I have been running a couple of instances of Teslamate - one locally on a server at home and another in Azure in a Ubuntu VM (see 👉 this blog post for details). I have been backing up the data to a NAS and then an offsite backup for the local instance. For the Azure instance, I have been running various backups during the day and backing up the data to OneDrive....
If you have a Tesla, then you should absolutely check out TeslaMate which is data logger for your car(s) that one self-hosts. This uses the car’s API and gets all different kinds of telemetry of your drives, charging, batter conditions, acceleration, braking, parking, etc. I personally prefer this, over other online services (of which there are a few) - as it is giving away the keys to the kingdom - literally in this case (the Tokens used to authenticate and login)....
Haven’t had time until now to explore on what is new as Tesla continues to push updates. The latest version as of this post is v3.9.1 which is what there I decompiled and when compared to the earlier version ( I had posted (v3.8.2) , there three new REST API’s outlined below. Service data from the car - not sure what exactly does this will. Need to try it. 1 2 3 4 5 "VEHICLE_SERVICE_DATA": { "TYPE": "GET", "URI": "api/1/vehicles/{vehicle_id}/service_data", "AUTH": true } Now, when I call that, I get a 200OK response (see below), so it is accepting the request, and that includes the bearer code in the header as expected....
It has been a while since I played with the various Tesla endpoint (APIs) - been too busy and haven’t had the time. I de-compiled the Tesla app and noticed a few new things in there - or at least new to me. The following are the ones which seem new and stand out. How exactly some of these are used, can only be one’s guess, but I can certainly infer a few things from this....
Sometime back, I noticed the car downloaded a large file (5.1 GB) which was a .ssq file. I hadn’t heard of a ssq file, and was curious on what this was. I researched a little and as it turns out, a .ssq file is a compressed file system which is often used in an embedded Linux system, where storage size might be a area of concern. This file-system is called SquashFS, and is usually used on a read-only mode....
In case you haven’t been following the news, Tesla is in the process of releasing the new firmware beta. I think many folks online are super interested in new autopilot upgrades. I reverse engineered the associated app and there are certainly a few new end points exposed, as outlined below. Need time to now figure out more details on this and what they entail. Also need time to see what changes in the existing code and json (data structure)....
Some time ago, I talked about my Tesla Model 3 “keyfob” which essentially uses a Amazon IoT button to call some of Tesla API’s and “talk” to the car. This for me, is cool as it allows my daughter to unlock, and lock the car at home. And of course it is a bit geeky, and allowing one to play with more things. :) Since publishing this, I was surprised how many of you ping me asking on details on how they can did this for themselves....
Tonight, I was a large download by the car, and saw that it was a .ssq file. The file name is consistent with the firmware naming convention, but I am not sure on what it is. The file itself is 5.11 GB, and in my case its name starts with “NA”. I am guessing, this might be the maps its updating. Below are a couple of screenshots showing this. I am trying to make sense of the binary file, but not making much headway....
I don’t know how to get to debug / dev mode on a Tesla, but did come across this old post , on how someone was in a test drive, which did have this mode. Now this is quite old, so a lot has changed, but am impressed that a lot of the components and foundational architecture was setup. I am particularly impressed how each cell in the battery pack and report its state....
As I was trying to understand more on the capabilities of the car, and what options I can do. The voice recognition on the car is quite impressive, it does seem as good at understanding as Amazon’s Echo, at least in the early days of “Alexa” (but that is a different story for another time). I was trying to understand what things can I control, or the options one has via the voice....
UPDATE: This cURL script doesn’t work anymore. This was originally published back in 2018 when it was the best way to do this. Over the last few years however Tesla has deprecated this endpoint (/oauth/token) and moved to a SSO service (auth.tesla.com) which is a completely different approach. I’ll have a look and if there is a simple way to do it, then will share it here. I did write a simple Windows (desktop) app called TeslaTokenGenerator, for those who wanted to create authentication tokens for their Tesla, and use with 3rd party apps/data loggers....
Inspired by a few folks on a few forums online , I took the liberty to extend their idea using a IoT Button, that acts as a simple “keyfob” for the Model 3. The main goal was being to allow my daughter to lock and unlock the car at home. She is too young to have a phone, and without a more traditional fob, this gets a little annoying. I extended the original idea, to understand the different presses (Single, Double, and Long press), and accordingly called the appropriate API to lock the car (single press - think of it as a single click), unlock on a double press, and open the charge port on a long press (when one presses and holds the button 2-3 secs)....
If you have a Tesla, and are using (or wanting to use) 3rd party tools or data loggers, the one think they of course need is to authenticate your details with Tesla. A simple, but insecure way is to use your Tesla credentials - and surprisingly many people just happily share and use this. I wasn’t comfortable doing this - after-all, they have access to your account where you can control a lot of things....