Sat nav settings with a mind of their own

[Dancing Badger]

Well this is strange - has anybody else had this?  I picked up my 2016 Prius the week before Christmas. I noticed one day while playing with the sat nav that it was showing the speed limit as 48 (it was a 30 mph zone). I planned to have a dig into the settings but forgot, and the next time I looked it was behaving normally - showing 30 in a 30 zone.  I never gave it another thought - other than to hypothesise that it was reporting the limit in km/h instead of mph for some reason.

Yesterday I took the car on its first long trip (Manchester to Southampton and back for the football, 520 mile round trip, 65.9 mpg calculated brim to brim, 64.9 mpg on the computer, loved the drive), and had the sat nav on to compare its performance with the TomTom in my phone - which is when I noticed that the map was out of date, it was missing the new(ish) A556 link road between the M56 and the M6, for those of you who know north west England. I had downloaded an update from the e-store but having read here that it can take 40 minutes to an hour and that some people have had problems I hadn't bothered to install it - I only intend to use the sat nav as back up if there's an issue with my phone - I've got the traffic enabled via the internet but the car seems not to choose routes as well (or quickly) as my phone. However, having a missing road and knowing about it was definitely going to annoy me so I installed the update this afternoon. I selected maps for UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Spain to save time as I'm unlikely to drive the car any further afield and went for a drive while it updated. It took half an hour or less with no problems, so happy days, but when it was finished the sat nav was back in metric units.

This prompted a dig into the settings where I found the ability to select l/100km or mpg, presumably for the trip screen in the head unit - I haven't found any other reference to miles/km. It was set on l/100km, so I set it to mpg. Woo hoo, cracked it, I thought. But when I backed out of the settings screen it reverted to l/100km. The only way I found to stop it reverting to l/100km was to power the car off while the setting screen was still open showing the mpg selection and then to power back on.

The other curiosity is the sat nav volume.  I never have the voice guidance turned on - I use the map and prefer not to be nagged by Digital Doris - but I assume the navigation volume drives the volume for the safety camera alert bong. I presume I can turn the alerts off but don't necessarily want to, however it was irritatingly loud, and the first several times it bonged at me I couldn't work out what the car was trying to tell me!  I found the setting for nav volume in the settings.  I had volume buttons on the map on my 2013 Auris - how is burying a function you're likely to want quick access to while driving two or three button presses away a good idea? Anyway, having found the relevant setting I reduced it from 8 (Status Quo concert front row) to 2 (string quartet, back stalls) which I found much more amenable. But then when I turned the volume up on my music the nav volume went up with it!  Come on - really?  I've dealt with it (I think) by setting the audio to where I'd usually want it and then going back and resetting the nav volume back down to 2 (it had gone up to 4).

Do these settings really just reset themselves while I'm not looking?  Is this Toyota knowing better than me what I want? Have I got a poltergeist? Or have I selected something silly?

[ian rooke]

Hi my Gen 4 has the same problem I have complained to Toyota they are not interested my previous Gen3 and Lexus ct 200 did not have this fault so the touch 2 and go is a step backwards .   

[Anthony Poli]

Hi,
Presumably you have a touch 2 unit?
I would be tempted to try the upgrade if you have down loaded it.
The update usually contains software and not just the new map.

If the layout of the main screen looks different, it is because they have made changes to the software.

Since you have paid for it, you might as well upgrade.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Dancing Badger]

Hi - it is the Touch 2 and I've applied the latest upgrade, not just the maps - 6.12.0L.  It was free as the car isn't 3 years old yet.  I haven't noticed any differences on the main screen.

[Dancing Badger]

10 minutes ago, ian rooke said:

Hi my Gen 4 has the same problem I have complained to Toyota they are not interested my previous Gen3 and Lexus ct 200 did not have this fault so the touch 2 and go is a step backwards .   

Not going to bother going to the dealer or trying to chase it up with Toyota - it's not that much of an issue for me and I was just curious to see if I was alone - but if somebody has found a fix I can do at home I'm up for that.

[TheProfessor]

I've had the random change to kilometers happen to me once. It was on a 2017 Prius Excel in the UK, with the latest Touch 2 Go maps and software available at the time.

After I restarted the car, it reverted on its own to MPH.

The only thing I can think of was that I was being impatient waiting for it to start, and tapping the buttons on the screen to get it to start navigating while it was still starting up and going through it's minute of being super-sluggish. May or may not be relevant. It's not happened since in 8 months of ownership.

Not sure what volume control changes the volume of the traffic camera alerts, but given there are so many of them I turned them off, figuring it was better to just not speed. I use speed limiting cruise control (set to 10% above the limit, as that's roughly what the error is on my speedometer), and on the rare occasion I do go too fast in a given speed limit zone my sat nav verbally warns me "The speed limit is 70MPH" or whatever. I suppose the sat nav volume would need to be up for you to hear that though.

[Dancing Badger]

I'm thinking of turning off the camera alerts - it was going off for every other gantry in the "smart" section of the M42.  I don't generally exceed speed limits, I use the Adaptive Cruise now I've got it (really very impressed with that!) and if I need reminders about speed limits and cameras then my TomTom does that anyway. It's just that I like to get to the bottom of these things where I can.

[Heidfirst]

3 hours ago, Dancing Badger said:

The other curiosity is the sat nav volume.  I never have the voice guidance turned on - I use the map and prefer not to be nagged by Digital Doris - but I assume the navigation volume drives the volume for the safety camera alert bong. I presume I can turn the alerts off but don't necessarily want to, however it was irritatingly loud, and the first several times it bonged at me I couldn't work out what the car was trying to tell me!  I found the setting for nav volume in the settings.  I had volume buttons on the map on my 2013 Auris - how is burying a function you're likely to want quick access to while driving two or three button presses away a good idea? Anyway, having found the relevant setting I reduced it from 8 (Status Quo concert front row) to 2 (string quartet, back stalls) which I found much more amenable. But then when I turned the volume up on my music the nav volume went up with it!  Come on - really?  I've dealt with it (I think) by setting the audio to where I'd usually want it and then going back and resetting the nav volume back down to 2 (it had gone up to 4).

The 2 volumes are linked - otherwise if the nav volume stayed the same when you adjusted audio volume up you might drown out announcements.

There are 2 ways of adjusting relative nav volume. One, as you found in the settings, the other by using a volume control (head unit or steering wheel controls) when it is announcing. I suspect that you may have fallen foul of the latter.

[Dancing Badger]

Cheers Scott, that makes sense.

[ian rooke]

Hi as you say the Sat Nav has to speak over the radio ,Usb,Cd so that part works as it should but turn off the radio Usb Cd the system does not lower the volume as it did in previous models as it has nothing to speak over