Touch & Go Apps ?

[kithmo]

Has anyone downloaded and used any Apps on the Toyota Touch & Go toolbox ?

I've just traded the 2010 Gen 3 T-Spirit in for a 2012 Prius + T-Spirit with Touch & Go Plus and I can't get any apps to load onto the system.

Am I taking all the correct steps ?

First I registered on the Toyota portal, got a username and password and downloaded the Toyota Toolbox software on to my PC. Then I plugged a USB stick into the car and took a copy of my Touch & Go system on to USB, then I opened the Toyota Touch & Go Toolbox, plugged in the USB stick and logged on to the portal. I downloaded 2 free apps, Glass of water and weather, onto my USB stick then took it out to the car and switched in to Ready mode and plugged the USB stick in and the system said downloading upgrade then the message went off and when I look on the Apps page the Apps are not there.

Am I missing something here ?

[Dave R.]

From experience, the app (and satnav update) loading is a bit hit and miss; however, I managed to download and run the Glass of Water app without any problems.

[kithmo]

Thanks for your reply Dave, for a while there I though I was the only member with Touch & Go.

Do you think it's still loading when the message disappears and maybe I'm not giving it enough time ?

My Nav is not the latest update but bearing in mind the unreliability of the download process and the problems some have had with the update from the portal I daren't even try to update it.

[aCactus]

I've not tried loading any apps, but from my reading of the manual it seems they require a data enabled phone to be paired to the car. The manual does say you should get a pop-up to say the download has finished (but it also says engine must be running during download). Ths manual is rather dissapointing as it is trying to cover different implementations of touch and go so it is almost impossible to know which bits actually apply to your car.

I have managed to transfer a few destinations via a USB stick after I found it almost impossible to enter a destination using the in car screen/software. I have had to add a short usb cable to the socket to avoid the contortions required to use the socket which is hidden under the central armrest

[kithmo]

It doesn't mention anything in the manual about pairing it to a phone for the apps/upgrades. It basically says to download the app from the Toyota portal to a USB stick via the Toolbox program on the PC and then plug the USB into the car to download it from the stick.

DaveR, yours worked, can you confirm the way to do it, do I need a data phone or not ?

[aCactus]

Page 95 of "touch screen" owner's manual...

Before using downloaded applications connect the bluetooth phone with an internet profile (See page 192)

[kithmo]

Page 95 of "touch screen" owner's manual...

Before using downloaded applications connect the Bluetooth phone with an internet profile (See page 192)

I read that, but I haven't got to the stage of "using" the apps, I can't get past the preceding page (94), downloading them. The glass of water app doesn't require a phone connection according to the Toyota Toolbox program.

Edit: I just went through the same process as above again and lo and behold it worked fine, downloaded the 2 free apps "Glass of Water" and "Weather" in about 10 seconds on the car.

It was something to do with the Touch & Go Toolbox program I reckon, as it crashed once on my desktop PC and kept crashing on my tablet PC (worked previously). After I got it running on the 2nd attempt on the desktop it worked.

The Glass of water app works as is but I will need a data enabled phone to use the Weather app.

Thanks for your input chaps

[Dave R.]

Well, when I installed "Glass of water" I didn't have a phone connected. The app should be loaded onto a USB stick, and then automagically installed when the system is started up with the USB connected.

As far as phones are concerned, there are very few that are able to provide internet access. Mine (HTC Desire C) certainly isn't. I can get bluetooth connectivity, and the car is able to download SMS messages and the phone book, but it isn't able to access the internet.

[kithmo]

My cheap T-Mobile Energy (Huwaie ?) phone will connect to bluetooth handsfree, can download texts and play music and the connect to internet option is available but when I select it the list of service providers, in the choose service provider option, are mostly foreign ones and mine, EE, is not listed, so the connection fails. My HTC Widfire S only connects to bluetooth handsfree & music, the internet connect is grayed out. The HTC has a tethering option but its only for connection to a Wi-Fi network not mobile network connection. Both phones are on PAYG so I didn't have much hope of getting internet connection anyway.

[Dave R.]

One other thing to watch with Touch and Go; after you do a map upgrade from a USB stick, the system does not always tidy up after itself.... so if you leave the stick inserted, the next time you start the car, it repeats the installation process (which, as noted earlier, can take ages). If you get this problem (e.g. if, like me, you have a 32GB USB stick to hold the 4GB map updates AND an iTunes library - so leave the USB stick permanently connected) the trick is to put the USB stick in your PC and delete the install file (if I remember correctly, it is the .ISO file - this is a CD image stored as a single data file). Oh - and check the forum here for the scary threads about faulty map update files :)

[kithmo]

I don't think I'll bother with the map update, after 3 hours on the Toyota toolbox program on the PC it had loaded 43% of the update on to the memory stick so I gave up.

Interestingly the update Map ID number started with EU2010 and mine starts with EU2011 is mine a later version anyhow ?

[kithmo]

I don't think I'll bother with the map update, after 3 hours on the Toyota toolbox program on the PC it had loaded 43% of the update on to the memory stick so I gave up.

Interestingly the update Map ID number started with EU2010 and mine starts with EU2011 is mine a later version anyhow ?

Update: I put a 6 months Web access package on my T-Mobile Energy phone for browsing and I managed to find the settings on the phone where the provider username and AP and password were, so I entered these into the touch and go, the password was blanked out with 6 ******s so I entered 123456 and it connected. Because I could now connect to the internet, I decided to have another go at downloading the free Weather app and found I couldn't download this on its own. Because I had started the Map update I could only download the Weather and the Map together, so I started the whole download. To my suprise the Toyota Toolbox program had saved the 43% download from before to a cache file on my PC and after about 10 seconds of downloading was back to where I had left off at 43%. The rest of the PC download only took about 15 minutes as most of the 57% progress left was actually just transferring the file from the PC to the USB stick. I then transferred the stick to the car and the Map & the Weather app update took about 40 minutes to update and then the T&G rebooted. After the update I checked out the weather app and it worked (through the phone) and the map version now was EU20121019 and the Touch & Go software version had changed from 1.7.4H to 2.7.4. The Toolbox software said I had to make a new copy of my T&G footprint to USB and verify it. I had to reformat the USB on the PC as the T&G wouldn't let me do it over the existing files. I then copied the T&G footprint over to the blank USB, plugged it back into the PC with the Toolbox program running and it said further updates were available for the Weather and Glass of water apps and the Map, so I downloaded them and again transferred to the T&G, where it took about a minute to update the T&G. After this time the T&G rebooted the internet connection through the phone wouldn't work and when I checked, the connection settings had changed in T&G, so I changed them back to my phone settings and everything works fine now. One thing that has improved on the Nav is that before the update , the car didn't seem to know which way it was facing when it was parked up, e.g. if I had just driven north then reversed into a parking space and the car was facing West, on the map is was still facing North, now it is facing the correct way.