Like promised, here's a little guide/tutorial to get the BMW Apps in the F30 working as described above.
Disclaimer: As you may understand I can take no responsibility if anything goes wrong, or if something turns out not to be working like expected. The above seems to be working for me inside my X5 with an iPad, but I haven't been able to test it fully with BMW Apps in the F30 and a iPhone 3GS or iPod Touch. Some settings within Android might be slightly different, depending on your phone and software version but it should be mostly the same as it is with me.
For the purpose of this guide, I start with the idea that your Android phone is already linked to the BMW Bluetooth and that it has stored it's name and such so it auto connects to your car. If you don't need how to do this, I would like to refer you to the BMW manual
First thing you need to do, if you haven't already, is to change some settings within your Android phone in regards to the Mobile Access Point. To do this, go to the following location: 'settings' > 'Wireless and network' > 'Mobile AP' > 'Mobile AP settings'.
In the next screen you will be able to make some changes. Enter any name, if there is no name yet or if you want a more personalized name, in the
Network SSID field, under
Security select "WPA2 PSK" and figure out a password, one easy enough for you to remember but hard enough so others cannot guess it, and enter this in the
Password field. It should look a bit like in the 3rd picture below:
When this is all done, your phone is basically set up to be a Mobile Access Point. If you don't want any of the following steps, you could of course manually enable to Mobile AP by simply ticking the box at 'Mobile AP' in the middle picture above. However, that would mean you had to do it manually every time while it can be done fully automatically.
Now, to enable, and disable, the Mobile AP only when you are within your car, and preferable have your phone hooked up to a power supply in your car to avoid the extra battery drain, you can follow the following steps.
The program I used to do this is called
Tasker. Tasker is an App you can either
download from Android Market or from the
Developer's website which gives you a 7 day trial. The App currently costs $6.49, so it's not one of the cheapest apps but once you get the hang of it, you'll see it's actually worth the money as it can do a lot of things.
After you downloaded and installed the app, just open it. Since it's the first time you're using the app, it will show several tool tips but you can just ignore those. Personally I always have the WIFI on my phone on, so I made this guide with that in mind as it will have a function to turn it off inside the car and turn it back on once you leave the car. If you want to skip these, that's possible but make sure you do add the variables that are part of these steps. I will write in
red what you can skip if you feel you don't need the automated WIFI on and off
(problem really is that WIFI has to be off in order to make the Mobile AP work, and for some reason it does not come back on once the Mobile AP turns it off.. my small workaround seems to fix this).
Once you get to the first screen above (probably right after you click away the tooltip), you should first click on the
green plus sign. The following window will open up:
You can enter any name in the screen in the first picture above, but it might be easy for clarification to use a similar name as I did. Also don't forget the
1 in the end because we need to make 2 profiles and this way we can keep them apart of each other (and if you make more profiles in the future, you will know these are together). Once you did this, tap on the
green check mark, the second picture above will be shown where you have to tap on
State.
Now, in the next screen, click on
Net. Then, in the next screen on
Bluetooth Connected and you will then see another screen with two empty optional fields:
Name and
Address. If you click, in this screen, on the magnifiers, it will actually show the name of your BMW Bluetooth (and if you have more than one BT connection, it will probably show more than just one) and it's MAC Address (I removed a part of it for security reasons):
Select the right one for your car, and do this with both the
Name and the
Address field. After you're done, click the
green check mark and it will ask you what to do next, click in this screen on
New Task.
First give the new task a name, I called it
Wifi Off as that is the main functionality of this task. If you do not care about your WIFI status, you can also give it a different name (either way, you do have to give it a name). After you have given it a name, click on the
green check mark.
In the next screen, it will ask you what kind of task you want to run.
(if you do not care about the WIFI status, you can skip this part in red, the next step is written where the text goes into black again)
Select Settings in the bottom of this screen, then click on Net and then select WiFi and make sure the setting has been set to Off. After this click on the green check mark to confirm the setting.
You should now be seeing the following screen below (unless you didn't do this step lol):
In this next screen, click on the blue-ish plus sign, then scroll a bit down on the next screen to
Variable and click on it, and then select
Variable Set.
Now enter the
Name and
To fields similar as in the following picture. Then click the
green check mark to confirm the setting.[/COLOR], you should be seeing a screen like the second picture below and there you click once more on the
green check mark to confirm the setting.
Next you will see the screen like below. Click on the task
Wifi Off (or whatever name you picked) and keep pressing down on this until a screen opens such as in the second picture below.
In this new screen, click on
Add Exit Task. It will now ask what you want to do, click on
New Task and give it a name. Again, if you don't do the WIFI settings, it can be a different name but since it will change the variable again, it will need a name at least. After the name has been given a name, click on the
green check mark. Now add a new task by clicking on the
blue-ish plus sign.
(again, if you do not care about the WIFI status, you can skip the next part and continue with the variable (that's where the text goes back into black :P )
Now click on Settings (in the bottom), then on Net and in the next screen click on WiFi. You will see similar screen again, asking what you want to do with the WIFI, make sure it is set to On and then click on the green check mark to confirm the new setting. In the next screen, click on the blue-ish plus sign again and in this next screen you scroll down a bit, click on
Variable and then on
Variable Set.
Since you already set the variable before, it will be easier to give it a name, just click on the button with the luggage tag symbol and you will see the variable listed. Simply click the variable name and it will be added to the
Name field. Obviously you can also type it but this way there is little room for error. In the
To field, type 'Off', and the screen should look similar as the one below:
Next click on the
green check mark to confirm this variable setting, and in the next screen click again on the
green check mark. You should now see the whole first profile called 'BMW Apps - 1' like the picture below:
The profile above will now run (if Tasker is enabled) once you enter the car, where it will shut down the WIFI and change a variable. It will turn back on the WIFI once you leave the car. So far nothing spectacular (although it might save you some battery as you normally don't need your WIFI when driving).
Next we will make the second profile, this one will turn the WIFI Tether on and off while we're hooked up to a power supply within the car. It will see whether or not we're in the car thanks to the earlier set variable. This way either profile will only work while in the car, and making sure it is connected to a power supply will be better for your battery too as a WIFI Tether can drain that quite fast.
Now, click on the
green plus sign and it will ask you once again what the new profile name should be. To make it easier, I called this profile "BMW Apps - 2" (how original, right? Haha). Once you gave it a name, click on the
green check mark and on the next screen, click on
State. On the next screen, click on
Power and when it asks you to choose between Battery and Power, select
Power once more. Make sure the setting is set to
Any and click the
green check mark to confirm this.
We now have to assign some tasks to this profile, so click on
New Task and give the new task a name. I called it "Tether On", like in the first screen below, as this is what the task essentially will be doing.
Now click on the
blue-ish plus sign to add a new action to this task. Click below on [b]Settings[b] and select
Net. Click in the next screen, the one you also see in the second picture above, on
Wifi Tether.
Now set make sure it is set to
On and check the check box next to
If, like in the image below.
Set the box in the bottom left corner (below 'if') to the variable name (I used %BluetoothOnOff). You can do this either by clicking on the luggage tag symbol and selecting the variable name, or by typing the name in that field (make sure it's exactly the same). And in the empty field at the other side, on the right corner, simply type 'On'. Now click on the
green check mark to confirm this.
It should now be showing the screen like below:
Now click on the task named
Tether On and keep pressing it down, just like the one before, until a new screen pops up with the option to add an exit task. Click on
Add Exit Task in this screen and select
New Task on the next. Now Give the task a name, I chose to name it "Tether Off", again because this is essentially what the task will be doing. Once done, click the
green check mark to confirm.
In the next screen you will need to create yet another task. Click on the
blue-ish plus sign, click on
Settings below and select
Net. In the next screen, click on
WiFi Tether and make sure the setting is set to
Off. There is no need to set an If statement here, just click on the
green check mark and you'll be back on the previous screen again.
Click in this screen again on the
blue-ish plus sign to create another action for this task. Scroll down to
Variable and click on it. Next select
Variable Set and make it look as in the first picture below. Click on the
green check mark to confirm and you should be seeing your tasks like in the second picture below. Click on the
green check mark once more to confirm everything.
You should now be seeing a screen similar as the third picture above. And you will have basically set everything up as it should be. Now only click on the
Off button in the bottom-right corner to make Tasker active and it will be running while your phone is on (it will also automatically start up if your phone is turned off and on again). To turn Tasker off, just turn on that same button again.
Now whenever you will enter your car, and make a connection between your phone and car, it will automatically turn off WIFI. When you connect to the power supply, it will automatically turn on the Mobile Access Point but only IF the variable has been set to On, which is done in the first profile. Once you disconnect power or simply the Bluetooth connection, it should return to it's original status
Here's how it works on video:
I hope this helped =)