Day 1 with Volt and MyLink

[drbruns]

Hello everyone. It was a hectic day for me. My wife and I went to the dealer at 10 to sign the papers and pick up our Diamond White Volt.

(Note: I had this ready to post around midnight, but Verizon lost my internet right as I was posting so sorry for a late post).

Things went smoothly. I had bought the cabin air filter from Allen English, brought it with me and had my dealer install it. MSRP was $44,330 and we got $1000 off. We went ahead and did the 72 months 0 interest (no brainer). We passed on the $3300 GMPP plan and went with the $10 for 300 OnStar minutes (thank you DonC).

While we were at the dealer, our son had a medical situation (poison ivy reaction) and we had to scramble to get him out of school, to the doctor, and the local CVS (too bad we don't have a local Walgreen's with EV charging).

After the orientation and dealing with my son, I came home and registered for OnStar, MyVolt, MyChevrolet, MyLink and Voltstats. Plugged into the Blink level 2 charger in the garage with no problems.

The first hurdle was trying to get the garage door opener programmed in the Volt. It seems the Volt requires you to have one of the portable openers in order to program the Volt since it learns its commands from the remote and not the actual door opener. The bad news is that I only have one of the original openers and it has crappy contacts. I could not get it to work, so I went back to the CVS to get a new battery for the garage opener (too bad my son's prescription was not ready) to see if this would solve the problem. Unfortunately, it didn't and I ended up having to go to Sears and get a new portable garage opener remote. I came back home and this required a new reprogramming of the entire unit. Once this was completed, I was able to use the new portable opener to program the Volt. This is a crummy way for GM to implement this capability. My wife's Prius can be programmed by talking directly to the garage motor and does not require a portable remote. This cost me a couple of hours this afternoon, but I digress.

First thing- the Volt is AWESOME and Sport + Low totally rocks. As many of you have reported, the rear camera is really crappy.

Now for a preliminary MyLink report. I paired my Android phone with no problem. Started Pandora on the phone, clicked the phone icon on the steering wheel and said "Tune Pandora". Within a couple of seconds, Van Morrison's Moondance was piping through the speakers and the album art appeared on the center display. I then pressed the phone icon again and said "Thumbs Up" which was acknowledged by the Volt and Pandora.

I then put in my iPod Touch with 2143 songs. The first song in the library started playing with the message "indexing..." displayed on the console. After about two minutes, the indexing was completed and I was able to then issue iPod MyLink commands. My first command was "Play artist" and the Volt then asked me for the artist's name. I said "The Beatles" and the "Let it Be" album starting playing, with album art appearing. Again, as many of you have reported, the album started playing alphabetically instead of track order. I must admit this is pretty lame and will hopefully be fixed by a software/firmware upgrade in the future.

I then went through the gambit and asked MyLink to "Play Genre", "Play Album", and "Play Song". In the case of Play Album, I said "Let it Be" and MyLink presented me with two choices from my iPod: "Let it Be" and "Let it Be Naked...". I was pretty impressed.

I then pushed the phone button and said "Tune FM 100.3". The source switched and FM and Big100.3 classic rock started playing (no album art, but artist and song title).

I then pushed the button again and said "Tune XM 20" and the source switched to XM and the E Street station started playing.

I made a couple of bluetooth calls and had somebody call me back, all working properly as you would expect.

I did not try a USB disk with music, but plan to try it tomorrow. I don't expect any issues, but you never know until you test it.

I did find that once you ask MyLink to play something specific, the Shuffle option would then only shuffle through whatever you had on the iPod that you last told it to play. So if you asked it to play artist, "The Beatles", you could then only shuffle through all songs done by The Beatles. I didn't see anyway to then cancel the custom selection, resume, and then have it shuffle through your entire library. I will do some more experimenting, but normally I leave the whole iPod on shuffle and let it play whatever, so this may not be a big deal for me.

Then after dinner and having to deal with my son leaving the lights on our Taurus and having to jump it, I then went into the garage and turned on the Volt for some more orientation.

I hooked up an old iPod Classic with 3800 songs to see how it compared with the iPod Touch I used earlier. After 10 minutes of processing, the" indexing..." message went away. I then tried to issue some MyLink commands and was told the system was still indexing and to wait. I hit Menu and observed that 3780 of the songs were in the index but MyLink apparently choked although it presented itself as completing the indexing. However, none of the MyLink commands would work. I could play songs and select songs from the menu, but the voice commands would not work apparently because it thought it was still indexing the iPod. I am not sure if this is related to the fact it is an old iPod, or is 160gb with some videos also on it, or if it exceeded some magic number of songs. I was planning on using my newer iPod touch with the Volt anyway and leave the old iPod classic on my old 380SL. This will require some more work on my part to see if there is some limit on the iPod Touch that chokes MyLinks's ability. More to follow on this.

While in the garage, I thought about streaming Pandora through my Android and then trying to place a call. At this point, I was having data connection issues with my Verizon Wireless and couldn't get a good 4GLTE connection on my phone. After a phone reboot, I was able to connect to Pandora at a lower speed. When I tried to make a call, it didn't work very well. I called my home number and heard my voice over the answering machine play over the song playing on Pandora. This could be a serious problem. I don't know enough about the Bluetooth technical protocols to discern if this is a problem or a limitation since I was asking my Android to do two simultaneous Bluetooth tasks. However, I would think that streaming Pandora via Bluetooth and receiving a call via Bluetooth would be something that people would expect to work.

I think that's about it for MyLink for now. I do have a couple observations/general Volt questions for the group.

When coming in my driveway, I am slightly dragging the front air dam. I don't think this is a big deal since it seems to have been designed to deal with this.

Secondly, when parking the Volt, I generally have the iPod or XM radio on. Once I hit the power button to turn off the Volt, the radio continues to play until I open the door. Once the door is opened, the center console goes blank and the Volt appears to be turned off as I would expect. With all the posts about the 12v battery going dead, I want to make sure I am shutting down the Volt properly to avoid a dead 12v in the morning.

This evening, I had the Volt charging with my level 2 Blink and had to make a couple quick runs. I unplugged the charger and went about my business and came back home. I did receive text messages from the Blink saying the charging was interrupted. I got no such message from OnStar. Once I was through for the evening, I had the Volt back on the charger and after a couple hours, the charging was complete and I received texts from both the Blink and Onstar indicating the charging was complete. I am wondering why I didn't get a "charge interrupted" text from OnStar. The Alerts for both charge interrupt and complete are set similarly.

Another question I have relates to delayed charging. I can set delayed charging using either the Blink or the Volt. For those of you who do delayed charging, which method do you use? I would think it could be an issue of you had them both set.

Anyway, I knew there was a lot to learn about the Volt, but I think I have only scratched the surface. I am hoping my wife is content for the moment with her 2008 Prius, otherwise we may soon be a two Volt family.

As soon as I can figure out how to include pictures, I will post a few.

Peace-Dennis

[drbruns]

Ok. I just figured out how to use the upload manager. Here are some quick pics from day 1. My beagle Rocky likes the leather interior.100_1118.jpg100_1117.jpg100_1120.jpg100_1119.jpg100_1122.jpg

[Bob_Livonia]

We passed on the $3300 GMPP plan [...]

As many of you have reported, the rear camera is really crappy.

Wow, you had a busy day. Congratulations on your new Volt.

The GM Protection Plan (GMPP) is a high-markup item for dealers. If you shop around, you can get the same GMPP from another dealer for much less. I bought my GMPP from a dealer in Georgia that does a high volume of GMPP business at a low mark up. (Thank you for the tip, Gordon). I paid $1,200 for a 4-year / 100k mile $0 deductible plan that best fits my driving schedule. There are a lot of other options. If you are interested, I can send you details (you can click my name on the post and send a private email - I'm not sure if this is the forum for advertising competing prices, or you can just reply to the post if you want, and I will probably see it.

As far as the backup camera, I am quite satisfied with it, especially the grid feature. Yes, you could have high definition at a cost, but what is the purpose? You can clearly see what you need to see, and you are not using the camera to broadcast the Super Bowl. And living here in Michigan, the lens is often covered with snow / slush, rain splash, mud, dust, or worse. Oh, and you need to be careful about not scratching the lens cleaning it off.

My 2008 GMC Yukon XL has an older version of the camera. At 65,000 miles on the 4 year old Yukon, this is the only item I have needed to use my GMPP on. It would have cost me $500 to replace it otherwise. (I know, service parts cost is a separate issue). But had it been a HD super-high quality, I can imagine what the replacement cost might have been.

I know GM has been looking at wide-angle cameras, but then there are usability and driver perception issues, and probably liability issues if they advertise it as wide angle but someone misses seeing an oncoming car in the non-proportional image.

[drbruns]

Thanks Bob- I just sent you a PM.

My main gripe about the camera is this image is very dark. My wife's Prius has a decent backup camera. I would think GM could at least emulate that.

Last week someone asked me about MyLink and the backup camera. I forgot to mention in my initial post that my camera does not have gridlines. I was kind of expecting this since grid lines seem to go with Nav and MyLink and Nav are not compatible.

[holland_patrick]

Onstar will not report a charge disconnect only a charge interruption ie if the cord is still. Connected to your car and power is lost. I'm not sure about if your alarm is set and you get unplugged.

[Bob_Livonia]

My main gripe about the camera is this image is very dark. My wife's Prius has a decent backup camera. I would think GM could at least emulate that.

Last week someone asked me about MyLink and the backup camera. I forgot to mention in my initial post that my camera does not have gridlines. I was kind of expecting this since grid lines seem to go with Nav and MyLink and Nav are not compatible.

Go to the configuration menu and choose "display", then "backup camera". You should be able to check the box to turn on the grid lines.

If you go to "dimming" under display, check that it is on "auto" and not "night".

As far as the front air dam, I have the factory air dam and haven't had any problems in 30,000 miles. It scrapes occasionally going into a driveway, but it is very flexible and hasn't been damaged. If you really scrape it, the tabs in the corners will come out to give it more flexibility; just push them back in. My biggest concern is not running into parking blocks at the front of the parking space (it's a non-issue in my Yukon XL). The ultrasonic park assist works pretty well telling me when to stop.

[drbruns]

Onstar will not report a charge disconnect only a charge interruption ie if the cord is still. Connected to your car and power is lost. I'm not sure about if your alarm is set and you get unplugged.

Thanks. This makes sense.

[Red Volt]

I would let the car control the delayed charging.

The reason you car didn't tell you there was a charge interruption is that you unplugged the car after unlocking it. If you unplugged the car while it was locked, the horn would honk (though you can turn this off on a 2012) and it would text you.

I sometimes forget to stop the charger (Chargepoint) at work before I unplug my car. I'll be going to lunch and get a text your charging was interuppted. At home I have the Voltec, so it's doesn't have the notifcations, etc. You can set up your Blink account to not do it I think.

[GeorgeH]

Wow, so GM is still managing to screw up song ordering!?

For what its worth, I wouldn't assume its going to be fixed. Its been broken all along on the non-MyLink cars, and from what I've read it also works wrong on every other GM car.

It seems most people fix it (as I did) by using a tool to put the track numbers at the start of the title so they sort correctly. That'd infuriate me if I had to do it with my iPod/iPhone collection, but it wasn't a huge deal to create a copy of the tracks I wanted in the car and convert them prior to copying them to the HDD.

[Bob_Livonia]

I would let the car control the delayed charging.

Since this came up, at the risk of hijacking the post, and rather than starting a new thread (which I still might), I have been experiencing a problem with delayed charging. I set it from my Volt and use a Voltec Level 2 (240V) EVSE. The Voltec doesn't offer a delayed setting.

Several times, including last night, my Volt did not begin charging at the pre-set 11 PM. Rather, the large green indicator on the vehicle was off, and the right LED on the Voltec (of the LED pair) was blinking red, instead of being a steady green. The cheat sheet says this means "fault" (how profound!). Simply unplugging the connector from the car and re-intalling it got the car charging, and it charged normally. This only happens on delayed charge. I had been using "immediate charge" as a workaround since I pay a flat $40/month for EVSE juice so DTE can collect data, rather than the variable time of day rate. I was trying to be a nice guy.

So I'm not sure if the problem is in the car or the EVSE. I called OnStar and the car has no codes. If the problem is repeatable (it takes a while from when I plug it in for delayed charge - the vehicle green LED is blinking slowly) until the fault condition occurs. I don't look forward to working with SPX service and may just opt for immediate charging from now on.