Introducing teltonika-go: A Go Package for Parsing and Communicating with Teltonika Devices

Daniel Sá — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 13:40:53 +0000

If you've ever worked with Teltonika GPS tracking devices, you know that parsing their proprietary protocol can be a bit of a challenge. Whether you're building a fleet management system, a custom IoT platform, or just tinkering with real-time vehicle telemetry, understanding and communicating with these devices is critical.

That's why I created teltonika-go — an open-source Go package that simplifies parsing Teltonika messages and enables communication with their devices over TCP.

📦 What is teltonika-go?

teltonika-go is a lightweight, idiomatic Go library designed to help developers decode, parse, and interpret the binary protocol used by Teltonika GPS trackers like the FMB series. It provides building blocks for server-side communication with these devices, which typically send AVL (Automatic Vehicle Location) data over TCP.

With teltonika-go, you can:

Read and parse AVL packets sent by devices
Understand GPS, IO, and timestamp data
Handle device handshakes and codec types (including Codec8, Codec8 Extended and Codec16)

Build your own custom server or integrate Teltonika device communication into an existing Go application

✅ Why Use It?

Teltonika devices are widely used in the GPS tracking industry, but documentation is limited and most of it is not tailored to developers. If you're a Go developer, teltonika-go provides:

A clean and idiomatic API
No external dependencies (other than the Go standard library)
Open-source flexibility (MIT License)

🔧 Getting Started

Install the package:

go get github.com/danieljvsa/teltonika-go

Example: Parse a TCP packet from a Teltonika FMB device.

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    pkg "github.com/danieljvsa/teltonika-go/pkg" //for general functions
    tools "github.com/danieljvsa/teltonika-go/tools" //for functions that used in package to help in case only want to decode specific tram code
)

func main() {
    // example binary data from a Teltonika device
    rawLogin := []byte{ /* login packet */ }
    rawTram := []byte{ /* AVL packet */ }

    // Decode login packet
    login := pkg.LoginDecoder(rawLogin)
    if login.Error != nil {
        fmt.Println("Login decode error:", login.Error)
    } else {
        fmt.Printf("Login decoded: %+v\n", login.Response)
    }

    // Decode AVL/tram packet
    tram := pkg.TramDecoder(rawTram)
    if tram.Error != nil {
        fmt.Println("Tram decode error:", tram.Error)
    } else {
        fmt.Printf("Tram decoded: %+v\n", tram.Response)
    }
}

🧱 Project Structure

The project is still in its early stages, but currently supports:

Decode login packets
Parse AVL records using Codecs 08, 8E and 16
Validate and interpret Teltonika TCP/UDP headers

Feel free to check out the repo: https://github.com/danieljvsa/teltonika-go

🚧 Roadmap

The project is under active development, and here are some features on the horizon:

Full support for Codec 12 and Codec 14
Full support for encoding for commands with codecs 12, 13, 14, 15.
Tools to send commands to devices (e.g., engine cut-off, configuration updates)
Improved error handling and documentation

If you're working with Teltonika devices and using Go, I'd love your feedback and contributions!

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! If you find a bug, have a feature request, or just want to improve the code, feel free to open an issue or a pull request.

🙌 Final Thoughts

Parsing Teltonika’s binary protocol doesn’t need to be a pain. With teltonika-go, you can start building robust applications that speak Teltonika's language — all in idiomatic Go.

👉 Check out the project on GitHub: danieljvsa/teltonika-go

⭐ Star it if you find it useful, and let's make working with Teltonika devices easier together!

Source code: https://github.com/danieljvsa/teltonika-go

DEV Community: Daniel Sá