time!

Previously I'd never seen the orange man. Went into destination mode, and he appeared.
Switched back to normal mode and he remained there.

Tested several times, and I can't work out what i'd been doing wrong. Maybe it wasn't in "Park"?

Anyway, the streetview works *flawlessly*. No complaints at all. No crashes, no issues.

Only tried it twice, on 8 different locations, though.

G

[Timothy Nathan]

On the other hand, my Google Maps now seem to be permanently crashed!

[MFGF]

What software version is your MMI currently running Timothy? Is it the latest?

[Timothy Nathan]

What software version is your MMI currently running Timothy? Is it the latest?
Is HN+R_EU_AU_P0518 the number you are looking for?

How would I know if it's the latest?

[MFGF]

I can compare it with mine! Oh... wait... Not for three weeks! Darn! :) Maybe gbjk could post his version up too so you can compare a broken vs working implementation?

[gbjk]

Son of a Mitch!

So: Testing yesterday at audi and when I got back here, using RSAP + 3 mobile SIM + samsung galaxy s2, everything worked fine.

Testing after that with vodafone + iphone rsap *OR* (another vodafone) SIM in dashboard, and found that intermittently:
- Man doesn't show for ages, then suddenly appears
- Google earth crashes as per others when you go to street view

So today I'll test to see if it's either 3 mobile sim OR samsung galaxy making it work.
I expect it can't be either, because once RSAP is working, or SIM is inserted, it's "all the same".
So I'm expecting to find it still crashes now, and yesterday was ... lucky?

Possible vector is: Better 3G connection allows faster data transfer, so streetview doesn't crash.

Will update later.

[Timothy Nathan]

Thank you.

My failure is on Vodafone, but I have a T-Mobile SIM I can try it on, I'll report back on that as well.

[gbjk]

Tested for 20 minutes with 3 mobile sim in galaxy S2 and in dash, and again with iphone.

*Cannot* get orange man to show again.
Doesn't matter if I'm in destination view, or just the "moving around view" you get when you press the dial down from normal nav.

All tried in one location which worked fine yesterday.

Damnit.

Also got some timings:
Sim in Dash connects 3-5 seconds
RSAP galaxy s2 connects 15-20 seconds
RSAP iphone connects 25-35 seconds

[Timothy Nathan]

I have found that the most reliable way of getting the orange (I would say yellow) man to appear is:

Create a route
Single click on the main dial to light up the other options
Go down one to the twisty arrow (follow route)
Click on that
Follow the route by turning the dial, the little man soon appears.


You see me doing this a number of times in this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYdIARpZMa8).

There are other ways, but that seems the most reliable.

[Timothy Nathan]

We have our answer. It works on T-Mobile, not Vodafone.

Simple as that!

[MFGF]

We have our answer. It works on T-Mobile, not Vodafone.

Simple as that!

What???? The carrier makes a difference? That's staggering!!

[Timothy Nathan]

All I can say is:

Vodafone SIM in Nokia via rSAP -> Fail
Vodafone SIM in dash -> Fail
T-Mobile SIM in dash -> Success

[MFGF]

Hmmm. I wonder if some mobile service providers compress images to reduce the amount of data passing through their network, and this is causing the Google MMI interface to crash? I might go googling to see...

[aurora7]

Just tried my "3" data sim in the dash - no little green/yellow man.

But my car is nearly a year old so might have more outdated online services?

[Timothy Nathan]

The appearance of the little yellow/orange man does seem somewhat random.

Have you tried my suggestion of going into scroll mode and tracking slowly along the route, as in the video?

[aurora7]

Yes... I re-created your video (different location) and traced a short route (at 30 yds) from beginning to end. I then went into central London and wandered around a few streets (using the touchpad). Did a few other random things. No man.

Haven't tried MyAudi; fell out with that many months ago (abysmal piece of software). Should I try to make friends again?

[Timothy Nathan]

Haven't tried MyAudi; fell out with that many months ago (abysmal piece of software). Should I try to make friends again?

Absolutely not. It would appear to be total cr@p and utter pants. Audi should be ashamed.