Does anyone of you use routines?
If so, which one do you find really useful?

Did you create them yourself, or did the car create them for you?

 

Good video:

 

I use them but find them only mildly useful. I like my ambient lights to be red at night and multi color blue during the day. I have a routine that will change them based on time of day. I also have routines that will turn on the seet ventilation or heat depending on the in car temp. I had one that would start a massage after leaving home but turned it off. The most useful one is the one that turns the parking cameras on when I arrive home to help with garage parking.

I would find it more useful if actions included raising the suspension or open/closing windows, roof, and blinds. In the US at least, nothing that physical moves can be controlled through automation. For example, in other markets the windows and sunroof will automatically close if the windshield rain sensor detects rain. Not in the US. I can open/close the blinds with voice, but not with a routine. I'm hoping they add more abilities in the future, but for now they are pretty basic.

 

Same goes with holding the recirculation button closes all windows , again not available in the usa.

Routines is also useful for turning on heated seats or cooled seats depending on set temperature.

 

Thanks for the answers. I live in Europe, so I assume I will have these options (such as closing the sunroof and windows at speeds above a certain limit).

I would also like something along the lines of... I come home... deactivate the alarm or turn on the garden lights.

Also curious about the Memory Parking Assist.

 

Might be able to control that using myq for garages and/or alexa integration if I recalled correctly mb has that.

 

Turning off alarms or turning on lights are more in the realm of smarthome integration and require much more than just routines. I have my garage door open/close and my security system switch to home/away mode automatically when I enter/exit a geofence, but that is not a function of the car. My smarthome system does know which vehicle I'm driving and operates the correct garage door. It also knows if anyone is still home and doesn't set the away mode if someone is still home. All this has nothing to do with the car.

I see the routines as more car specific, but it would be nice to fully integrate with a Smarthome system. With the many protocols and types of systems out there, I wouldn't expect it anytime soon. There is Smartthings integration but it's so limited it's useless.

 

Useless. Almost completely.

 

In the last week I tried some of the ones you've read above. I currently have the seat heating go on as soon as I get in, and it is the only one I still like. Others were cool, but not keepers for my habits. I'd love to learn about others people find useful.

As mentioned, in North America (or at least the US) there are fewer and less useful "vehicle" actions.

 

I don't have routines in my car and don't own a W214, but I'm into smart homes. My smart home setup mainly focuses on access control, meaning smart locks, alarm system and garage door, but I also have smart appliances and a smart thermostat. I do use some automations to trigger multiple actions when arriving or leaving the house. Specifically, I have automations/scenes set up that upon departure lock all my doors, arm the alarm system and close the garage with a single press of a button on my phone, and similarly when I arrive it does it in reverse. The thing with automation, though is that they run as soon as the conditions are met, whether you want it or not. Some platforms require confirmation for certain automations before they run. For example I use Apple Homekit and any automation that involves a secure device (locks, gates, doors etc.) require confirmation and Face ID before they run, so simply crossing into the geofence around my house doesn't automatically unlock everything. That's how I want it anyway, as sometimes I walk past my house and don't want it to unlock, or god forbid if somebody were to accost me in front of my home I wouldn't necessarily want the door to unlock and allow them to walk in, or if they steel my phone or I lose it, somebody shouldn't be able to just walk up to my house and it would unlock automatically and invite them in. Gotta require proof that it's actually me and not somebody else in possession of my phone. I also don't want my garage door to open automatically before I have line of sight and I proof that it's me and not somebody else.

I think I saw that the MBUX routines need confirmation before they run. Perhaps some of this is the reason. You may have a routine that automatically turns on the seat heater if the cabin is cold, but maybe you are hot on that day and don't want the seat heaters to turn on, even though it's technically cold in the car. It's kinda similar for my thermostat in the house. It turns on the heater based on how cold it is in the house, but if the weather is nice outside or if I'm doing some chores in the house and I'm hot, I don't necessarily want it to turn on, even though technically it reached the temperature threshold, so I often need to intervene and turn the thermostat off when I don't want it to heat. It's convenient to be able to do that from my phone, though.

So, automations can be a blessing, but they can also be an annoyance. I honestly never wished something would happen automatically in my car based on parameters I set, because most of the functions I use in the car I use them on demand, based on how I feel or how I'm driving at the moment. This is not something that could be easily expressed with automation, at least not until we have AI that can actually reason and truly be an assistant who knows you and can read your intentions etc. We are a long way from that. Todays LLM AIs are often completely wrong unless you feed it a correct prompt that yields the result you were looking for.

 

All good points about the dangers of automation that may unlock things in situations you may not want them to. For that reason, I have not automated any locks yet and not sure I plan to. My home automation is mostly lights, the garage doors, and thermostats. My garages (x4) are all detached and only provide access to the garage so I'm good with them automatically opening when I arrive. A thief would have to be driving my car and have my phone for it to automatically open. Even if it does, all they can do is park the car and maybe take some things I've stored in there but it's pretty empty as it's just for cars.

The routines in the W214 do not require any confirmation and will execute once a condition has been met. It will do a brief notification on the display that allows you to cancel the action if you want. I have the seat heat go on only if it's very cold (like 50°F) in the car which it would never be unless it's cold outside. Same with the cooling, it's set to something like 80°F so no worries about it going on when it shouldn't. I do find it too slow though, particularly for heat and will often turn it on myself before the routine kicks in.

Completely agree on the AI needing more refinement before it's really useful. MB claims the W214 has AI but I find it quite dumb in many situations. It's nothing more than an Alexa integrated with the car and I'm not talking about the new, yet to be released Alexa+. It's pretty cool, but still basic and cannot remember context. We should start a thread on it to go a little deeper on the topic.

 

I have a routine to turn on the front camera when speed drops below 10 mph and the notification that the routine is "starting" involves an unnecessary and annoying 5 second or so countdown. Stupid.

 

It is the anticipation...

 

Everything has AI now, google search, ios and android, now cars... Wish I can turn some off. Are we transitioning to Wall.E?

 

That said, the Routines might still be helpful, useful, just need to come up with better scenarios. Perhaps also get rid of that 5 second count down mentioned.

 

Why not just start loop recording automatically every time you start the car? What is the use case to turn it on only when it drops below 10mph?

 

How do you turn on loop recording automatically every time you start the car? Do you have to enter it as a routine? I can turn on loop recording manually every time the car starts by clicking through the recording icon on the screen menu, but it does not automatically restart the next time the car runs.

 

That's what I thought. It's not that you need to confirm before a routine runs, but it gives you 5 seconds to cancel it before it runs. This goes to my point above regarding not wanting the automations to run all the time, so this is their way to let the user intervene, but it's not perfect either if there's always a 5 second delay. Might as well turn the front camera on manually if it takes 5 seconds for it to turn on automatically.

 

Parking into a spot forward. I think you are confusing it with the dash cam. The front camera does automatically turn on below 10 mph already if the car senses an obstacle in front of it. It brings up a small birds eye view, but then in my case I can press the right touchpad on the steering wheel to activate the detailed camera view, so the automation seems of limited use, especially if you have to wait out the 5 second timeout first. I do sometimes manually turn on the front camera as I'm parking. I have it in my favorites, so it's two taps to activate it as needed. I believe on the newer AMG models, the camera can even be put on one of the two programmable soft buttons on the left lower part of the steering wheel (AMG Drive Unit), so it can be brought up with one press of a button. In my AMG that's not an option yet. I can only put powertrain related functions on to those buttons.

 

Assuming you meant the parking camera then there is no loop recording. I thought you meant the dash camera when you said "front camera" since the dash camera is only front while the parking cameras are actually 360. In the case of the parking camera, it will come on automatically when you are going slow and have an obstacle close enough to the car. You may be able to turn it on faster by increasing the warning time for obstacles. I use a routine to turn on the parking camera when I arrive home based on geofence. It actually goes on at the perfect time which is about 50 feet before I get to the garage door. It will come on automatically (eventually) but I like to have it on before I enter the door as I park in a way that gets me very close to the opening on one side. If I need to turn it on manually then there is a button (one of the few) just below the screen to turn it on. Takes less than a second.

BTW: Turning on loop recording on the dash camera automatically is done by tapping the camera icon in the upper right of the center screen and from there it's an obvious selection to turn it on. I would have to go to the car to go through it myself to give you an exact description. It's set one and done so I don't normally go there. Some locations for some reason prohibit this feature and the car will disable the ability depending on the GPS location of the car at that time.

 

Not many scenarios I can think of. But in winter I created a routine to turn on the seat and steering wheel heating when the outer temperature and internal temperature are below xxF and yyF separately. It worked for a while, then never again. Mentioned this to the mechanic when sending in my car for service, and they said a software update could solve the problem. And it didn't. I'll see if it can turn on the AC for me in summer.

 

Ugh, it really stink when something doesn't work as promised : (

 

It is. Even though the seat heating button is so close, or just a "Hey Mercedes, ..." away, but advanced features like routines help to define Luxury. Right?

 

I mean, they had been advertising it, in the order guide, youtube videos (although it was the European channel), mbusa media site. I just wish they at least work if you give an if and then command. What was the main error that was shown when the Routine was activated?

 

The car didn't say anything when the routine didn't work, just like it didn't know anything about that.
I'm (forced to get) used to MB claiming something they can't/don't make it work. How many of us ordered digital headlight and are still waiting for it to be activated, with a fee (did they mention this extra fee when ordering DA4)? To me it's a scam.