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AI Box Fix

Heat & throttlingReviewed

AI Box Reboots When Mobile Signal Drops: Hotspot or LTE Mode

Box reboots or shuts off in dead zones? Use your phone's hotspot instead of the SIM, or set the network type to LTE/WCDMA. Picasou 3 Pro, Mstick4, UX999.

Quick answer

Give the box its internet from your phone's hotspot instead of its own SIM, so the modem stops hunting for a signal in dead zones; five of five owners who did this reported the reboots stopped. If you want to keep the SIM, set its preferred network type to LTE/WCDMA, which worked for three of four, and fit a cooler if the box is also hot.

Symptoms

  • The box restarts at the same dead spot on your daily route
  • It reboots on country roads as soon as the mobile signal disappears, and keeps rebooting until coverage returns
  • It runs all day on Wi-Fi or a phone hotspot, but not on its own SIM
  • Mobile data drops first, then the box freezes or restarts
  • Extra power is already connected and it still happens

Applies to

Connection to the car
CarPlay and Android Auto
Head units mentioned in reports
Haval / GWM GWM head units
Highest risk on this page
Safe
Status
Workaround confirmed by the community

Why it happens

When coverage disappears, the box’s modem starts hunting: it scans bands, falls back to slower networks and keeps retrying. That draws extra current and makes heat right next to the processor, and some firmware handles the lost data connection badly. The result is the same from the driver’s seat: the box freezes, drops off the head unit or restarts, often at the same spot every day.

Two Ottocast Picasou 3 Pro owners described exactly this, one with extra power already connected, and nobody in that thread had a fix yet. Owners of other boxes with the same pattern did find fixes, and they work on the same principle: stop the modem hunting (hotspot), stop it falling back (network type), or keep it cool enough that it does not fail (cooler).

Power is the first thing to rule out. If the box also restarts under heavy app load or only with the SIM in at start-up, read AI box keeps rebooting: a second power lead fixed most of those cases. The fixes below are for owners whose power supply was already sorted.

Fixes, ranked

Use your phone's hotspot for internet instead of the box's SIM

  • Safe
  • Time: 10 minutes
  • Worked for 5 of 5 reports
  1. Turn off mobile data on the box, or remove the SIM.
  2. Turn on your phone’s hotspot and connect the box to it once, so it remembers the network.
  3. Optional, on an Android phone: set up an automation (MacroDroid or the phone’s own routines) that turns the hotspot on when the phone connects to the box over Bluetooth.
  4. Drive through the dead spot that used to trigger the reboot.

An MGears Mstick4 owner whose box shut down 30–60 minutes into drives between towns, with navigation and a video playing, removed the SIM and used the phone’s hotspot, and the shutdowns stopped. Cables and power sources had made no difference. Three more Mstick4 owners reported the same: reboots on the box’s own SIM in weak signal, none on the phone’s hotspot. One set up an automation so the phone shares Wi-Fi as soon as it detects the box, another found it worked even with the SIM left inside, and a third, who had already tried heatsinks and a dual cable, drove a full day without a single reboot.

An ApplePie UX999 Ultra owner described the same thing: restarts every time the mobile network dropped, and none when connected to Wi-Fi. Leaving the SIM in has one advantage: when GPS is jammed, navigation can still estimate position from cell towers.

Set the preferred network type to LTE/WCDMA

  • Safe
  • Time: 5 minutes
  • Worked for 3 of 4 reports
  1. Open Settings → Network & internet → SIM cards → Preferred network type.
  2. Choose LTE/WCDMA. On Picasou boxes the list reads as 4G/3G options; choose the one without 2G.
  3. If the setting is missing, ask the seller for the engineering code that opens it (on some UX999 firmware it is hidden).
  4. Reboot the box and drive through the area where it used to restart.
Options vary between boxes and firmware versions. Reconstructed screen, labels may differ by firmware.

A UX999 Ultra owner whose box froze and went dark at the first loss of signal on every highway drive set LTE/WCDMA and reported it fixed. A Picasou 3 owner with reboots in no-coverage areas said the same setting helped, and another Picasou 3 owner found the reboots on signal loss stopped after a firmware update together with the recommended network settings.

That last owner traded one problem for another: when coverage drops, the sound now cuts out until the box is restarted. And the setting did not help the owner who started one of these threads. Keep the hotspot fix in mind if it does not work for you.

Cool the box if data drops before the reboot

  • Safe
  • Time: 15 minutes
  • Worked for 2 of 2 reports
  1. Turn on a temperature readout (how to) and check it the next time data drops.
  2. If the box is hot, clamp a magnetic Peltier phone cooler flat against the case.
  3. Power the cooler from a separate USB socket.
  4. Drive the same route with the SIM in.

On the Picasou 3, heat shows up first as lost mobile data, then lag, then a restart; one owner of both the P3 and P3 Pro described exactly that. A P3 owner whose data dropped whenever the box got hot fitted a cooler and the problem was gone. Another has used a Peltier cooler on a P3 for six months with the SIM in and no overheating since. The Picasou 3 and 3 Pro guide covers the P3 Pro’s hidden CPU Monitor app.

Things to try (unverified)

  • Picasou 3 drops CarPlay when it joins a phone hotspot. One owner’s Picasou 3, stable for two years in a Geely Atlas, started dropping the CarPlay connection whenever it connected to the phone’s hotspot, and ran normally without internet. Resetting the box with the R pin-hole on its underside and resetting the head unit did not help, and nobody has reported a fix. If you see this, try the box’s own SIM for data instead, and report your firmware date to Ottocast support.
  • Watch the temperature on the Picasou 3 Pro. Suggested to a P3 Pro owner whose box restarted every time the network dropped: run a CPU temperature widget and see whether the restarts line up with heat. Nobody has reported back.
  • Record logs before the restart. The same thread suggested writing system logs to an SD card and noting the time of each restart, so the log shows what failed first. That needs some technical skill; how to report a bug lists what to send.
  • LTE only, or picking bands. Also suggested in the P3 Pro thread, with nobody reporting back. Where LTE coverage ends completely, LTE only leaves the modem nothing to fall back on, which is why LTE/WCDMA in Fix 2 is the more common choice.

If nothing works

Note the box model and firmware date (Settings → About), your carrier and SIM type, the network type setting, whether extra power is connected, and the temperature when it restarts. Mark the spots on your route where it happens: if they match places where your phone also loses signal, the cause is the modem, not the car.

Send that to the seller or the manufacturer (Ottocast: [email protected]; Carlinkit: [email protected]). Until there is a firmware fix, the phone hotspot is the most reliable workaround reported. SIM card not working covers SIM types and settings, and start here compares box families if you decide to replace it.

Parts the fixes above need

  • Magnetic phone cooler (semiconductor / Peltier)

    Active cooling that clamps onto the box; needs its own USB power.

Related fixes

Did this work for you?

Tell us which fix worked (or didn't), with your box, firmware date and car. Reports are how fixes get confirmed and re-ranked.

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Changelog

  • Last reviewed against new community reports:
  • Confirmed by 10 community reports on MGears Mstick4, ApplePie UX999 Ultra, Ottocast Picasou 3.
  • Page updated:

"Confirmed" means a community member reported that the fix worked on their unit. We have not tested it on our own hardware. How we verify.