[EmDashes]

I have a 2022 XC90 Extended Range with Sensus. When I use Android Auto with it, my taps are often ignored. Specifically, taps on the top items in lists cause the screen to scroll. I’ve seen this on other XC90s I’ve tried, and I’ve seen it in other Sensus-based Volvos. Does anyone else see this problem? Is there anyone at Volvo to complain to, or are there workarounds?

I don’t see this problem with CarPlay, and tapping works OK in Sensus. So I know this isn’t a hardware problem with my screen, and I know that it’s not a problem anywhere else except in Android Auto.

 

[brad_saggy]

I have a 2022 XC90 Extended Range with Sensus. When I use Android Auto with it, my taps are often ignored. Specifically, taps on the top items in lists cause the screen to scroll. I’ve seen this on other XC90s I’ve tried, and I’ve seen it in other Sensus-based Volvos. Does anyone else see this problem? Is there anyone at Volvo to complain to, or are there workarounds?

I don’t see this problem with CarPlay, and tapping works OK in Sensus. So I know this isn’t a hardware problem with my screen, and I know that it’s not a problem anywhere else except in Android Auto.

Unfortunately, I'm going to give the cliche Android Auto suggestion. Have you tried different cables, small ones are known to be better. Is the behavior reproducible with other more than one phone?

 

[EmDashes]

I tried different cables (including the one that came with my phone, and other high-quality cables), and different phones.

Good suggestions though!

What I really wish I could do is talk to a Volvo engineer because I'm fairly certain I know the root cause. I think for Android Auto, Sensus needs to accept slightly more finger motion on a tap before deciding that a tap is a scroll.

I see that it usually recognizes the tap, because the tap highlight happens. Then instead of the tap causing the action (like selecting a list item), the list scrolls. This happens because the Sensus head unit cancels the tap gesture and sends a scroll gesture to Android Auto.

Since I don't see this on other cars, I am fairly sure this behavior is specific to Sensus.

I have seen on other parts of this forum that Volvo engineers noticed that people on this forum were using VIDA to modify their cars and shut down those people's VIDA accounts. My hope is that they'd also use that same engagement with this forum to fix a nasty issue with their head unit. I'm capable of providing a good bug report.

Not being able to tap on the top item in a list makes Android Auto on Sensus not very usable, and very distracting while driving, and I would love to see Volvo engage with this.

 

[Borked]

Not being able to tap on the top item in a list makes Android Auto on Sensus not very usable, and very distracting while driving, and I would love to see Volvo engage with this.

Did you ever get to the bottom of this?
I've scoured the internet and found myself in the same position on a 19' XC60.
I've had limited success with double tapping sometimes, but it's wildly inconsistent.

 

[Pioneer4x4]

Did you ever get to the bottom of this?
I've scoured the internet and found myself in the same position on a 19' XC60.
I've had limited success with double tapping sometimes, but it's wildly inconsistent.

To me, it just takes a VERY motion free tap. ANY slide at all makes it a scroll.

 

[EmDashes]

Nope. This is definitely something Volvo needs to fix but they don’t seem to care.

One thing I noticed is that the touch screen registers taps even before your finger makes contact with the screen. That’s a lot more motion that their tap detection/scroll detection algorithm has to deal with because clearly your finger will move even more to make contact with the screen.

If Volvo isn’t going to fix their really bad bugs the least they could do is open up the software so I can fix it myself. But they’re too busy trying to lock people out.

 

[x119]

If Volvo isn’t going to fix their really bad bugs the least they could do is open up the software so I can fix it myself. But they’re too busy trying to lock people out.

Well, much has been discovered since Aug.

QNX might be the booting part... but it looks very much like Windows CE to us 👀

Couple of us have IHUs on our desks and we're going in!

 

[@ChristopherMcG]

Clean the IR sensor around the screen

 

[Borked]

Clean the IR sensor around the screen

Where what now??

 

[@ChristopherMcG]

The infotainment system uses infrared to track your touches. The sensor is around the infotainment display behind the bezel and infront of the screen. Make sure it is clean

 

[Borked]

The infotainment system uses infrared to track your touches. The sensor is around the infotainment display behind the bezel and infront of the screen. Make sure it is clean

Urrrrhhh you sure about that? Looks and feels like an standard multitouch capacitive touchscreen to me.

 

[EmDashes]

The manual thinks it’s infrared:

Managing the centre display | Centre display | Displays and voice control | XC90 2022 Late | Volvo Support

Many of the car's functions are controlled and regulated from the centre display. The centre display is a touch scree...

www.volvocars.com

those of you with IHUs: do you have a picture of the board to share? We could possibly figure it out from that.

 

[EmDashes]

Well, much has been discovered since Aug.

QNX might be the booting part... but it looks very much like Windows CE to us 👀

Couple of us have IHUs on our desks and we're going in!

are you all working on this somewhere? Would love to know what you’ve found. Could be interesting to see if the touchscreen driver or Android Auto binary are easily modified.

 

[Borked]

The manual thinks it’s infrared:

Oh wow that's stupid, they use a resistive touchscreen for the presses and IR for movement while pressed. All this so you can wear gloves. SMH. Either way, thats not why AA isn't working well, because then you would see an issue with the lower half of the screen when not using AA. It's a problem with the handoff between sensus and AA for touch

 

[EmDashes]

It makes the touchscreen driver and tap handling algorithm more complicated. They have to account for jitter from two sources. If the IR sensor and the resistive screen disagree, there could be a large jump in reported coordinates when your finger hits the resistive screen.

It is possible that the apps or UI framework on Sensus generally account for it somehow. But Android Auto might be fed coordinates from a lower-level source that doesn't allow it to handle the weirdness of this setup.

The thing is that this is easy to fix. You would just start a scroll gesture a little later/increase the threshold at which a tap becomes a scroll.

Unless it's horribly designed software there is no way that this threshold isn't just a hardcoded value somewhere. One might even be able to fix it without the source code by dissembling it and/or running it in a debugger. The harder part is if they sign the binaries and you can't just copy an updated file to the system.

But this is almost certainly just changing literally one byte. (Yes, also, re-building, re-testing and deploying the OS too afterwards. But that should be a largely automated process!) It's a shame Volvo won't do it or make it so I can do it.

 

[x119]

It makes the touchscreen driver and tap handling algorithm more complicated. They have to account for jitter from two sources. If the IR sensor and the resistive screen disagree, there could be a large jump in reported coordinates when your finger hits the resistive screen.

It is possible that the apps or UI framework on Sensus generally account for it somehow. But Android Auto might be fed coordinates from a lower-level source that doesn't allow it to handle the weirdness of this setup.

The thing is that this is easy to fix. You would just start a scroll gesture a little later/increase the threshold at which a tap becomes a scroll.

Unless it's horribly designed software there is no way that this threshold isn't just a hardcoded value somewhere. One might even be able to fix it without the source code by dissembling it and/or running it in a debugger. The harder part is if they sign the binaries and you can't just copy an updated file to the system.

But this is almost certainly just changing literally one byte. (Yes, also, re-building, re-testing and deploying the OS too afterwards. But that should be a largely automated process!) It's a shame Volvo won't do it or make it so I can do it.

👀👀

 

[EmDashes]

That's pretty exciting! How does one get those files? I'd love to have more of a look around.

Also interesting: I couldn't know for this sure without looking at more. But it looks like Sensus is written using the QT framework and some/all of the UI is written using QML.

Some info:

QML Applications | Qt 6.4

QML is a pretty easy language, and it works with JavaScript. With QML and JS combined, an app developer could write a lot of the logic needed to build Sensus. So it is likely that much of Sensus might not be in C++. Unless it was built using the newest versions of QT it would be very easy to decompile the QML and and update it (vs if it were written in C++.) A lot of the variable names and other symbols might be clear strings (vs obfuscated ones you might find in software written with other frameworks.) This would make it easier to understand how it works so you can modify it.

Sensus also seems to be running Windows, given the dll file. (Or is somehow emulating Windows.)