VisibleTesla

[paulkva]

Joe, I think your "wacky" idea could work quite well with one caveat: you'd need a publicly accessible server that you control/maintain. (There's probably even some kind of free hosting service that would do the trick.) Then, both the car's browser and the VT app could communicate with that server. When VT is in sleep mode, it would presumably poll the server every X minutes, and the server would reply "hey, wake up!" if the same user had clicked the "wake up" button from his/her browser within the past X+1 minutes. There would have to be a consistent and reasonably secure way to identify yourself from VT and the browser as well. Still not trivial, but I think much easier than dealing with NAT and firewall traversal to talk directly from a browser to a desktop app.

Also, your "P.S." sounds very close to what I was trying to request/suggest a few weeks back. Glad it's coming up in the next release, and thanks again for all your hard work on VisibleTesla!

 

[Mario Kadastik]

I think I found a bug. When I try to set the HVAC temperature in the EU model the setting immediately sets to LO no matter which temperature I set. If I use the Tesla App I can set it to right temp and it then shows that in VT too. My first initial guess would be unit conversion issue. If I set the temp to 20C but you communicate to the car 20F, then the closest temperature it can set to is LO and that is for ALL temperatures if you accidentally set the C number in F

 

[scaesare]

Hi All,





P.S. The current version of VT (not released yet) will notice if the car transitions from being asleep to being awake. For example, let's say it is 8 AM and the app and car are both asleep. You get into the car and drive away. at 8:05 VT says "hey, the car is awake and it used to be asleep. I didn't wake it up so something else must have done it. Since someone else woke it up, I'll collect some data." In this case, only 5 minutes of the trip will be missed (at most).

This is along the lines of what i was going to suggest as well.

Unless Tesla ultimately implements some sort of web service that can register for notifications of state transition, that's probably about the best?

 

[jpasqua]

I think I found a bug. When I try to set the HVAC temperature in the EU model the setting immediately sets to LO no matter which temperature I set. If I use the Tesla App I can set it to right temp and it then shows that in VT too. My first initial guess would be unit conversion issue. If I set the temp to 20C but you communicate to the car 20F, then the closest temperature it can set to is LO and that is for ALL temperatures if you accidentally set the C number in F

Thanks for the report Mario. When I put my U.S. vehicle into metric mode this works fine. I'll have to investigate further.

Joe

 

[LuckyLuke]

I think I found a bug. When I try to set the HVAC temperature in the EU model the setting immediately sets to LO no matter which temperature I set. If I use the Tesla App I can set it to right temp and it then shows that in VT too. My first initial guess would be unit conversion issue. If I set the temp to 20C but you communicate to the car 20F, then the closest temperature it can set to is LO and that is for ALL temperatures if you accidentally set the C number in F

Had the same yesterday, started hvac with iPhone app at 18C but wanted it to be more toasty so some minutes later I used VT from my desktop to raise it to 20C, when I got to my car it was ice cold blasting LO.

 

[jpasqua]

Had the same yesterday, started hvac with iPhone app at 18C but wanted it to be more toasty so some minutes later I used VT from my desktop to raise it to 20C, when I got to my car it was ice cold blasting LO.

I think I found a bug. When I try to set the HVAC temperature in the EU model the setting immediately sets to LO no matter which temperature I set. If I use the Tesla App I can set it to right temp and it then shows that in VT too. My first initial guess would be unit conversion issue. If I set the temp to 20C but you communicate to the car 20F, then the closest temperature it can set to is LO and that is for ALL temperatures if you accidentally set the C number in F

Hello Mario and LuckyLuke,

I think I understand why this works for me and not for you even when I have my units set to celsius. It's not a conversion error. I'm guessing that the locale/language settings on your computers are such that they use a comma as a decimal mark as opposed to a period as is used in the US. This is perfectly fine for user interface purposes, but when I am sending formatted commands to Tesla via the REST API, the commas confuse things. I should always being using a "." within these commands. I tested this by forcing a "," instead of a "." and had the same result (temp set to min).

This is a trivial fix and I will look for other places in the code that may have the same problem. Thanks for pointing this out and sorry for the inconvenience.

Joe

 

[jpasqua]

...One more thing. I know I can get my Firmware Version from the "Details button" on the "Overview tab". would it be possible to also put it on the "Overview tab" itself under the VIN?

A slight variant of your request will be in 0.25.03. The area on the overview tab that currently displays the car's VIN will now allow the user to toggle between displaying the VIN or the firmware version. The setting is remembered between runs of the application. You can toggle back and forth between VIN and version # all you want while running the app, and if you quit and restart, it will begin wherever you left it (displaying VIN or firmware version).

Joe

 

[andrewket]

This is along the lines of what i was going to suggest as well.

Unless Tesla ultimately implements some sort of web service that can register for notifications of state transition, that's probably about the best?

A smartphone app running in the background could do the trick. Using GPS/geofence, if phone is near last known location of car and in motion above 10mph, check vehicle state.

 

[gg_got_a_tesla]

Cross-posting here:

Is the mobile app connection down for anyone? Can't get through the iPhone app - it seems to think the car's asleep when it's not (it's charging here at work) - nor through VisibleTesla...

VT gets through the login phase but, all tabs are disabled at that point.

 

[MichaelS]

My Android app works fine.

Cross-posting here:



VT gets through the login phase but, all tabs are disabled at that point.

 

[gg_got_a_tesla]

Thanks, Michael. Posted a followup here: Phone App: iPhone/Android app - Page 53

I'll follow up with Ownership and see what gives. Will post an update on the phone app thread then.

 

[ebbrey]

Great work with this app!

Noticed that if i try to set the temp higher with heating the cabin. It resets down to 18C. Also looks like version 25.02 max Celsius is 27 degress. With the app it starts with LO then 17,5 upto 31,5 then HI.
If i set VT to ON it starts on 18 degress. App says 17.5. Changing the slider to max 27. Vt then jumps back to 18. Refreshing the app to check, app reports that it has been changed to LO. Sett ap to HI and refresh VT, VT says 27.

 

[jpasqua]

Great work with this app!

Noticed that if i try to set the temp higher with heating the cabin. It resets down to 18C. Also looks like version 25.02 max Celsius is 27 degress. With the app it starts with LO then 17,5 upto 31,5 then HI.
If i set VT to ON it starts on 18 degress. App says 17.5. Changing the slider to max 27. Vt then jumps back to 18. Refreshing the app to check, app reports that it has been changed to LO. Sett ap to HI and refresh VT, VT says 27.

Hello ebbrey,

There is a known problem with the temperature jumping to LO when using VisibleTesla. There are some comments about this a page or two back in this thread. This primarily impacts European users. This will be fixed in the next release (coming this weekend I hope).

Joe

 

[Mario Kadastik]

Can you explain to me why VT decides to reduce the polling interval once the car actually starts to do something?

 

[Volker.Berlin]

I bet this has been discussed before. Please forgive me, this thread is "longish"... I would love to try VT but entering my Tesla password into any software that does not originate from Tesla Motors seems to violate the most basic principles of IT security. Of course, Tesla's apps and website could contain bugs or back doors, too, but I sold my soul to that company, anyway. I mean, I trust them with my life everytime I drive my car, how much worse could it get?

Is there any provision in the design of VT that would give me some confidence that my password is merely being sent through to Tesla's servers, without being looked at for any other purpose?

Dear jpasqua, this does NOT mean that I question your trustworthiness. It's a matter of principle. As someone who obviously knows a thing or two about IT, I am confident that you understand my concern.

 

[ZBB]

Glad I could provide some assistance to you Joe!

For the others out there, we noticed an issue in my logs where VT did not log data after I manually woke the car <5 min before leaving.

 

[araxara]

Is there any provision in the design of VT that would give me some confidence that my password is merely being sent through to Tesla's servers, without being looked at for any other purpose?

The best way is to examine the Java source code (since it's open source) and then build your own version of the software.

 

[Volker.Berlin]

The best way is to examine the Java source code (since it's open source) and then build your own version of the software.

I agree that this is most likely the best (or maybe only) option I have. Let's hope that the password handling is simple enough to be quickly verified because I'd have to repeat the process for every single new version...

 

[hans]

I agree that this is most likely the best (or maybe only) option I have. Let's hope that the password handling is simple enough to be quickly verified because I'd have to repeat the process for every single new version...

It's not your only option. You could scope out your network traffic and verify that VT isn't sending any network traffic to IP addresses other than Tesla's REST and Streaming API interfaces.

I think you will eventually learn to trust jpasqua as much as we do.

 

[jpasqua]

I agree that this is most likely the best (or maybe only) option I have. Let's hope that the password handling is simple enough to be quickly verified because I'd have to repeat the process for every single new version...

Hi Volker.Berlin,

If you take a look at the FAQ it talks a little bit about security. You can find it online here or in the Documentation folder that comes with VT.

As araxara points out, you can read the code and build it yourself to ensure that the jar file actually reflects the sources that you're reading. The Readme.md file on github has notes on how to set up the build environment.

hans has a good point (that I just added to the next version of the FAQ). You could use an app to monitor all network traffic coming from VisibleTesla and forbid any connections that you don't want. Little Snitch on the Mac is a good example. FYI, VT talks to Tesla, Dropbox (to check for and download new versions), and MailGun to send notifications. It will only check for new versions and send notifications if you explicitly ask it to do so. Otherwise it just talks to tesla.

You may already be familiar with hans' teslams project. If not you should definitely check it out. It's an awesome package and you'll probably find it much easier to do a security review of it than of VT.

Joe

- - - Updated - - -

Can you explain to me why VT decides to reduce the polling interval once the car actually starts to do something?

View attachment 41056

I can't tell you what is happening in this specific case based on just this image, but I can tell you a few things about how VT works (also in the documentation) which might help. I also encourage you to take a look at the code if you want to see what's really going on at a detailed level.

The Graphs Tab has a data collector that collects data samples every two minutes unless the car is in motion in which case it collects data every 30 seconds. This happens regardless of what Tab you are displaying as long as the app isn't asleep.

When you are sitting in another tab, e.g. the Overview tab, the app auto-refreshes the displayed information every 30 seconds unless the app is asleep or daydreaming. The Graphs tab will opportunistically grab any relevant information that is collected by the other tabs and add it to it's own data set.

The location tab is a special case of this. If you are viewing the location tab while the car is in motion, it uses the streaming API which may collect data at a much higher rate. The graphs tab also opportunistically includes any relevant data from there also.

People are going to think hans is paying me since I'm mentioning this twice in a row, but I really encourage people who are interested in data collection to check out teslams. It's got very nice data collection and visualization capabilities and can easily be run on a server to collect data in the background. It's also easily modified to make it do exactly what you want. Of course you can modify VT too, but there is a lot more code to wade through since it has all of the GUI code, etc.