Just updated to Sync 3.4 on my Ranger 2019

PalmettoRanger

Active Member
Joined
Jun 11, 2020
Threads
2
Messages
40
Reaction score
44
Location
Upstate South Carolina
Vehicle(s)
2019 4x4 Magnetic Ranger XLT SuperCrew with STX package
I was planning on moving forward with the update and use Forscan to fix the climate issue. But the site says that I should have 8 to 11 files in the SyncMyRide file, but I only have five. I used 7-zip to redo the extraction and got the same thing. Does this look right?

sync.PNG
 

UofMEngineer

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 19, 2019
Threads
1
Messages
516
Reaction score
334
Location
Michigan
Vehicle(s)
20' Escape Hybrid,18' Fusion Hybrid
I was planning on moving forward with the update and use Forscan to fix the climate issue. But the site says that I should have 8 to 11 files in the SyncMyRide file, but I only have five. I used 7-zip to redo the extraction and got the same thing. Does this look right?

sync.PNG
Yes, the site is just an example.
 

DavidR

Well-Known Member
First Name
David
Joined
Jul 22, 2019
Threads
4
Messages
388
Reaction score
323
Location
Eastern CA
Vehicle(s)
2019 Ranger XLT Supercab Saber FX4
Occupation
Engineer
Not really. While moving, browse gives you the current playlist. You can use voice, but you'll still be limited in the number of pages you can scroll so your mileage may vary on how well that works for you. And, if you hit the back button it'll kick you out of the browse menu.
I played around with this a bit today. On the good side, the voice control works pretty well for the commands that are implemented. You cannot use it to browse the folder hierarchy, but you can browse by artist, album, genre, or playlist. Most of the time that should be good enough. The problem, though, is that the scrolling depth seems really short while driving.

If you know the exact names of all of the albums, artists and playlists on your 16GB USB stick, you can access anything by voice, but I have several large USB sticks with enough on them that I don't always remember what albums and playlists are on what sticks without being able to scroll them.

This could become a big limitation in some cases. People driving on city freeways can't safely and legally stop without completely exiting the freeway. People driving 70MPH on long road trips will not want to have to always stop to browse and remember what albums they have on their 16GB sticks. I hope Ford comes up with a solution for this. Making a large portion of someone's music unavailable to them while driving on city freeways because they don't remember the exact names of all the albums or playlists on a 16GB USB stick is not a good solution, and I've never seen this much browsing limitation on any vehicle we've had with USB support.

As a workaround, I might just resort to rearranging my music onto more but smaller USB sticks with few enough albums and playlists that they can be scrolled within Ford's limitations :/
 


Hirnlego

Well-Known Member
First Name
Jason
Joined
Jan 24, 2020
Threads
1
Messages
82
Reaction score
50
Location
SC
Vehicle(s)
2019 Ford Ranger XLT 302A
I played around with this a bit today. On the good side, the voice control works pretty well for the commands that are implemented. You cannot use it to browse the folder hierarchy, but you can browse by artist, album, genre, or playlist. Most of the time that should be good enough. The problem, though, is that the scrolling depth seems really short while driving.

If you know the exact names of all of the albums, artists and playlists on your 16GB USB stick, you can access anything by voice, but I have several large USB sticks with enough on them that I don't always remember what albums and playlists are on what sticks without being able to scroll them.

This could become a big limitation in some cases. People driving on city freeways can't safely and legally stop without completely exiting the freeway. People driving 70MPH on long road trips will not want to have to always stop to browse and remember what albums they have on their 16GB sticks. I hope Ford comes up with a solution for this. Making a large portion of someone's music unavailable to them while driving on city freeways because they don't remember the exact names of all the albums or playlists on a 16GB USB stick is not a good solution, and I've never seen this much browsing limitation on any vehicle we've had with USB support.

As a workaround, I might just resort to rearranging my music onto more but smaller USB sticks with few enough albums and playlists that they can be scrolled within Ford's limitations :/

I was also testing things out in v3.4 this weekend and this USB music lockout is by far the most annoying thing in the new version. I use a large 128GB USB drive with lots of music and can’t recall all that is on the drive and would like to see the list of choices. I like the old way it was set up as I was planning to use a 500GB micro drive for my music collection. The voice controls do work nice if you know exactly what you want to listen to, but does not control browsing.

This lockout has reduced a large format USB drive to a single CD player. I also noticed that at the end of a album it just repeats the album whereas before it would ask to browse media and make a selection at the end of an album.

Ironically that for safety they locked browsing in this version but you can still fully use the phone options in the APIM. I also noticed for some reason the contacts defaults to a key board that is functional while driving instead of a list of contacts (there is a button for access to a list). Would keyboard use not be more a driver distraction than browsing music.

I tested a few options for music from the phone like Pandora a Spotify which are functional, however, I would prefer my own music from a large USB drive.

Lets hope if and when Ford creates an update for the climate controls they do away with this annoyance with the USB music.
 

UofMEngineer

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 19, 2019
Threads
1
Messages
516
Reaction score
334
Location
Michigan
Vehicle(s)
20' Escape Hybrid,18' Fusion Hybrid
I played around with this a bit today. On the good side, the voice control works pretty well for the commands that are implemented. You cannot use it to browse the folder hierarchy, but you can browse by artist, album, genre, or playlist. Most of the time that should be good enough. The problem, though, is that the scrolling depth seems really short while driving.

If you know the exact names of all of the albums, artists and playlists on your 16GB USB stick, you can access anything by voice, but I have several large USB sticks with enough on them that I don't always remember what albums and playlists are on what sticks without being able to scroll them...
I hear you. I'm one of the niche USB media listeners. Only time I browse is to remember what I even have on the drive. I doubt there will be much change to this though. The USB media browsing was always sort of exempted from the NHTSA rules until recently. If they wanted to add the alpha jump like phone contact browsing, they probably would have already. From a voice perspective, we're just pushing to the standard UI.

Hot off the press from Oasis...

Capture.JPG
Better late than never. I was hoping they would blast something out a while ago. :(
 

DavidR

Well-Known Member
First Name
David
Joined
Jul 22, 2019
Threads
4
Messages
388
Reaction score
323
Location
Eastern CA
Vehicle(s)
2019 Ranger XLT Supercab Saber FX4
Occupation
Engineer
I hear you. I'm one of the niche USB media listeners. Only time I browse is to remember what I even have on the drive. I doubt there will be much change to this though. The USB media browsing was always sort of exempted from the NHTSA rules until recently. If they wanted to add the alpha jump like phone contact browsing, they probably would have already. From a voice perspective, we're just pushing to the standard UI.
USB sticks may be becoming a niche, but I think many people still have their own music collections on phones. My guess is that the same browsing limitations will apply when sync3 accesses music that's on your phone, since it's also a USB device. I guess it will be interesting to see over time how many users come out of the woodwork due to being locked out of their music while driving.

Contact browsing is different in some ways. With contacts, you usually *do* remember the name of the contact. With a large music collection built up over time, many people won't remember everything that's on a 32+ GB stick, or even on their phone if that's where it is. I don't normally have to browse contacts (I usually know the exact contact name) so I'm not sure what alpha jump is or if it would be useful for music browsing where you don't remember what's on the stick.

I'm not sure how the NHTSA regulations are formulated in terms of whether it's visual distraction time or hand-off-the-wheel time, or some combination of both, but I thought of a few possible suggestions. One is that when there is a list being presented, you could hijack the forward/back buttons on the steering wheel so that they temporarily become scroll up and down buttons. This would allow scrolling longer lists without needing to remove a hand from the wheel to operate an LCD display. Alternatively, you could keep the voice VR active while the list is presented and allow the voice commands "up" and "down" to scroll through the list, which would also keep your hands on the wheel. Would either of those satisfy NHTSA requirements?

If USB users are truly a small and shrinking niche, maybe Ford will have no interest in making any changes at all to help address this. I hope that's not the case, though.

I have found a partial and kludgy work-around. The system will recognize up to two partitions on a USB stick (but not more than two for some reason), and it will present each partition as a separate source in the media player. That would let you at least divide a stick into two smaller virtual sticks, which might help keep the lists shorter and lock out less music while driving. With a stick plugged into each port, you could have up to 4 virtual sources. One thing Ford could do that could make this workaround more useful is to have the system recognize more than just two partitions on USB sticks to make it easier to divide and conquer.

Lastly, this change has caused me to lose far more than I have gained in going from sync 3.3 to 3.4. Is it possible to downgrade back to sync 3.3, even if I need to go to a dealer to do it?
 

UofMEngineer

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 19, 2019
Threads
1
Messages
516
Reaction score
334
Location
Michigan
Vehicle(s)
20' Escape Hybrid,18' Fusion Hybrid
USB sticks may be becoming a niche, but I think many people still have their own music collections on phones. My guess is that the same browsing limitations will apply when sync3 accesses music that's on your phone, since it's also a USB device. I guess it will be interesting to see over time how many users come out of the woodwork due to being locked out of their music while driving.

Contact browsing is different in some ways. With contacts, you usually *do* remember the name of the contact. With a large music collection built up over time, many people won't remember everything that's on a 32+ GB stick, or even on their phone if that's where it is. I don't normally have to browse contacts (I usually know the exact contact name) so I'm not sure what alpha jump is or if it would be useful for music browsing where you don't remember what's on the stick.

I'm not sure how the NHTSA regulations are formulated in terms of whether it's visual distraction time or hand-off-the-wheel time, or some combination of both, but I thought of a few possible suggestions. One is that when there is a list being presented, you could hijack the forward/back buttons on the steering wheel so that they temporarily become scroll up and down buttons. This would allow scrolling longer lists without needing to remove a hand from the wheel to operate an LCD display. Alternatively, you could keep the voice VR active while the list is presented and allow the voice commands "up" and "down" to scroll through the list, which would also keep your hands on the wheel. Would either of those satisfy NHTSA requirements?

If USB users are truly a small and shrinking niche, maybe Ford will have no interest in making any changes at all to help address this. I hope that's not the case, though.

I have found a partial and kludgy work-around. The system will recognize up to two partitions on a USB stick (but not more than two for some reason), and it will present each partition as a separate source in the media player. That would let you at least divide a stick into two smaller virtual sticks, which might help keep the lists shorter and lock out less music while driving. With a stick plugged into each port, you could have up to 4 virtual sources. One thing Ford could do that could make this workaround more useful is to have the system recognize more than just two partitions on USB sticks to make it easier to divide and conquer.

Lastly, this change has caused me to lose far more than I have gained in going from sync 3.3 to 3.4. Is it possible to downgrade back to sync 3.3, even if I need to go to a dealer to do it?
USB media, whether stick or phone, is becoming less common with the streaming services. We're a rare breed anymore.

RE: Keeping VR active - We generally fall under the same rules. They may differ a little, but the same problem will still be there even if it was voice enabled.

RE: Work-around. That'll sort of work to the extent you've seen. Remember though, there is only 1 media device active to the system at a time. So, if you want to browse UI or VR, you can only browse the one currently / last sourced.

RE: Rolling back - You would need to get the matching 3.3.19052 voice and apps packages. I haven't tried it with a proper production updater though.
 

DakotaGuy

Well-Known Member
First Name
Tom
Joined
Mar 1, 2019
Threads
13
Messages
657
Reaction score
1,306
Location
Black Hills, SD
Vehicle(s)
2022 Ranger SuperCrew XLT Tremor
Thank you for confirming! I didn't get the .xml file to upload back to Ford (to tell them the upgrade was successful), but last time I tried to do it, it never worked anyway, so I'm not going to sweat that at all.
I didn’t get the .xml file either, however after I updated I connected my Ranger to my home WiFi and did the “Check for updates” and after it worked awhile it told me in the truck my software was up to date. When I later checked on the Ford website it also shows the newest 3.4 version running on my vehicle.

It does appear that they fixed Wi-Fi at least on mine because with 3.3 it didn’t seem to communicate with Ford. Hopefully going forward at least small maintenance updates can just be pushed via WiF. We’ll see.
 

UofMEngineer

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 19, 2019
Threads
1
Messages
516
Reaction score
334
Location
Michigan
Vehicle(s)
20' Escape Hybrid,18' Fusion Hybrid
I didn’t get the .xml file either, however after I updated I connected my Ranger to my home WiFi and did the “Check for updates” and after it worked awhile it told me in the truck my software was up to date. When I later checked on the Ford website it also shows the newest 3.4 version running on my vehicle.

It does appear that they fixed Wi-Fi at least on mine because with 3.3 it didn’t seem to communicate with Ford. Hopefully going forward at least small maintenance updates can just be pushed via WiF. We’ll see.
The v3.4 update *should* be available OTA now. I believe they may also have switched on map updates OTA as well. Not sure what the limitations on it are though.
 

DavidR

Well-Known Member
First Name
David
Joined
Jul 22, 2019
Threads
4
Messages
388
Reaction score
323
Location
Eastern CA
Vehicle(s)
2019 Ranger XLT Supercab Saber FX4
Occupation
Engineer
USB media, whether stick or phone, is becoming less common with the streaming services. We're a rare breed anymore.

RE: Keeping VR active - We generally fall under the same rules. They may differ a little, but the same problem will still be there even if it was voice enabled.

RE: Work-around. That'll sort of work to the extent you've seen. Remember though, there is only 1 media device active to the system at a time. So, if you want to browse UI or VR, you can only browse the one currently / last sourced.

RE: Rolling back - You would need to get the matching 3.3.19052 voice and apps packages. I haven't tried it with a proper production updater though.
You might be right. In a few years, having your own music library might be limited to audiophiles and us olds with hundreds of CDs. I don't think people with personal music libraries will disappear completely, but hopefully there will still be enough of it to warrant being supported by auto entertainment systems ;)

Anyway, I played around a little more and have an update. I figured out what alpha jump is and guess what - it is there in the album browser once the voice control brings it up (I think Ford officially calls it "A-Z Jump"). Due to that, I think the system is usable, albeit with a number of extra screen taps, which somehow seems more distracting than a longer list (up to a point). The limit of a scrolling list seems to be 10 items, so as long as you have less than 10 albums each that start with any given letter, you should be able to see everything even while driving. Super large libraries on a single partition might still have a problem with the 10-item limit, but at that point maybe you just have to divide it up into a few separate sticks or partitions. Yes, they will be different sources to the system but that's fine as long as all of the music is available. You just wouldn't be able to shuffle-play across them.

My hunch is that the goal of the NHTSA regs might be that more screen taps is okay as long as it breaks up the screen attention period into shorter bursts of time between which you'll naturally tend to glance up and look at the road for a second or two.
Sponsored

 
 



Top