[justniz]

I bought a 60k 2012 RRS SC maybe 6 months ago.

It has an occasional problem where maybe 1 in 10 times, when you turn on the ignition/start the car, either the whole center screen stays black, or some of the functionality is missing, like the some of the cameras in the vision assist are out(blue screen only), or the phone won't connect, or the music player panel is greyed out and no music will play (seems to happen more often if the music source was a USB stick when the car was turned off). I've already replaced the battery thinking it might be low voltage on startup, but that hasn't fixed it.

Pushing buttons and/or just waiting doesn't bring anything back either, you have to turn off ignition, get out and lock the car for a few seconds and try again then it works fine. I've used IIDtool to check the errors list but there's nothing listed.

I work as a software engineer and this really looks like a problem that would be caused by poorly written firmware. But if that's true then it would be happening to everyone else too (at least without an update). Is anyone else seeing this?

 

[Win7ermute]

My 13 does it once in awhile, a lot more rarely than your does, maybe three times in six months. I just restart it.

 

[58ford]

Mine does on the odd occasion too - maybe 3 times in 6 months.

 

[RRToadHall]

58ford, what year is your rig?

This could be something easy like a loose connection or corrosion at a junction connector. Firmware doesn't just fail and certainly wouldn't change.

 

[SaturnV]

Our 2011 does it about twice a year, we just restart it. How is your battery? Rovers and Jaguars love new batteries.

 

[58ford]

weird that my sig didn't come up. 13 RRS SC

 

[John W.]

Our 2011 does it on occasion, but given the dealers inability to resolve it we are just living with it.

 

[dcuozzo]

I experience the same issue with the nav screen on my 2008 RRS a few times a year (no cameras). It started about 3-4 years ago, so I attributed it to age and wear. Since a restart (sometimes 2) resolves the issue I have not taken it to the dealer. I notice the same issue with the radio. It's weird though that the two issues do not occur at the same time. I have not been able to associate the timing of the issue with a battery replacement, but that does not mean that is not the cause.

 

[SECRETM]

Did anyone figure this one out? My 2012 ATB now does it but is stuck in a weird state. Screen turns on but Phone button is grayed out. Nav is stuck on “initializing” forever, and I can only use the Sat Radio. BT does not work

 

[justniz]

2012 RR sport here.
I'm a software engineer by trade and have extensively worked on automotive products. It seems clear to me that there's a fundamental design problem with the Range Rover software, such that modules on the MOST or CAN bus only get a certain amount of time to initialize/"report in" to the head unit on powerup. If they are slow to initialize or somehow the message gets "lost", then the head unit just incorrectly assumes that module is not installed for the length of the entire journey (i.e. until you power off/on the ignition), even if the module subsequently starts communicating. This just comes down to obviously poor software design that personally I would never have written the software this way.

My car had this same problem until I had the dealership update the head unit and BT phone module firmware. The newer firmware still doesn't fix the problem properly but does at least try to work around it. It seems like if some module doesn't "report in" that the car expects to, it simply silently restarts the part of the head unit code that detects connected units again. It mostly works but sometimes still doesn't. it's clearly a kludge rather than a proper fix.

My car has the vision assist package and I still get the odd time when the one or more of the cameras just show a blue screen, it appers like exactly the same problem is occurring on the camera bus too. Its bad enough that LR hire software engineers that don't know enough to write better code, but whats worse is that LR also clearly didn't do a thorough enough testing job to catch even obvious problems before they released the product.

 

[jhartz]

On my '08, RRS/SC, the dealer found it was a poor connection in the CAN circuitry. But I think their diagnostic equipment pointed it (which leads me to believe your IID should have caught it, if it was CAN).