# Error Messages



## Love (Sep 13, 2017)

Has anyone had random warning messages pop up on screen? I've had the warning about using the manual release on the front doors a couple of times when a passenger was getting IN my car. It's happened multiple times, but vanishes before I can bug report it or take a picture. Maybe just a false trigger of that message from an outside handle opening? Just an assumption. (Both pictures here are not mine, just from the internet)









I've also had the "touchscreen unresponsive" message a number of times. It says to hold the scroll wheels down to reset, but usually after a few seconds it just goes away on its own, without having to reset anything. Which is good, but is odd behavior. 
Anyone else seeing odd messages? I don't think it's anything to worry about but am curious if it's just me. (Build 2018.4.9)


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## SoFlaModel3 (Apr 15, 2017)

So just to clarify on the first issue, you’re saying that you see the on screen error but no one has actually pulled the handle?


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## Love (Sep 13, 2017)

SoFlaModel3 said:


> So just to clarify on the first issue, you're saying that you see the on screen error but no one has actually pulled the handle?


Correct. I was sitting in my car by myself. My passenger entered the vehicle (passenger side, front seat) and the message triggered. I saw it before when I had a full car, we all entered about the same time, I was just a little faster opening/entering as I know my car and opened the door as soon as the mirror moved. When I got seated I saw it and almost panicked but noticed there was no way my front seat passenger could have possibly used it. Those are the two times I recall seeing it.

After my initial post, I emailed [email protected] as recommended above


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## SoFlaModel3 (Apr 15, 2017)

Bizarre, but hopefully nothing too bad to get fixed! You may also want to call your local shop and see if they can send mobile service out to you to disagnose as well.


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## Love (Sep 13, 2017)

SoFlaModel3 said:


> Bizarre, but hopefully nothing too bad to get fixed! You may also want to call your local shop and see if they can send mobile service out to you to disagnose as well.


Good idea. I'll see if I can get my own images if it happens again, and am hoping for 10.1 soon to see if that fixes it.
Had the odd speaker crackle twice this week that required a reset as well. My 4.9 is buggy!!!!


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## SoFlaModel3 (Apr 15, 2017)

Lovesword said:


> Good idea. I'll see if I can get my own images if it happens again, and am hoping for 10.1 soon to see if that fixes it.
> Had the odd speaker crackle twice this week that required a reset as well. My 4.9 is buggy!!!!


Ugh... hopefully it will all be good soon. I haven't had the speaker crackle again *knocks on wood*


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## mig (Jul 10, 2017)

Lovesword said:


> Has anyone had random warning messages pop up on screen? I've had the warning about using the manual release on the front doors a couple of times when a passenger was getting IN my car. It's happened multiple times, but vanishes before I can bug report it or take a picture. Maybe just a false trigger of that message from an outside handle opening? Just an assumption. (Both pictures here are not mine, just from the internet)
> View attachment 6478
> 
> 
> ...


I have had the "touchscreen unresponsive" pop up a couple times. Also, when pulling out of my garage "Autosteer disabled" error message. I'm guessing that second one is a good thing, but why issue an error when I'm clearly not going to cruise-control at 35mph into my garage with autosteer?


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

Lovesword said:


> Has anyone had random warning messages pop up on screen? I've had the warning about using the manual release on the front doors a couple of times when a passenger was getting IN my car. It's happened multiple times, but vanishes before I can bug report it or take a picture. Maybe just a false trigger of that message from an outside handle opening? Just an assumption


does the passenger door window appear to lower the same amount as the driver side door? maybe the error message is triggered because the glass motor isn't calibrated correctly (??)


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## Bokonon (Apr 13, 2017)

Wild guess on the "touchscreen unresponsive" error message... and I apologize in advance for the technical gobbledygook, but here goes....

TL;DR -- this is the equivalent of the "application not responding" message that you see on Windows, MacOS, and other common operating systems.... where the "application" in this case is actually the car's entire touchscreen UI. And just like on Windows, MacOS, etc., sometimes the application resumes responding after a few seconds and the message goes away, sometimes it doesn't and you have to force-quit the app or reboot. You're likely seeing it because Tesla's firmware engineers took an ill-advised shortcut or two in order to meet a deadline, and it will (hopefully) be corrected in a future OTA update.

So what does this type of message actually mean, and what triggers it?

Many graphical operating systems require (or strongly recommend) that a given program dedicate a single processor thread to updating the user interface, and perform all other non-trivial operations on any number of "worker" (background) threads. This programming model, when correctly implemented, allows the UI to remain responsive and smooth to the user, regardless of the computational intensity happening in the worker threads (unless, of course, the CPU is completely maxed out).

The downside is that this introduces some additional complexity for the software team, since the program now has to communicate across parallel threads. To avoid that additional complexity, there is always a temptation (especially when one is under a tight deadline!) to try to "get away with" performing a simple (but not completely trivial) operation on the UI thread. Do this once, and maybe no one will notice. Do it in a lot of places -- or, worse, do it within a loop -- and you'll start to see the UI act herky-jerky, or even freeze up entirely.

Meanwhile, most operating systems have internal diagnostics that are constantly monitoring available system resources to ensure that they are within a range of acceptable values. One such measurement assesses the responsiveness of an application's UI by monitoring its ability to respond to requests from the operating system itself. Think of it as a game of "Marco Polo"... if the operating system says, "Marco," and the application doesn't reply "Polo" within a certain number of milliseconds (possibly because it's too busy performing a longer operation better-suited for a worker thread), the OS is going to yell, "Fish out of water!".... which the user will eventually see as an "application not responding" message.

To the extent you can catch this message on-screen and file a bug report in spite of its presence, it will be immensely helpful for Tesla's firmware team. Presumably, the bug reports contain a snapshot of the car's memory (and/or other state) at the time of the report, so they *should* be able to identify the problematic operation(s) if they receive enough reports.

It's also quite possible that they already know EXACTLY where the issue is, because they left a comment in the code like this...


```
int doSomething() {
   // HACK: This really should be done in a background thread, but 
   // Elon is literally standing over my shoulder right now, and 
   // he is impatiently tapping the trigger on his Boring Company Flamethrower
   // sooo.... ima just gonna do this right here on the UI thread. 
   // Sorry, @Lovesword and @mig, whoever you are!
   LargeHumongousThing gigantor = new LargeHumongousThing();
   gigantor.doThatThingThatTakesForever();
   return 0;
}
```
(Not that I have any personal experience with this sort of thing... )


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## Love (Sep 13, 2017)

MelindaV said:


> does the passenger door window appear to lower the same amount as the driver side door? maybe the error message is triggered because the glass motor isn't calibrated correctly (??)


This is a great idea to test MelindaV. Especially since I've only seen the error sporadically, doing some testing to try and recreate the event is logical step. I'll try opening the passenger door numerous time to see if I can prompt it to show up again. Then hopefully capture the image at least on a phone pic, but even better would be the bug report. Thank you for the reply!



Bokonon said:


> Wild guess on the "touchscreen unresponsive" error message... and I apologize in advance for the technical gobbledygook, but here goes....
> 
> TL;DR -- this is the equivalent of the "application not responding" message that you see on Windows, MacOS, and other common operating systems.... where the "application" in this case is actually the car's entire touchscreen UI. And just like on Windows, MacOS, etc., sometimes the application resumes responding after a few seconds and the message goes away, sometimes it doesn't and you have to force-quit the app or reboot. You're likely seeing it because Tesla's firmware engineers took an ill-advised shortcut or two in order to meet a deadline, and it will (hopefully) be corrected in a future OTA update.
> 
> ...


That makes perfect sense as the times I've seen this message is when the car is waking up as I'm getting in early in the morning to head to work. So it's waking form its slumber ... which I imagine takes up most, if not all, of the systems resources/power. Great/thorough, well written write up there Bokonon. Thank you.

Appreciate the responses. @Bokonon you want to help me build a website?


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## PSNeo (Feb 7, 2018)

I’ve experienced the “Touchscreen Unresponsive” message a few times as well (also when backing up out of the garage). The message usually goes away and everything seems normal by the time I start driving. However, on two occasions it actually required a reboot with the scroll wheels.

The car drove normally and displayed speed / location on the map but I could not access any of the controls on the screen. I thought that the issue would resolve itself after parking, walking away for sometime, and then restarting upon return but the screen was still frozen.

I haven’t reported this to Tesla since I’ve only seen this message persist two times but I will probably do so next time. (Btw...I’m on 2018.4.9 now but this also happened with an previous release as well I believe.)


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## Stringcheese (Jan 1, 2017)

I have had a bunch of these same error messages briefly show up. Never enough to really make me call Tesla... I also have had a permanent charge port door error since delivery... part is back ordered.

Today though I had a charge port error which wouldn't allow me to charge so I HAD to call. The tech said the recent firmware has resolved a lot of errors people have been having with their 3's... I was running 4.9 and they would push the new one out to me. YAY heated rear seats! Unfortunately not though... they pushed 4.18 out to me instead. Luckily though I haven't seen any of the other errors again since... just my permanent charge port door which is a physical error. Will keep you posted if this holds out. But if you have significant issues you should definitely call Tesla tech support and maybe they can push at least the latest 4.xx version to help you out.


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## Maevra (Oct 24, 2017)

Stringcheese said:


> I have had a bunch of these same error messages briefly show up. Never enough to really make me call Tesla... I also have had a permanent charge port door error since delivery... part is back ordered.
> 
> Today though I had a charge port error which wouldn't allow me to charge so I HAD to call. The tech said the recent firmware has resolved a lot of errors people have been having with their 3's... I was running 4.9 and they would push the new one out to me. YAY heated rear seats! Unfortunately not though... they pushed 4.18 out to me instead. Luckily though I haven't seen any of the other errors again since... just my permanent charge port door which is a physical error. Will keep you posted if this holds out. But if you have significant issues you should definitely call Tesla tech support and maybe they can push at least the latest 4.xx version to help you out.


Sounds like you have a faulty charge port. I recall some reports of owners having to switch their chargers because of a fault in the wiring or closing mechanism.


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## Maevra (Oct 24, 2017)

PSNeo said:


> I've experienced the "Touchscreen Unresponsive" message a few times as well (also when backing up out of the garage). The message usually goes away and everything seems normal by the time I start driving. However, on two occasions it actually required a reboot with the scroll wheels.
> 
> The car drove normally and displayed speed / location on the map but I could not access any of the controls on the screen. I thought that the issue would resolve itself after parking, walking away for sometime, and then restarting upon return but the screen was still frozen.
> 
> I haven't reported this to Tesla since I've only seen this message persist two times but I will probably do so next time. (Btw...I'm on 2018.4.9 now but this also happened with an previous release as well I believe.)


Ditto, same I have seen the "Touchscreen Unresponsive" message sporadically since 4.6 until 4.9. It always went away after a few seconds of opening the car door, so I could never get a photo of it. Car drives fine though so am not too worried, I did mention it to CS and they said likely a bug and will be fixed.


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## John (Apr 16, 2016)

Lovesword said:


> Has anyone had random warning messages pop up on screen? I've had the warning about using the manual release on the front doors a couple of times when a passenger was getting IN my car. It's happened multiple times, but vanishes before I can bug report it or take a picture. Maybe just a false trigger of that message from an outside handle opening? Just an assumption. (Both pictures here are not mine, just from the internet)
> View attachment 6478
> 
> 
> ...


Could be there's not a sensor on the manual door latch, instead there's a sensor on the window position and of course the door being open (all cars have that one). So the error message is supposed to occur if the door is open but the window is all the way up. You could get a false error if :

The window has lowered, but the car thinks it's still up (stuck or sticky sensor), or
The window lowers too slowly (cold weather, stiff gasket, sluggish motor, delay in sensing door handle and activating window drop), or
The door or handle sensor is monitored by a high-priority safety thread or even a hardware interrupt, while the window position has to be polled by a slowed or blocked process; in that case it might be that the message from the window just was registered too late to prevent the error message.
And that third one sounds a little like the UI error, that a process (either the UI process or a door monitoring process) is not being responsive. Maybe both are being hampered by a diagnostic routine that has been added that they didn't realize could hog the CPU at certain times, like when you first jump in the car. Probably doesn't take much to start causing all kinds of race conditions like these that they haven't encountered when they had a more stripped down UI, but which get exposed when CPU cycles get tight and things don't get sensed in the order that they used to.

Anyhow, if there's any value in my above speculative blather, it's that these problems may not indicate any hardware failures, but rather (software) growing pains. If I'm putting my software hat on like Bokonon did-nice hat, by the way-I'm actually kind of impressed if they are writing these things as asynchronous agents, even if right now they seem to have their timing off. My guess is that when they toss in a new feature or background diagnostic they are getting unintended consequences. In the "old days," car companies would install these features in a more predictable but less flexible "hardware-first" way. These problems may be a side effect of a "software-first" car, where the software can monitor, control, and even modify how the car works, but unfortunately HAS to work for even basic things to operate as expected.


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## Spiffywerks (Jul 30, 2017)

SoFlaModel3 said:


> Ugh... hopefully it will all be good soon. I haven't had the speaker crackle again *knocks on wood*


Did you get the crackle when playing streaming music through slacker? I have had this happen many times. I think something to do with a streaming error.

Here is a sample. The scratchy sounds went away after I changed songs.


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## rxlawdude (Sep 12, 2017)

Spiffywerks said:


> Did you get the crackle when playing streaming music through slacker? I have had this happen many times. I think something to do with a streaming error.
> 
> Here is a sample. The scratchy sounds went away after I changed songs.


I don't hear any scratching on your recording, but can you tell me: was this coming only from one side, and if so, which?


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## Spiffywerks (Jul 30, 2017)

rxlawdude said:


> I don't hear any scratching on your recording, but can you tell me: was this coming only from one side, and if so, which?


I tried playing the video on some computer speakers and I can't hear it either, but once I put on headphones (Sennheiser), the scratchy/buzz sounds are very clear.

The sound comes from all speakers, starts on a song and goes away once I switch songs, making me reason it's completely streaming audio related.


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## Stringcheese (Jan 1, 2017)

Spiffywerks said:


> I tried playing the video on some computer speakers and I can't hear it either, but once I put on headphones (Sennheiser), the scratchy/buzz sounds are very clear.
> 
> The sound comes from all speakers, starts on a song and goes away once I switch songs, making me reason it's completely streaming audio related.


I've only experienced it when streaming through TuneIn.


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## SoFlaModel3 (Apr 15, 2017)

Spiffywerks said:


> Did you get the crackle when playing streaming music through slacker? I have had this happen many times. I think something to do with a streaming error.
> 
> Here is a sample. The scratchy sounds went away after I changed songs.


It only happened once and it was from streaming through my phone and after hanging up with a call.


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## LucyferSam (Sep 13, 2017)

Spiffywerks said:


> I tried playing the video on some computer speakers and I can't hear it either, but once I put on headphones (Sennheiser), the scratchy/buzz sounds are very clear.
> 
> The sound comes from all speakers, starts on a song and goes away once I switch songs, making me reason it's completely streaming audio related.


I get it every once in while, from both slacker and USB playback. I usually find pausing and restarting makes it go away, though once I had to actually skip the track.


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## RunCycle (Jan 21, 2018)

Anyone getting a message like "Unable to charge."? We've seen it twice in the last week. Once, when actually trying to charge (it started charging a handful of seconds later) and once when we were getting everyone situated in the car to go home (nowhere near a charger).


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## LUXMAN (Apr 4, 2016)

RunCycle said:


> Anyone getting a message like "Unable to charge."? We've seen it twice in the last week. Once, when actually trying to charge (it started charging a handful of seconds later) and once when we were getting everyone situated in the car to go home (nowhere near a charger).


I have only gotten one message like that when the Destination Charger I was trying to use had a fault. I didn't see the BIG RED LIGHT on the front and just plugged it in. It didn't like it, but the other unit worked fine and message went away as soon as I unplugged the faulty unit. But not since. There could have been a spike in power when you plugged it in on the first one. I would say Reboot to clear any Cashed issues (is that a thing? LOL) and see if it happens again. If so, call Tesla. While you are on the phone they can actually read the codes on your car and look at the history. Shoot, maybe just do that anyway. It would be interesting to hear what they say before you Reboot


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