Went out to dinner, came home at 9:00ish, parked, locked car for the night.
This morning when I started the car my dash is not mine - favourite buttons are all gone - nothing is "right". I hit home, see profile is on "Guest" and think "oh ok!" weird. I choose my profile under my name. It asks "Do you want to perform blah blah blah setup" and I say "skip".
Well, still nothing is right. HUD is not setup, Gauge cluster is not setup, favourites buttons are all gone, every single setting on the car is "wrong".
Radio stations are there, that's about it so at least there's that.
Everything is factory - to the extent when I parked at the office and locked the car again THE HORN BEEPED. How embarrassing OMG. LOL.

I thought maybe my son or someone is playing a trick on me and pranking me so I looked for motion and there was only three suspect times. At 9:50pm then again at 11:00pm and then again at 2:30am my dome light/rearview mirror light (can't tell wich) goes on for 1 second and immediately back off again all by itself. WTH is that all about?

Why did the system decide to just reset itself to factory? Was there an over-air thing that just messed up? Why would the light go on and off 3 different times overnight?

 

https://nypost.com/2024/05/28/us-new...o-peer-review/

 

I've seen them for years, the invisible aliens, cause so much trouble.

 

You have MBUX, but I'm dealing with a similar issue in my 2019 C63S coupe with COMAND. As of earlier this year, the digital instrument cluster intermittently loses some of its settings. Specifically the layout changes from my usual Supersport to Sport and more annoying the units get changed from miles to kilometers. I've brought it in to the dealership the other day finally and the COMAND system's watchdog reported an internal software error. This explains the couple of spontaneous reboots that have happened as well. The advise was to reload the COMAND software which they did, but it pretty much fixed nothing. I'm now faced with potentially reload the software on the instrument cluster, but that apparently takes several hours and my dealerships wants close to $2000 for that. I've reached out to RJ Automotive to see if they offer reloading the software, but Raj has stopped responding. In his initial responses he couldn't really offer a concrete idea on why it's happening. His first comment was that the flash memory/storage in the head unit might be starting to fail, which if that's the case then I'm looking at having to replace the head unit out of warranty.

I'm not entirely sure what to do next. I don't drive the car a lot, so so far I've been putting up with changing the two settings back whenever it happens. At least it's not like in your case where it loses pretty much all settings. As far as I know, MB is turning off the Personalization service for vehicles such as mine with NTG 5.5. They could be potentially screwing around with it causing these issues, but I have disabled the Personalization service, deleted all the profiles and am currently using the Guest profile, but it's still happening.

There's also the possibility that since my car is 5+ years old now, the battery might be dying causing these random issues. More troubleshooting needed to get to the bottom of this, but also not keen on throwing money at the problem. I'll replace the battery if necessary as that will be needed at some point anyway, but I'm not going to spend tons of money on reloading software or replacing instrument cluster and head unit with no guarantee that it will fix the issue. Just weird that it was all working for 5 years and now suddenly has these issues. No update other than map updates and communication module updates, but the last update was before all this started.

 

Could someone have been trying to steal your car remotely by radio signal and clone the key fob, triggering the SAM or BCM and the done light therefore ... then in attempting to access the car it went into reset mode

 

This was top of mind. I keep my keys far from the car but who knows… also the larger reason why I reviewed security footage. I’ll look at the outdoor cams during the same timeframe shortly.

 

That sounds terrible. I have a friend that has started a biz reprograming chips and cloning chips for all sorts of automotive stuff. The nand etc. does indeed have a lifespan and goes bad.

 

Here is a video of the car lights thing.

I have a pretty nifty commercial video system so doing an investigation is super easy. I drew my motion frame around the windshield and this has been happening for months. There is nothing going on outside on any cams in the same timeframe.

 

The dome/map lights coming on is definitely bizarre. Something is waking it up.

Do you think there could be a possibility it could be related to an external connected application like Mercedes Me (or whatever they're calling it this week)?

BTW, nice camera setup and footage. Nice.

 

Also if you get OTA updates that may be something else to consider?

 

Will a bug flying or crawling on the motion sensor trigger anything

 

we reload, reset, reprogram all clusters and head units easy
no need to pay $2000
we also have repair pack deals
and, for lifetime members, all this is FREE

 

Excellent. I was gonna contact you as well. I'll get in touch.

 

you are very welcome!

 

My car just stopped folding the mirrors when locked and started limiting the trunk lid height when opened. It turned out the mother ship sent a bunch of gratuitous profile changes that needed undoing.

 

This is all I can figure.
I renewed Mercedes Me - perhaps everything got wiped on the anniversary day? Looking to see what day that was now…

 

I thought of that too. Thing is if I forget and lock a passenger in the car to run in and out of a store the alarm starts going after a few minutes.

Definitely something to look into more.

 

If you are serious about this thought - I think you are - the person(s) doing it would not need to be within camera range, or are smart enough to check for IR and avoid it. I have seen goofiness like this many times (not so much with cars...but, your an IT guy, right?). Tends to be an adventurous neighbor kid with some YouTube videos and an Arduino. If it was a serious player...I would find the cars home (in theory they did)...test, test, test in the AM when you are heading to work (a typical normal daily time to minimize the "stake out"). Then, finish the job at a more public open place while you are getting some eggs or something.

If your theory is right...I blame neighbor kids (and I am as jaded as they come and have left my former home/state due to crime).

 

Ahhh...some of the reasons the cellular chip is removed from four of my cars.........

 

The relay attack to steal the cars doesn't need the key to be close to the car, just needs the key to be out in the open close enough to where someone with an antenna can pick up the signal from the key. They they relay the signal to someone close to the car. https://leasing.com/guides/relay-car...-you-avoid-it/

Of course they'd still have to get your garage door opened, so doubt it was that going on. But the key relay attack is something to be aware of when parking out in town or other places where someone could grab your car.

 

For someone who can do an MITM attack (man in the middle), opening a garage door is the least of the concerns.

 

Agreed, but the fact that the garage door was never opened suggests that this isn't what was going on.

 

The fob shuts down after a few minutes, so this concern is overblown. Any cloning would have to take place immediately after the car were parked, even if the fob were left in it (as I always do). That's why you have to give the key that's been sitting a jiggle when you restart the car. Once it detects zero motion for a couple of minutes, it becomes a paperweight. (The motion detection is very sensitive, so just being in a moving car keeps it active.)

 

Back to this - My Mercedes Me ran out June 2 and I renewed them June 2. Maybe it's just that finally kicking in?! I will ask the dealer next time I am in.

 

Anyone else want to stare at their car all night? I wonder if this is just some dance it does talking to MB.

Anyhow, I haven't had five seconds to string together so my car still honks when I lock it.
So annoying.
Maybe I'll fix it tonight while enjoying a cigar pondering life.