OEM HU intermittent reboot - solved!

So for the last few months, my head unit has been intermittently 'rebooting.' I'd be listening to music and would discover a few things, most of which went together:

1. I was unable to control the volume on my HU, either with the HU itself, or using the steering wheel controls.
2. Usually within a few minutes of discovering #1, the head unit would sort of reboot on me. It wasn't a full reboot...just a dropping/reestablishment of the music source (which was/is my iPhone 14 Pro, plugged in via the lightning cable).

I've tested literally everything. It wasn't the charging cable; it wasn't any fuses, or anything like that. It did NOT do it with my wife's phone, which made me question whether it was the HU or not.

Yesterday morning, I went to work having forgotten most of my stuff, because I was fighting a fire in my front yard Tuesday afternoon....and it hit me that not once did it reboot all day long. The culprit?

My Apple Watch SE.

It turns out that there's a feature on there that allows you to handoff audio app control - e.g., if you start playing music from your iPhone to something, it'll allow you to further control it from your Apple Watch. Handy when, say, you're cleaning or working in the shop and don't want to mess with your phone. NOT so freaking handy when your @#$#@ HU reboots every so often. My assumption is that the phone essentially sort of freaks out and says "OK, I'M in charge here...leave me TF alone" when my watch (or anything else) tries to control it.

Anyways, I turned off the handoff feature...and the issue is gone.

 

Interesting, where in the menu can you turn this off in the HU? I don't have an Apple Watch but I do sometimes connect my Android phone via BT. Usually I listen to XM and my phone bluetooth is off.

I have the same issue with the NO volume control form the knob and steering wheel controls intermittently. Mine hasnt randomly rebooted.

 

Crapple at its finest.

 

Do you have anything else that’s connecting to your phone? It happened again today when I wasn’t even in the truck…. turns out my son had connected his phone to the truck via cable, and he was trying to use his AirPods as well.

Best guess is that the phone essentially gets confused as to who should actually be able to control it and it sort of throws a bit of a fit.

I have discovered that the very few times I can’t control the volume, I simply press the volume button to turn audio off and back on; and it resolves the issue.

I have not actually turned anything off in the head unit; but I am trying to figure out how to completely disable Bluetooth as a precaution.

 

I’m a pretty big fan of Apple…but yeah, this was pretty annoying.

 

Thanks for the response, nope nothing else is connected to my phone. I rarely connect it via Bluetooth or use wireless earbuds while in the truck. Ive rebooted the HU by holding down the volume knob but that doesn't resolve the issue. I literally have to turn off the truck then turn it back on for it to work.

 

Update to my issue. It was the stock JBL amp, there's a recall on the amp which was replaced by my dealership. So far the no sound and controls has been fixed.

 

SO...the issue appears, FINALLY...to have been solved.

I thought it was solved previously, and that the issue was my Apple Watch. I was wrong....the problem came back and has been plaguing me for the last few months. Literally every time I started my truck up, the head unit has consistently rebooted six or seven times, every time.

UNTIL I upgraded my iPhone 14 Pro to the beta version of iOS 17 yesterday.

Since then, it has gone from rebooting six or seven times every time I’ve driven the truck….to not at all, not even once.

Obviously this means the issue was with some component of iOS. Thinking back, the problem originally started when I upgraded to iOS 16.5. I don’t know exactly what they changed, but obviously they fixed it in iOS 17.

I am totally fine with this, however….as it means I’m saving about $1500.

 

Have you updated your firmware in the headunit. There is a thread about that and some said it fixed their problem with rebooting

 

It's been updated to the latest version since that version (1383) was released.

 

To clarify something….

For the last few months. I’ve had this issue multiple times *literally* every time I started up my truck. As in, EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

To give you an idea of how annoying it is, my super frugal wife originally gave me a bunch of crap for wanting to spend $1000 on a new radio. After several rides in my truck, she turned me and said “I didn’t realize it was this bad. I apologize; get whatever head unit you want.” LOL

After updating my iPhone to iOS 17 beta… it hasn’t done it once. Not once, not at all.