Voice Control and Speech - Issues and Questions

[cathaldinneen]

Just got off the phone from VWA Customer care as they had not returned my email I had sent to them last week or even indicated that they had received an email from me.

The agent I was talking to stated that the Voice Control was not standard on Australian MK7's. When I disclosed that the April 2013 sales catalog stated that it was Standard, the agent simply put this down as a 'misprint'. I also stated that it was Standard on MY14 Golf's and she that may be the case but the MY13 MK7 it was not standard coming from the factory.

I then asked about upgrading the software on the Discover Media unit on my Highline and she stated that it was an "accessory" option that could be done at your local dealer. She said it was up to your local dealer if they were willing to charge for it or not. As I did not purchase from a local dealer, I don't thinks it's likely they'll do it free of charge.

My 15k service will becoming up shortly so I might ask my local dealer kindly if he could apply this update kindly. Has anyone in the Brisbane area had an accommodating dealers apply this fix / "accessory" ?

[night_flight]

Ryan_R: I was already aware of your considerable prowess with VCDS. It would appear that your skills go much further than Mr Ross's diagnostic tools. One of the reasons why troglodytes like me come these forum is to talk to people like you!

Ryan_R is the king! I also with his help have activated and installed bluetooth & sat nav with voice control ...voice control is frustrating but can work sometimes well...for people who ask this is no siri but VW's voice control system...funny enough when pressing siri on iPhone the microphone or the quality of the feed in voice is so bad that siri has no idea what I want yet speakerphone siri works fine this is perhaps in relation to apple having more than 1 mic blocking out the background noise...in any case people voice control is ok but not worth paying extra...

[Wrinkles66]

Went to dealer yesterday to have the voice software installed and after a 2 hour wait for what was to be a 30 minute job, was told that they had a problem with the software authentication. Problem referred to VW Australia and not certain yet when it will be resolved. For those hoping to get this work completed as a warranty fix, you may be interested to know that the VW paperwork classifies the software upgrade as a 'repair'.

[jdbrown1953]

My 15k service will becoming up shortly so I might ask my local dealer kindly if he could apply this update kindly. Has anyone in the Brisbane area had an accommodating dealers apply this fix / "accessory" ?

I've tried two dealers in Brisbane and they both want $409 - $429 respectively for the "accessory". The difference in installation prices and knowledge of what has to be done is woeful. One dealer tried to claim that I would need to have trim removed and said that it would take over two hours, the other dealer quoted $60.

If I was paranoid I would think that this is a dealer conspiracy to charge as much as they can and hold as much information back so that VW owners are in the dark as to what effort is really required. The other option is that despite the VW logo and purported training the dealerships really don't know much about the car, god help us if there was a real problem.

[Ryan_R]

Well if anyone does get it done, do a before & after VCDS scan and hide a long-life video camera somewhere and we should be able to figure it out

[scobb]

Ryan_R is the king! I also with his help have activated and installed bluetooth & sat nav with voice control ...voice control is frustrating but can work sometimes well...for people who ask this is no siri but VW's voice control system...funny enough when pressing siri on iPhone the microphone or the quality of the feed in voice is so bad that siri has no idea what I want yet speakerphone siri works fine this is perhaps in relation to apple having more than 1 mic blocking out the background noise...in any case people voice control is ok but not worth paying extra...

I just checked my Oct 2013 MY14 Highline and voice activation is not enabled . Just the standard mute/un-mute when pressed.

So, the quote above suggests that Ryan_R has sussed out how to enable this without a visit to the dealer. Can anyone share the process? I have a genuine VCDS cable and am happy to guinea pig this if someone can give me some pointers.

[Ryan_R]

erm, I know how to do it on the Mk6. I don't own a Mk7

[scobb]

erm, I know how to do it on the Mk6. I don't own a Mk7

Aah...yes. good point .

Looks like I'll be making a visit to my dealers in Christchurch tomorrow to see what they have to say. I'll be interested to see if VW NZ are even aware of this upgrade.

[kennyc]

I asked that dealer yesterday when I drove one and he said voice activation was not a feature, then I mentioned that vw have a software CD to "upgrade" it. He then mentioned he heard of that but they don't have the CD yet. Lol

[DV52]

Well if anyone does get it done, do a before & after VCDS scan and hide a long-life video camera somewhere and we should be able to figure it out

Ryan_R: I reckon your suggestion for a long life video camera hidden surreptitiously in the vehicle somewhere is a great idea. However, the problem with the before/after VCDS scan is that Mr Ross's current software (ver 12.12.0) has some fundamental problems when it comes to scanning the "AU" chasis on which the MkVII is built. The big problem is that the controllers for the infortainment system and much of the electronics are currently not supported (and much of the other stuff is in German).
As you know, I've already had the voice control fix installed in my MkVII. and I've tried an "after" scan, without much success. I guess we will just have to wait for the next SW upgrade and hope that Mr Ross has turned his atention to better supporting the MkVII.

[Ryan_R]

Did any of the long coding numbers change when you compared before and after? Having the correct labels isn't super important here (this is how you start to work out the labels). Feel free to send both scans to me via PM.

[night_flight]

I just checked my Oct 2013 MY14 Highline and voice activation is not enabled . Just the standard mute/un-mute when pressed.

So, the quote above suggests that Ryan_R has sussed out how to enable this without a visit to the dealer. Can anyone share the process? I have a genuine VCDS cable and am happy to guinea pig this if someone can give me some pointers.

well I had bought "RNS510 with voice control" that is hardware related feature....some rn510 don't support this at all even if you do the coding is my guess...I know you guys have now different head units, however with the first batch of mk7s I m sure that the units would be all the same hence IT MUST be the software tweak! sometimes I am pissed VW is so slack to simple things like this...

[spikeyboy22]

Ryan_R: I reckon your suggestion for a long life video camera hidden surreptitiously in the vehicle somewhere is a great idea. However, the problem with the before/after VCDS scan is that Mr Ross's current software (ver 12.12.0) has some fundamental problems when it comes to scanning the "AU" chasis on which the MkVII is built. The big problem is that the controllers for the infortainment system and much of the electronics are currently not supported (and much of the other stuff is in German).
As you know, I've already had the voice control fix installed in my MkVII. and I've tried an "after" scan, without much success. I guess we will just have to wait for the next SW upgrade and hope that Mr Ross has turned his atention to better supporting the MkVII.

Any chance you could provide the before and after scans to Ryan R and see if he can see something

[Ryan_R]

We did see something

If you jump into address 5F: Information Electr. (J794) with VCDS, and check to see if your code matches this:
02730008FF00000011510001000900001F0100960100010245 (there may be differences between Trendline/Comfortline/Highline Golf's due to equipment differences)


Then try changing it to match this:
02730008FF00000011510001000900001F0100960100010247

Once you save the coding turn the car off then on again before checking. If the voice control now works... great (let us know). If not, just change the coding back to how it was and clear any fault codes that might have resulted. No harm done

Feel free to take VCDS screenshots as you go so you can start a thread

[DV52]

We did see something

If you jump into address 5F: Information Electr. (J794) with VCDS, and check to see if your code matches this:
02730008FF00000011510001000900001F0100960100010245 (there may be differences between Trendline/Comfortline/Highline Golf's due to equipment differences)


Then try changing it to match this:
02730008FF00000011510001000900001F0100960100010247

Once you save the coding turn the car off then on again before checking. If the voice control now works... great (let us know). If not, just change the coding back to how it was and clear any fault codes that might have resulted. No harm done

Feel free to take VCDS screenshots as you go so you can start a thread

Ryan_R I tried to PM but I couldn't get through (message from admin said that your email box was full).

Appropos of the coding values in your post (above) first, let me start by apologizing for telling you what you probably already know but my (very amateur) take on what I have seen of the VCDS screens strongly suggests that the software uses standard digital nomenclature.

At the bit level (i.e. as shown on the long coding screen - line 4), Mr Ross's software appears to allocate each of the eight bits in a simple binary fashion. By this I mean that the long coding screen appears to take each of the eight bits (in line 4) and to produce a bog-standard binary number.

At a byte level (i.e. as shown on the long coding screen - line 3), each of the bytes appear to be a standard hexadecimal pair.

This means (I think) that the process for translating "45" & "47" into the bit allocations is just a matter of doing a hexadecimal-to-binary conversion. In my youth (many years ago) I used to do these conversion by hand, but I find it much easier these days to use the converters on the web

Converting hexadecimal "47" to binary gives 01000111
Converting hexadecimal "45" to binary gives 01000101

So, if your hypothesis about "45" and "47" is correct, the key to Voice Control activation for the MkVII is to put a tick in the bit 1 box for byte 24. As a check for this logic, someone who hasn't had the Voice control fix should see binary 01000101 on the right-hand box on line 3 (of the long coding screen).

Again, my apology if you already know this stuff.