Auto AP and mobile use incompatible?

[AE5E]

I and other DMR users in our local area have struggled with mobile hotspots. I previously posted the topic "Mobile Hot Spot requires power cycling for practical use." One alternative to simply pulling the plug was to program the power down command (9999996 'PiStar-Remote') into our radios and set up pi-star accordingly for a graceful power down. You have to remember to send the command from your radio, wait, and then drop the power.

Rather than powering down, the alternative would be to leave the hotspot powered. It draws about 0.15 amps, which would seem acceptable for a typical 50 amp-hour car battery for a few days. But even leaving it powered, for reasons unknown, the hot spot would still occasionally get stuck in a mode where it would not connect to wi-fi, requiring a power cycling.

The subsequent power cycling eventually would result in the microSD card contents getting corrupted, requiring those in our group to carry an imaged microSD card to pop in to return to service.

It finally occurred to me to disable Auto AP. That seems to have solved the problem. Perhaps the cars were occasionally glitching the power, resulting in the unit going into Auto AP mode and getting stuck there. I don't know if this was the case, but I do know that disabling Auto AP appears to have solved the problem.