SwiftOtron

Hello.
I live in the UK and got the following three warnings pop up on my 2019 A6 Avant the other morning. My car is under extended warranty but the dealership claims these are ‘normal’ at this time of year, due to condensation by the camera. I can’t believe this to be true, so wanted to see if anyone else out there had experienced similar issues.

DadAudi

That popped up the other week on my 2021 sedan and I was also told “normal “ well if that’s the case what are we supposed to do when it’s between temps ?

John Simcox

Not sure I would call it "normal" but certainly common. The issue seems to be most commonly occur if you turn the ignition off and then restart again after just a few minutes (ie not all the system have fully shut down. The faults are all associated with he camera based system not restarting properly. I has it regularly on my original C8 but get it much less frequently on my current one. One day maybe Audi will be able to fix all of the software bugs in these cars but I am not holding my breath and it seems that Audi (or indeed the wider VAG group) are not alone with many other manufacturers having software related issues on their cars

DadAudi

This is one of the reasons why I did not want a feature laden vehicle as to prevent me being annoyed because of things such as this lol.

SwiftOtron

Thanks all. It’s reassuring to know that I wasn’t being fobbed off, but still disappointing to know.
Fingers crossed it’ll not happen regularly.

PaulR7

This is not the hot restart issue, this happened to me as well the other day with the terrible fog we had east of London, it's just the nature of how these systems work and there isn't much you can do about it except for maybe use something like RainX on the windscreen, it won't help in the fog but it will help any other time getting rid of the condensation issue.

John Simcox

True it can also be caused by misting in front of the camera, but there are heater elements there to clear that so after a short time the warning should go away. If it stays longer than a few minutes then it is almost certainly the software issue

Bartenderfloyd

I get that all the time when it rains. I just assume the spray is covering the camera so all those systems shut down because they won't work correctly.

whynotme

Yeah, I get it in heavy rain.

PaulR7

So just to update everybody, I've had this popping up more and more with the matrix lights, pre-sense and distance warning malfunction all popping up one after the other after a certain time.
I've put it down to the fact that the weather has been absolutely crap lately with >90% humidity and the heater element needing time to kick in as it'd usually clear once on the motorway but then it started kicking back in once off it on my daily commute.
There was a, what I thought to be light, mist inside the camera tunnel just behind the windscreen and it was not going away at all so I decided to pull down the plastic cover and have a look at it myself and clean it which has worked wonders so far (only one trip since I've done it so knock on wood).

Here's how it looked once I pulled it all off:

You can clearly see this was way too much mist for the camera to work, some windex and elbow grease worked it right off.
I think this might have been caused by my dashcam install as the cables have been fed above the plastic cover which kinked a little rubber seal around it and the weather we've been having so I also ordered some passive dehumidifiers that I'll keep in the car to keep grime off the windscreen inside.

edit: And I didn't need to do any calibration whatsoever as the camera itself stayed in place, the only thing that has come off is the big plastic cover around the modules and the heated tunnel you can see dangling on brown and white wires, the camera is the module that's still secured with the sticker on.