HondaLink stopped updating after May 29th at 4:00 pm

3555 Views 8 Replies 4 Participants Last post by 2002, Jun 2, 2022

2002

Discussion Starter · Jun 1, 2022

My HondaLink has not updated since May 29th. I'm pretty sure that it's not just my app that is having the problem because the symptoms are identical to what many of us experienced several months ago when HondaLink was down for several days.

I'm not going to uninstall and reinstall HondaLink because last time people tried that and it didn't help, and some had trouble reinstalling. So just like last time I'm just going to wait until Honda fixes it which hopefully won't be too much longer.

It's not a problem with my connection because I still get notifications when charging has stopped, which means my car is still communicating with Honda, but Honda is just not sending the data to my phone.

The symptom, just like last time, is that when I launch HondaLink I see the data as it existed the last time it updated, which in my case was on May 29th when I turned on remote climate. For the past three days in HondaLink this is the screen that I see:

Light Azure Font Screenshot Electronic device

Note that it was last updated on May 29th at 3:57 pm. My guess is that HondaLink went down sometime after 4:00 pm on Sunday because it did not update that climate ended which was about twenty minutes later, nor has it updated when I charge for the past several days.

If I press refresh, for a brief moment a message appears "Data is Unavailable" as seen in the screenshot below, then after a couple of seconds that message goes away. This also is exactly the symptom when the problem occurred several months ago that affected most owners. It actually probably affected all owners but not everyone uses HondaLink.

Azure Font Screenshot Electronic device Multimedia

I know my car is still communicating with Honda, for example I got this notification this morning at 5:00 am when charging stopped:

I'm surprised no one else has reported this, but what usually happens is when the first person reports it, several people then say theirs isn't working either but they thought it was just theirs.

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TheWu1976

· #2 · Jun 1, 2022

Mine was fine, as of last night (May 31st). But after reading this, I checked it again, this morning, & it was not communicating with the car. Then it prompted me to do a phone app update. So I updated. But it still didn't work. Then, a few minutes later, it just started working again. That's my experience.

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ClarityDave

· #3 · Jun 1, 2022

2002 said:
My HondaLink has not updated since May 29th. I'm pretty sure that it's not just my app that is having the problem because the symptoms are identical to what many of us experienced several months ago when HondaLink was down for several days.

I'm not going to uninstall and reinstall HondaLink because last time people tried that and it didn't help, and some had trouble reinstalling. So just like last time I'm just going to wait until Honda fixes it which hopefully won't be too much longer.

It's not a problem with my connection because I still get notifications when charging has stopped, which means my car is still communicating with Honda, but Honda is just not sending the data to my phone.

The symptom, just like last time, is that when I launch HondaLink I see the data as it existed the last time it updated, which in my case was on May 29th when I turned on remote climate. For the past three days in HondaLink this is the screen that I see:

View attachment 1015

Note that it was last updated on May 29th at 3:57 pm. My guess is that HondaLink went down sometime after 4:00 pm on Sunday because it did not update that climate ended which was about twenty minutes later, nor has it updated when I charge for the past several days.

If I press refresh, for a brief moment a message appears "Data is Unavailable" as seen in the screenshot below, then after a couple of seconds that message goes away. This also is exactly the symptom when the problem occurred several months ago that affected most owners. It actually probably affected all owners but not everyone uses HondaLink.

View attachment 1016

I know my car is still communicating with Honda, for example I got this notification this morning at 5:00 am when charging stopped:

View attachment 1017

I'm surprised no one else has reported this, but what usually happens is when the first person reports it, several people then say theirs isn't working either but they thought it was just theirs.

My app prompted for an update and after the update everything is still working as it should on June 1st.

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2002

Discussion Starter · #4 · Jun 1, 2022

This afternoon when I launched it it said there was an update. After updating it now works, for the first time in three days.

I think I remember now this is what happened last time also. I think what happened is they loaded a new update onto the server, but there was a delay getting the app update available. In other words there are two separate updates that occur, an update to the software on the Honda server, and an update to the phone app. Both should happen simultaneously, if not then you are stuck with unusable HondaLink until the app update is available.

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ClarityDave

· #5 · Jun 2, 2022

2002 said:
This afternoon when I launched it it said there was an update. After updating it now works, for the first time in three days.

I think I remember now this is what happened last time also. I think what happened is they loaded a new update onto the server, but there was a delay getting the app update available. In other words there are two separate updates that occur, an update to the software on the Honda server, and an update to the phone app. Both should happen simultaneously, if not then you are stuck with unusable HondaLink until the app update is available.

Since there don’t seem to be any visible changes in the newly updated app it makes you wonder what has changed so much so as to break compatibility with the server software. An intelligent crew of programmers could make server changes that do not require immediate updates to the app.

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EV Nerd

· #6 · Jun 2, 2022

ClarityDave said:
Since there don’t seem to be any visible changes in the newly updated app it makes you wonder what has changed so much so as to break compatibility with the server software. An intelligent crew of programmers could make server changes that do not require immediate updates to the app.

Remember that "an intelligent crew of programmers" still must heed the directions of their not-necessarily-technically-abled management.

Engineers and designers don't work in a vacuum.

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2002

Discussion Starter · #7 · Jun 2, 2022

ClarityDave said:
Since there don’t seem to be any visible changes in the newly updated app it makes you wonder what has changed so much so as to break compatibility with the server software. An intelligent crew of programmers could make server changes that do not require immediate updates to the app.

Who knows what they do in these app updates since maybe only once or twice in my three years of ownership have there been any noticeable changes in how the app works after an update.

My guess is that the server software only communicates with an app that is current, i.e. there is a table in the server with the current app version, and if the version in the app does not match what the table says it should be, the server doesn't send any data to the app. They may have a policy that whenever the server software is changed for any reason, then not only the server version but the app version needs to change also, so that there is always a one to one relationship between the version numbers of the two softwares, instead of one to many. This could explain why there are app updates when nothing in the app seems to change, because nothing has changed in the app only the version number, all of the changes were on the server.

So on Friday they update the server, and the server programmers enter into the table what the new app version number will be. But for whatever reason the app programmers (likely different people) don't immediately put out the new app update, either through some type of problem that causes a delay, or maybe through miscommunication (You updated the server on Tuesday? I thought it was supposed to be next Tuesday!)

In a situation like this the app apparently isn't smart enough to know why it's not getting data from the server, it just knows it isn't, so it briefly flashes "Data is Unavailable" on the screen and then displays the last received information.

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ClarityDave

· #8 · Jun 2, 2022

2002 said:
Who knows what they do in these app updates since maybe only once or twice in my three years of ownership have there been any noticeable changes in how the app works after an update.

My guess is that the server software only communicates with an app that is current, i.e. there is a table in the server with the current app version, and if the version in the app does not match what the table says it should be, the server doesn't send any data to the app. They may have a policy that whenever the server software is changed for any reason, then not only the server version but the app version needs to change also, so that there is always a one to one relationship between the version numbers of the two softwares, instead of one to many. This could explain why there are app updates when nothing in the app seems to change, because nothing has changed in the app only the version number, all of the changes were on the server.

A good example of how it should work is with an email app and an email server. Server changes are many times made and updates are effectuated but no mandatory change is forced upon the email app unless a huge change is implemented which renders the app useless. I’m sure my Thunderbird email app is not up to date with the most current version yet it still continues to pull my email from a server that may have been updated multiple times over the years.

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2002

Discussion Starter · #9 · Jun 2, 2022

To give them some credit, they are doing something which is somewhat rare, which is they are a non-software company which produces a proprietary software used by their customers. Whether they have inhouse programmers and software managers or outsource some or all it, the fact is that it's a lot different than using an off the shelf software from an actual software company. I know because the company that I worked for produced a software that all of our customers used. Here we were just a small department within a non-computer company, yet we had to perform all of the functions that a full software company does. Even when the programming was sometimes outsourced we still had to manage all of it, understand the customer needs, know what was feasible and not feasible within our limited resources. It's so easy to say, "it should work this way or that way." Unfortunately we rarely could get good input during the requirements phase, only after the beta software was delivered we started getting input, but most input didn't come until the final software was released. Very difficult to make changes at that point because every little change risks a major catastrophe if you break an existing software that all of your customers are using. Pre-release testing couldn't catch every problem because you have to first imagine what problems might occur and then test for them. Takes a lot of time to do thorough testing, but everyone wanted the new version with requested changes yesterday. The managers and other employees of our company would say things like, "Why doesn't our software do such and such like Microsoft does". We wanted to say well give us Microsoft's budget and we'll see what happens, but of course we couldn't say that.

So as much as I often can't resist the urge to poke some fun at HondaLink, I do have some sympathy for what they are up against.

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