Time and Date Adjustment

Botus

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 29, 2014
Messages
6,287
Reaction score
2,475
Location
UK
Your Mercedes
S500/2010/500
It seems as soon as the car is switched off then on again it has the right date and the clock can be altered however when you alter the clock or move the car the date reverts. Does seem to be getting better though as when this prob started the date was never right and could not be altered.


I think you need to take it off auto summer winter or you will continue to get frustrated.
I believe the car just picks the date it finds from whichever satellite it comes across first....

if it picks an old one, the date goes to British summer time and between the digital and analogue clocks it goes in a tail spin unsure which to move or which is master - take it off auto switch over, and for the next 5 months it doesn't matter what the date is - when it next finds a satellite beaming out the right date and time, it allows you to line up the two clocks and gets over the issue - temporarily (and should remain on the correct time for 5 months... come BST 2019 I think we should try moving timezone to IRL, or hope Mercedes do a very simple software fix to pick whichever date is the latest)
 
OP
S

steve.link

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 29, 2006
Messages
164
Reaction score
45
Age
67
Location
CARDIFF
Your Mercedes
2014 W222 S500, 2019 W213 E220
  • Thread Starter
  • Thread starter
  • #102
Do we know if this also effects the face lift W221's from 2009 with NTG 3.5 COMAND?
 
OP
S

steve.link

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 29, 2006
Messages
164
Reaction score
45
Age
67
Location
CARDIFF
Your Mercedes
2014 W222 S500, 2019 W213 E220
  • Thread Starter
  • Thread starter
  • #103
Just had mine back from a MB Main Dealer who claimed to have fixed it by resetting the Comand/Audio system. I collected it and drove it 10 yards and the date changed back to April 10th 2018.

I did advise them that this seemed to be an issue with all W221's and they did confirm they had seen the issue in one other car. So at least their Master Tech has seen the problem with his own eyes and they have told me they will investigate further with Mercedes. Will keep you posted of any developments.

Good news is they did not charge me for any work/time.

Steve
 

slonsdale

Active Member
Joined
Oct 28, 2018
Messages
41
Reaction score
3
Your Mercedes
w221 2009 320cdi
Well that sounds like a positive, maybe. Might try my main dealer if free then that will be another in the system. Got a reply from MB cc who did say take it to a main dealer.
Steve.
 

Botus

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 29, 2014
Messages
6,287
Reaction score
2,475
Location
UK
Your Mercedes
S500/2010/500
it doesn't impress me,

so you went to a dealer taking 3 hours of your life, for them to delete all your phonebook and nav addresses, which "surprisingly" had zero effect on a software fault. We could all have been that stupid in 15 seconds on our own drives. Fortunately they didn't take £250 out of your pocket, but regrettably will do absolutely nothing with the info.

Audi have an issue with one steering wheel button randomly responding that they can't fix, a mate with a Passat had one with the link to his phone randomly dropping out.... their response is. yes we know about it, it might take 12 months for a software fix. (and that's on brand new cars in warranty and models they are still hoping to continue selling)

His replacement BMW 5 series works fine by the way... and he's a fussy git.

car manufacturers are woeful with tech and updates.... how can it take 12 months before a patch is available, let alone applied to affected vehicles? Its 10 minutes work for a bloke they already employ to correct….. (once he bothers looking at the code a 3 year old colleague wrote in-between searching for porn). The basic fix can be pushed on to their servers in 30 min and applied next time the car goes to a main dealer. Most likely in under an hour of the customer arriving at a dealership at almost zero cost.

They pretend they don't have updates when they do, they can't be bothered to apply them, and the dealer's grunts mostly aren't capable of doing the job let alone understanding why happy customers and safer more reliable cars on the roads is a good idea
 
Last edited:

slonsdale

Active Member
Joined
Oct 28, 2018
Messages
41
Reaction score
3
Your Mercedes
w221 2009 320cdi
Now now you're letting your anger show
 

dreadlockdw

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2014
Messages
378
Reaction score
40
Location
Wakefield
Your Mercedes
clk 500 cabriolet 2005; E280 1993
Seen a few 211’s with emissions and inspection times up on dash. Look on command and the date is 1976 and will not reset.

My COMAND is an NTG2 model in a 2005 CLK and the screen also now indicates year '76 (as in the post above) but is greyed out and cannot be changed. The time had drifted out by a few hours following the last BST change but was correctable and has stayed correct for weeks since. So at least satnav ETA is correct.
 

Botus

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 29, 2014
Messages
6,287
Reaction score
2,475
Location
UK
Your Mercedes
S500/2010/500
mines turned into a time machine...

its been the usual may 2018 for about last 3 weeks, then today whilst out I checked to see it was still months behind, but later travelling back round the M25 for a good 40 mins thought I'd check again and it was on 3rd Jan 2019... but going back through Bracknell I must have gone through some portal

Time machine.JPG

saw the new fix released recently on some later models - gives a NEW epoch engineering menu
 

RajFRS

New Member
Joined
Jan 27, 2010
Messages
4
Reaction score
0
This might sound bizarre ..I had a similar issue ..centre clock was 1 hour in front of clock on command ..tries everything to align (it used to set summer/winter time zone automatically ) . I set the clock to German time zone not Uk and took off the auto update function) Reset the time on command screen and hey presto the centre clock adjusted back also . Then just altered tome zone back to UK
 

Botus

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 29, 2014
Messages
6,287
Reaction score
2,475
Location
UK
Your Mercedes
S500/2010/500
This might sound bizarre ..I had a similar issue ..centre clock was 1 hour in front of clock on command ..tries everything to align (it used to set summer/winter time zone automatically ) . I set the clock to German time zone not Uk and took off the auto update function) Reset the time on command screen and hey presto the centre clock adjusted back also . Then just altered tome zone back to UK


taking it off auto summer works for now (as were are in GMT at the moment) - but the date wanders about due to the strange ways satellites are calculating years... its a bit like the millennium bug, later firmware is being rolled out on the latest cars with a hidden menu to set the car for the current "epoch"

In the fields of chronology and periodisation, an epoch is an instant in time chosen as the origin of a particular era. The "epoch" then serves as a reference point from which time is measured. Time measurement units are counted from the epoch so that the date and time of events can be specified unambiguously.

epochs are defined for the past, and another epoch is used to start the next era, which is the purpose of the new engineering/dealer menus in the latest firmware.... Epochs are generally chosen to be convenient or significant by a consensus of the time scale's initial users, or by authoritarian fiat. The epoch moment or date is usually defined by a specific clear event, condition, or criterion—the epoch event or epoch criterion—from which the period or era or age is usually characterized or described
 

slonsdale

Active Member
Joined
Oct 28, 2018
Messages
41
Reaction score
3
Your Mercedes
w221 2009 320cdi
Hi, mine is exactly the same. it has changed to 2019 but mostly in May. go to it before moving and the date and time are correct, move the car and presto back to May and the clock looses about three mins. Before setting off clock is adjustable after reversion back to wrong date it is not .Hey Ho.
Happy New Year.
 

Botus

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 29, 2014
Messages
6,287
Reaction score
2,475
Location
UK
Your Mercedes
S500/2010/500
….as far as I understand things which satellites it finds comes and goes. And I guess why 12 years back TomTom had a quick fix software update which if you updated weekly it knew where to look for a faster satellite lock.

Since the NTG3 vehicles lost the plot in Oct 2018, I find for 3 weeks each month the date is always wrong. But there seems to be about 1 week each month where for 3 to 5 days it often finds the satellites showing the correct time and date
 

LostKiwi

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 25, 2006
Messages
31,328
Reaction score
21,575
Location
Midlands / Charente-Maritime
Your Mercedes
'93 500SL-32, '01 W210 Estate E240 (RIP), 02 R230 SL500, 04 Smart Roadster Coupe, 11 R350CDi
The GPS system is undergoing an update at present. Some satellites are the newer updated ones and some are not. GPS satellites aren't geosynchronous so the number and which satellites your GPS can see will vary throughout the day. There are 31 operational satellites and in most parts of the world 5 to 8 are visible at any one point in time (not withstanding ground based obstacles).
The older satellites use an epoch defined by a 10bit data stream giving an epoch of 1023 weeks or a little over 19 years. The epoch starts at zero and increments by one each second. At 1023 weeks it resets to zero and starts again.
The newer ones use a longer data stream hence increasing the epoch length.

GPS was originally designed as a military tool to guide weapons to targets. As such time was not a consideration in the design. It's only since consumer grade GPS became available that time reporting has been more of an issue.
The simplest method to time reporting is to simply use the data from the satellite as the base and report that as the time. After 19 years this will fail as epoch rolls over. The method used to get around this is to use an offset base (i.e subtracting an arbitrary date of manufacture from the base) hence giving a longer period before the roll over of the epoch affects time reporting. Sometimes this date will correspond to the firmware date for the GPS product (but it's not a given). Typically GPS equipment vendors do not document if they are using offset dates nor what that offset is and it's pretty much impossible to tell without access to the source code of the firmware.
The last epoch rollover occurred at midnight 22/08/1999 meaning the next one is due 6/5/2019....

The latest data streams from the newer GPS satellites use a 13 bit code (from memory) extending the epoch to around 160 years. These signals are broadcast in parallel to the older 10 bit streams. Some newer hardware can use these newer signals hence why time reporting can click all over the place depending which satellites the GPS device connects to to derive the time signal.
Another complication is that GPS time is not UTC and makes no compensation for leap years or leap seconds nor for the slowing of the earth's rotation. Initially GPS time and UTC were synchronised but are now several minutes apart.

As can be seen using GPS to calculate time is seriously flawed as it was never intended to be used for that purpose!
 
Last edited:

slonsdale

Active Member
Joined
Oct 28, 2018
Messages
41
Reaction score
3
Your Mercedes
w221 2009 320cdi
That is one he'll of a response. Thank you.
 

Botus

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 29, 2014
Messages
6,287
Reaction score
2,475
Location
UK
Your Mercedes
S500/2010/500
After 19 years this will fail as epoch rolls over...

that's what the new menu brings on the ones getting an update. you go in the engineering option and select one of 6 epochs

the issue is on the 221 with sat nav, there is no way to adjust the clock other than let it pull in the time and date off a satellite
 

LostKiwi

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 25, 2006
Messages
31,328
Reaction score
21,575
Location
Midlands / Charente-Maritime
Your Mercedes
'93 500SL-32, '01 W210 Estate E240 (RIP), 02 R230 SL500, 04 Smart Roadster Coupe, 11 R350CDi
that's what the new menu brings on the ones getting an update. you go in the engineering option and select one of 6 epochs

the issue is on the 221 with sat nav, there is no way to adjust the clock other than let it pull in the time and date off a satellite
Same issue on the R230.
 

Botus

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 29, 2014
Messages
6,287
Reaction score
2,475
Location
UK
Your Mercedes
S500/2010/500
Another complication is that GPS time is not UTC and makes no compensation for leap years or leap seconds nor for the slowing of the earth's rotation. Initially GPS time and UTC were synchronised but are now several minutes apart.

As can be seen using GPS to calculate time is seriously flawed as it was never intended to be used for that purpose!

just re read your post.... I can see the sat nav derived clock is about 2 mins behind these days. Do you think there's a way Mercedes could bodge this if they actually do an update and do they even realise this... looking at mine recently the error seems worse than 3 years ago
 

LostKiwi

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 25, 2006
Messages
31,328
Reaction score
21,575
Location
Midlands / Charente-Maritime
Your Mercedes
'93 500SL-32, '01 W210 Estate E240 (RIP), 02 R230 SL500, 04 Smart Roadster Coupe, 11 R350CDi
The accuracy of time derivation is entirely down to the firmware in the device. The signal from the sattelites is the same for everyone, from there it's just down to the calculation used in the device.
So short answer yes MB could fix it by doing the calculation correctly.
 

EmilysDad

Senior Member
Joined
May 8, 2012
Messages
12,120
Reaction score
5,664
Location
Bury Lancs
Your Mercedes
ML350
Why didn't Merc just use the radio RDS signal like Vauxhall did/does?
 

Botus

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 29, 2014
Messages
6,287
Reaction score
2,475
Location
UK
Your Mercedes
S500/2010/500
yes, it worked perfectly was 100% accurate and "just worked"
 

AIB understand your special Mercedes deserves a special insurance policy. We have a refreshing attitude to insuring high performance, modified, imported or classic and vintage cars and deal with the UK’s leading insurers. We offer discounts for length of ownership, where the vehicle is kept overnight and limiting the mileage and can also cater for those clients who need higher mileage and business use. To obtain a quotation please call the team on 02380 268351 or visit us atAIB Insurance
Top Bottom