Bluetooth range

Yeah, when I leave my Nokia 6230 on the kitchen table and work on the Prius in the garage (seperated by a hallway), I get a good connection.

 

when I leave the phone at home and then whan I arrive in the vicinity of my house it tells me that the bluetooth connection is successful, kind of cool

 

I have a Motorola V3 Razr that will connect from over 150 feet away. My significant other picks me up every evening after work in my Prius and she tells me that she can tell when I'm about to leave the building because "Bluetooth connection successful".

 

I took my Prius in for its first oil change a few weeks ago. I am sitting in the reception area, and my cell phone rings. I answer it, no one there. It happened again a little while later.

The service manager comes out and says that the tech wanted me to know that my wife has been calling me, she sounds nice, and she wants me to call her. Prius hands-free has been intercepting the calls....

 

OK, I know I'm resurrecting an old thread, but my problem is quite relevant to it and the 'New Thread' box said try this one first...

I bought my wife a 2005 Prius in June that has NAV and Bluetooth...so far--so good.

I set my wife's phone so it would connect to the car via Bluetooth. Even managed to upload her phonebook to the system (but still learning how to use it). Again, so far--so good.

The problem: as stated in earlier posts, the car Bluetooth can connect to the phone even if the phone is outside the car...sometimes quite a distance from the car too! Now normally when I drive my wife's car she is in it too, so connecting to the car via Bluetooth in that situation is fine. But if I'm driving her car and, for whatever reason, she stays at home...when I drive back to the house and she is talking on her cellphone, the car will connect with her phone and 'steal' her call. So all of a sudden, I'm pulling up in the driveway and I find myself talking to whoever she was on her phone and she is now talking to thin air!

Question: is there ANY way to decrease the connect range of the Bluetooth so it will only connect if the phone is actually IN THE CAR??? She is not a happy camper when this happens!

 

NO, only if you remove her phone from the cars system. I can stand in my backyard and get a great connection through the house, and I am about 130 ft away or so....

As far as camping goes.....c'est la vie

 

When my car is in the driveway, which is right outside of our kitchen window, and my cell phone is in the kitchen where I leave it on the charger, it will connect if the car is on.

I found this out one weekend when I left it on the charger and went to leave. I was surprised that it would connect in that distance of about 100 feet and through a window.

 

Thanks for the feedback...not really what I wanted to hear , but that's the way it goes.

 

Do you have your phone paired to her car? This has happened when my wife drives my car. We have her phone paired also so she switches to her phone when she is driving so that it will not interfere with mine.

 

No I don't. I understand it will allow up to 4 phones to be defined, but I'm not sure how it works if more than one phone is in range simultaneously. If I define mine along with hers and only she gets in the car will it automatically select hers if I'm nowhere in range?

I just found the manual yesterday and haven't done any in-depth reading yet...it talks mostly about the NAV unit anyway.

 

It will attempt to pair with the phone last paired. If you want to pair with a different phone you have to select it from the touchscreen menu, even if the other phones aren't nearby.

This is my experience with BT on my 2008, anyway.

So if you don't want it to pair with your wife's phone, pair it with another (or maybe there's a way to disable automatic pairing, either on the phone or on the touchscreen).

 

This is the way the 2010 works also. You can pair up to 4 phones and the car will always attempt to pair with the last phone paired until another phone is selected. I do not think there is a way to disable the automatic pairing without just deleting the pairing from the system.

My wife and I have had two different phone conversations going on at the same time, one on bluetooth and the other on the cell phone. Not something that I recommend but it has happened to us on more than one occassion.

 

Your phone should pair just like your wife's phone did. I do not remember the exact steps but you basically select another phone slot to be paired and go through the same steps that you did for your wife's phone. Then both phones will be displayed. The last phone selected will be the one that the car attempts to pair with on each power up.

The phones, phonebooks, settings, etc. are completely independent of each other.

 

My old phone (2006 Razor) was paired with my 09 Prius. My wife's phone was not. When she would drive my Prius and I would be at home, I always got a "warning" that she was almost home, my razor would beep that it was paired with the Prius, so she couldn't sneak up on me in stealth mode. It usually paired up when she was about 3 driveways from the house.
And a funny story with the same Razor/Prius, my other car was in seriously bad shape, so I was driving it to my mechanic with my wife following me in the Prius, every time she would get about 4-5 car lengths or closer behind me, my Razor would pair up with the Prius bluetooth.
If I got more than about 5 or 6 car lengths ahead of her it would lose the signal.

 

I have an 06 and use the Bluetooth all the time, and here are a few suggestions, pick the one you like best;

- As mentioned, the car generally auto-connects to the last phone selected. If you also have a phone, just get into the habit of pressing the Phone button on the steering wheel -> Settings -> Select Phone (I think) and choose your phone each time you switch drivers.

Or...

- If you go into Settings, I believe there is a toggle button there on the right side of the screeen for AutoConnect, and another for Connect. I've never tried turning it off, but I suspect that if you turn off AutoConnect, well, it probably wouldn't connect automatically...? Just a guess.

Or...

- Suggest to your wife to turn off the Bluetooth on her phone when she doesn't want it to connect. An alternate on this is some phones require you to "Confirm" on the handset when a BT accessory (such as Prius) asks to connect. My wife's BB Pearl was like this where it would ask, until she checked the "Don't ask me again" box.

Personally, my wife and I use option #1 when we change drivers, it's not really that hard, just remember to do it before you start moving.

A few options for you, pick the one that suits you best.

Now, all that said, the option I wish they incorporated was a "Priority List" of BT partnerships. I.e. if phone #1 is in range, connect to that, otherwise #2, then #3, etc. When my wife and I are together, I am generally always driving, so it would be nice if the system were smart enough to behave that way, but whacha gonna do...

Hope that helps...

 

+1

This would extend battery life for the phone, too.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately my wife is severely technically challenged. If I didn't set the clock on the VCR or microwave it would be blinking 12:00 forever...:rockon:

I've added my phone to the list and I shouldn't have any trouble switching the setting from her's to mine. The problem here is that I could very easily forget to set her phone back selected on the Bluetooth. Then I'm in even more trouble.

I like the idea of a priority list of pairings. That would be an ideal solution.