Can you comment on the security implications of handing over our My Tesla login information to a third party? Thanks.
Same question. I want to buy the app but I'd like to understand how my data is protected.
@ regoapps Can you let us know a bit more about data confidentiality? Thanks.
The app only communicates with the Tesla servers directly. None of your login information is sent to me. I have no interest in people's login information, and I welcome anyone to sniff the packets sent by the app. This is also easy to do if you have a wifi router that logs the IP addresses that your devices uses. You'll see that the IP addresses it contacts are only Tesla's IP addresses. Your password is stored in the app for the Apple Watch Start Car feature and/or Touch ID feature. If you don't want the app to store any passwords, just don't turn them on. The only reason why I have to store the password is because to start the car, Tesla's API requires the password. Since the Apple Watch doesn't need a password and the Touch ID doesn't have a password input, the app needs the password to send to Tesla's servers. However, nobody has access to that password except for the app, since apps are sandboxed and inaccessible by other apps.
I like the way you call it "Start Car" on the watch.
I'd like to see the crown used -- perhaps when changing the charge level or temperatures, turning the crown, instead of tapping could be an option.
The crown is inaccessible by the app developers at the moment.
Awesome job!!!
I installed it on my (Future Model X driver) wife's iPhone 6 and Apple Watch (I'm Windows Phone guy).
Some minor feedback:
Phone:
Rename 'Unlock Car' to 'Unlock'.
I'm currently unplugged but it says 'Charge On'.
Charge limit is tough to get to amount desired. Maybe loosen the sensitivity.
Update graphic to show if charge port is open.
Watch:
On sunroof page, remove the word 'Roof'. Less is more.
On map page upper left, say 'Map' or 'GPS', not 'S'.
Again, really well done. Thank you!
The "S" in the map page is actually the heading of your car. S = south. As your car changes directions, it'll tell you the different headings like SSW, WNW, NW, etc.
"Charge On" means to turn the charge on. I guess that's a big confusing. I tried putting "Turn Charge On", but it doesn't fit. I'm not really sure what I should call it to fit in that small space.
I noticed that the charge limit thing is also hard to control. That slider functionality is set by Apple and I can't change the sensitivity. I need to think of a better way of doing it. I'm considering putting plus and minus buttons next to it so that you can fine-tune the charge limit, and then use the slider for someone who wants to quickly change the charge limit.
Suggestions:
In map mode, show a marker for where the phone/watch is (in addition to where the car is)
In breadcrumbs mode it would be cool if the trail of crumbs changed color gradually as the car kept going (i.e. for example the most recent marker is red, the next is slightly darker, the early markers are dark red or blue - kind of like a temperature gradient that cools off the further away from the marker you've driven).
For the map mode in the watch, I didn't put where the user was, because the map is very small already and I didn't want to drain the batteries by turning on the GPS. Instead, what you can do is tap on the map and it will open up the maps app. From there, you can get directions to your car and it will also tell you where you are and where the car is.
As for the phone app, I can put the user's location into the app. That's not a problem.
I'm getting Miles fine in San Diego.
My watch is not here yet, so I can only play with the phone part. So far so good.
I like having there odometer reading and estimate miles displayed. I wonder why Tesla left those off the Official app?
One thing I noticed is the map is not showing the cars location with I start up. It just shows the whole US in the background of the main page. It does not zoom into the car location until I go to the map page, though once it zoomed into a small island somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.
Are there any plans to allow turning off features that don't work on some cars (close port on older cars, sunroof controls on cars with no sunroof, etc) or an option to display only whole miles on the odometer?
It's good to know that at least most users are seeing miles correctly. I wonder why the other users' APIs are different. I'm going to need to see the API responses for the people who have the bug for me to fix it. I hope someone with the bug will volunteer their OAuth token to me for a few seconds so that I could see the responses and fix my code accordingly. By design, the app doesn't ask for the car's location right away. It only asks for it when you're in the location view. The reason is because I didn't want to overwhelm the Tesla servers with requests. But I might add it in the next version and see if Tesla's servers will allow me.
Just purchase the app! It is great but I dont seem to be able to find a camper mode and also not sure how to adjust the temperature for driver and passenger separately!! Also anyone knows when the closing charge port automatically was included in cars? My was in production in feb 15, delivered in March 2015 with tech, so I was hoping my car had that capability but does not appear so!! Any thoughts?
Camp Mode appears when you press the giant REMOTE S logo on the top. It's like an advanced features page.
You can adjust the temp for drivers and passengers separately in the Apple Watch app. But I ran out of space for the iPhone app. But I will add the functionality to adjust them separately in the advanced features page I mentioned above. I believe the closing port functionality came out around the time the dual motors came out, because they mentioned that it was a new feature when I took delivery of the car. I have it on mine, and mine was delivered in Dec 2014.
When doing a force touch on the Apple Watch, it's hard to touch somewhere else on the screen to leave the screen without activating one of the functions:
This confused me at first too, but there's actually three simple ways of closing the menu: Press any of the two side buttons (crown or contacts). Force press anywhere on the screen again. Press the center or sides of the screen (this might cause false presses).
As promised in the other thread, I just bought the app. Looks great so far. A few suggestions:
1. It's not entirely clear how to geolocate your car. The way I found it is to press on the "hamburger (upper left 3 parallel line) button" and toggle the panels until I saw the mini tracking panel. The hamburger menu in most apps gives a pop out menu for things like preferences, other views, etc. would you consider moving things like the link to the car selection/sign out function, in app browser, preferences (eg units, notification selections, future features) to a pop out menu?
Right now, screen space is used for functions we don't need very often: the car icon in the upper right could be replaced by a target icon for geolocation, and the big Remote S text in the title could perhaps toggle the panels like the current hamburger icon does. Then, the hamburger can be used for a menu.
2. How does camping mode work?
3. Any plans for scheduling functions for HVAC etc?
4. What notifications, if any, does the app do? I'd love to have the charge interruption, charge status change, alarm, and update notifications that the Tesla app offers.
5. Agree with other suggestions about close port being invalid for non motorized charge ports. Does this unlock the charge port?
6. Looking forward to the large blue car icon to reflect the actual door(s), trunk, frunk, sunroof status.
7. It would be nice to have an icon indicating the car is indeed locked. The unlock car function in the lower left could be repurposed to an icon reflecting the actual lock status, then it becomes a graphical toggle. It might then move to the lower right panel where other graphical control icons are.
Thanks for a great app! Even as a 1.0, it's very impressive.
1. I considering just geolocating the car from anywhere in the menu system.
2. If you press the "Show Info" button next to the Camp Mode button, it tells you how it works. In general, you press "Turn Camp Mode On", and then leave your phone alone. Don't lock the screen, don't switch apps, don't switch screens or switch websites. If you lock the device or switch apps, you have 3 minutes to get back to the Remote S app before Apple shuts down the background functionality in the app. Apple doesn't allow apps to execute code in the background after 3 minutes of not having the app in the foreground. There are app exceptions like GPS apps, VOIP and music apps, but my app doesn't qualify as any one of them. If you're asking about how the Camp Mode works algorithm-wise, it shuts off your HVAC, and then turns it back on after 5 seconds. It will do this every 30 minutes (which is the time when the Tesla shuts down the HVAC normally).
3. Yea, these can be added in the future. The only issue is that the app has to be running in the foreground for it to execute code. Otherwise Apple suspends apps in the background and it can't do anything. I'm not sure how scheduling can be useful in these conditions, as someone would have to keep my app running the whole time. The other solution would be handing over the OAuth token to my servers and letting my servers execute the code (what I don't want to do, because people will complain about security issues and/or I don't want to run a server that controls multiple Teslas - that's too much liability). The other solution is to take your own OAuth token and creating your own server code or run a scheduler. But I don't know. My hands are tied here, because app can't run in the background.
4. I don't have access to Tesla's push notifications, and apps can't run in the background. So I don't have plans on adding notification. I would suggest just keeping the Tesla app installed for that, like I do. It even pushes notifications to the watch, which is nice.
5. It should unlock and lock the charge port. Does it? I don't have a non-motorized charge port to test this on.
6. It's a lot of graphics to create, because each combination would have to be its own graphic. But I'll get around to doing it. I wish I could overlay graphics on top of each other on the Apple Watch, but it doesn't appear to be a way to do it. I'll have to do more research to figure this one out.
7. The color of the car changes depending on whether it's locked or not. Blue = locked. Orange = unlocked. Also the lock car and unlock car buttons change according to its lock state. It would say unlock car if the car is locked. And It would say lock car if the car is unlocked.
The side button does that as well.
@regoapps - great job on this app. Love it! Any chance of using the crown to zoom in on the location map? Also for those without pano roofs, can the roof buttons be removed for simplicity?
I have no control over the crown button. Yea, I can remove the roof button for those without the pano roof.
I agree with SteveW on all his points, especially the "hamburger" (E-like symbol) not behaving like a drop-down menu as you'd expect.
One additional very minor nitpick: the charge port graphic depicts a US charge port. EU and Asian cars have the Mennekes Type 2 inlet, depicted below. If the API gives you info on whether it's a US or EU/Asian car it would be nice to have the graphic change.
I also agree it would be good if the pano roof controls simply did not appear for cars without the panoramic roof.
I didn't know that about the charge port graphic. That's something I can change.
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Using the iPhone version only... just came out in US this past evening, and I really like it. Would be great if next version had some sort of indicator that it was responding to a command, and working - so I don't push it multiple times.
Great work. Hope you sell a ton of them.
I'm probably going to add sound effects to give users an audio feedback when a button is pressed. Someone else is already working on giving me some sound effects.
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The app looks great. The vehicle seems to respond much quicker than with Tesla's app too.
One other request...
I love the ability to set the driver and passenger temps in the watch app, having the same ability in the iPhone app would be great too.
Also, does Tesla's API allow you to access the fan speed? That'd be a nice addition too, the 'auto' from the car does a pretty good job, but I'd love to override that if I wanted.
Awesome job again!
I'm running out of space in the iPhone app to include both driver/passenger temp buttons. But I will add the driver/passenger temp in the advanced features section (accessed by pressing the REMOTE S button) shortly. That just requires a website update and doesn't need an app update. I cannot control the fan. It adjust automatically according to the temperature setting, so you can "control" it by setting the temperature further or closer to the interior temperature.