Bluetooth in car

[tourdetor]

Trying to set up this flow thingy when leaving house and entering car. Will this work?

Wish I could figure out how to automate that Bluetooth switches off when leaving car (as soon as door is slammed behind me) and reconnect as soon I enter car again. Help much appreciated

[Martin]

Hi,

This is quite difficult to achieve. For the car leaving case you could use a trigger Bluetooth Device Disconnected and then switch off bluetooth.
Turning on bluetooth when you reach the car is more difficult. You could periodically turn on bluetooth, sleep a few seconds and then check if the car is connected. If yes, keep bluetooth on otherwise turn bluetooth off. This flow could use q bit of battery when executed often. Executing once every 10 minute should not be a problem but might not be useful anymore since you have to wait 10 minutes in the worst case until bluetooth is turned on.

Regards,
Martin

[MURTUMA]

I have this same problem with wifi, when entering the wifi's range. Instead of periodically checking available connections, I only manually turn wifi on and check a few times before turning it off in a flow. Same for lost connection.

It might not be as autonomous as you want but I find that sufficient for my use.

[bogdyro]

Hello.
An option would be trigger detect user activity but I guess that would drain the battery. Another option would be sticking an NFC sticker to your car's phone holder and setting it to enable Bluetooth.
Or maybe you could just leave Bluetooth always on as it doesn't use that much battery anyway.

[Wibbly]

Your situation may be different, but my phone is usually on (for navigation or listening to music) when in the car (and in a phone mount). You could do the test for Bluetooth (turn it on and see if it will connect, before turning it off again) only when the trigger 'user present' is fired? This will save a lot of power, as it will only try when you unlock the screen.

I usually have Bluetooth on anyway & I'm able to use a NFC tag on the phone mount to trigger my 'in-car' setup

[bogdyro]

I've struggled with this issue before. Haven't found the best way yet. A perfect scenario would be to connect to the car's Bluetooth always,even if you have the phone in your pocket or bag and forget to place it in the car holder.
Anyone have an idea about how much Bluetooth consumes when left on all the time?

[Wibbly]

On my phone (Moto X Play) I'd estimate Bluetooth battery consumption at ~ 0.4%/hr. Might be less though.

[tourdetor]

Thanks for all help and answers. Have thought about these nfc stickers before, and seems like I have to bite the bullet and buy some of them. Handy.

Thing is I'm very often in and out of the car during a work day, and often doing work just a few meters (10 to 50 meters) away from the car. Jupp. Bluetooth kicks in and I answer phone in a normal manner, but person on the other end is of course screaming to non-existent ears inside the car. Yeah. Long story short: buying nfc!

[MURTUMA]

If that's the case, I would also suggest using trigger incoming call. After that, check with time condition if you are doing work or not and then try the bluetooth connection. I'm not sure if it's fast enough to be usable this way, but might be worth testing.

[bogdyro]

Interesting idea. Will try it myself. Don't think it will have time to kick in though...