Vessel view mobile won’t connect to phone anymore

Spyderweb

Have had VVM a few years now and has worked great.  Went to boat today, started engines, and VVM app on phone won’t connect by Bluetooth to module.  After getting to destination went in ER and saw blue light blinking on module under “blue tooth”.  Turned on engine and solid blue light came on under “smart craft”. I assume that indicates connection to the ecu’s.  When trying to connect I just get message there is no module.  I tried dumping app from phone and reloading from App Store.  Still indicates no module available.

Help!  Any ideas?

Pat310

Have you connected any other devices lately? (Wife’s phone, tablet). Happened to me when i used my phone one time and couldn’t get tablet to connect until i turned off Bluetooth on the phone. Can’t connect more then one device at a time. 

rmrstlmo

I've had trouble a time or two with my phone connecting.  With the engines off I unplugged and replugged the harnesses.  After that i worked fine. 

Spyderweb

@Pat310 I use my wife’s phone to connect to VVM.  The only other device on boat is the iPad.  I turned Bluetooth off on iPad and still no connection.  

Spyderweb

@rmrstlmo I did unplug then plug in connector coming out of the module itself with no luck.  I could try the other connections and see what that does tomorrow.

Ian

I had this once or twice, seems the BT can get panty bunched for some reason. Grab an app called BLE scanner or LightBlue and it does a deeper scan and wakes something up to get it back in the module. Looking at past email with VVM support, BLE did the trick.

Spyderweb

Thanks Ian. I’ll be back to boat tomorrow.  I loaded LightBlue on the phone.  Not sure what to do with it but I’ll give it a shot.

Ian

Grab BLE Scanner too, that worked for me. Basically start it up and it looks for and interrogates BT devices and in my case cleared whatever was blocking it from connecting. Guidance came from Merc VVM support.

Spyderweb

@Ian I’m at boat.  I’d already loaded BlueLight so turned ignition keys on, still nothing from VVM.  Then opened BlueLight and it went through same process you described for BLE.  Opened up VVM again and it had no problem connecting to module.  

Can’t thank you enough.

Ian

Great! Yeah, apparently the BT node can go to sleep or something and these apps wake it up with a forced interrogation.

Maybe we can get this pinned on the home page like the FAQ and Faults threads. @Dream_Inn @raybo3 ?