Getting to the bottom of Boston's CarPlay dead zones
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It's always frustrating when your car's GPS system crashes or resets.
- It's even more infuriating when it happens every day — in the same spot.
Why it matters: That's what happens to some Boston drivers who say their Apple CarPlay or Android Auto dashboard units disconnect every time they drive over a certain spot on Storrow Drive by Harvard's athletic fields.
Other spots where drivers report CarPlay failures:
- The Storrow Back Bay exit
- The Park Drive bridge over the Fenway MBTA stop
- Further down Storrow near the Hatch Shell
- The other side of Soldier's Field by WBZ.
What's happening: Most dashboard devices like CarPlay and Android Auto don't handle GPS navigation on their own — they use a direct wireless connection to the driver's phone for their link to the outside Internet and navigation satellites.
- Radio interference can disconnect the dashboard from the phone, causing the GPS route to get knocked offline.
What they're saying: "Given that these bands are unlicensed and that anybody can operate in these bands, it is likely that sometimes there may be some interference in the system," Northeastern University electrical and computer engineering assistant research professor Michele Polese told Axios.
- Northeastern runs the Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things, which specializes in how modern online devices communicate.
The intrigue: Another user suggested point-to-point microwave links along the Charles River, possibly owned by a certain Ivy League university on either side of the river, are to blame.
- If a microwave transmitter operated on the 2.4GHz band, the same one used by Bluetooth and to connect phones to most dashboard units, interference could knock out a driver's GPS.
- Redditor calinet6 suggested WBZ's antenna dishes along Soldier's Field Road could also contribute to the problem.
"My wife thought I was crazy, then I told her to watch right before it happens the other night. It's been multiple years, phones, and cars using CarPlay that it happens," user vr6_kid reported in a popular Reddit thread on the phenomenon.
💭 Deehan's thought bubble: I drove loops around Soldier Field and up and down Storrow to see if I could replicate the problem with my Android Auto system.
- I don't know if I should credit Samsung, the cheap Chinese dashboard display manufacturer or the Faraday cage that is a 2007 Ford Focus, but I never lost my connection.